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|  | Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.36
as of 11/24/2009 13:43 CST details
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Seller: indoobestsellers
Rating:  258 reviews
Sales Rank: 1458
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: First Printing
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0393334805
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.49
EAN: 9780393334807
ASIN: 0393334805
Publication Date: May 4, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Showing reviews 21-25 of 258
 Economic condition of America September 11, 2009
Nora (Salt Lake City, Utah)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very informative for people who want to understand what is happening to the American economy in relation to the world economics.
 Hare & Tortoise September 3, 2009
Ratna Dalal (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In my desire to understand globalization better, I am often drawn to books that explain it at different levels. By levels I mean leaves (people), trees (countries) and forest (the world). So far I have read and reviewed two books. They are as follows:
Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation - explains leaves (i.e. Indians and their changing attitudes) and a tree (India).
The Elephant and the Dragon - explains two trees, namely India and China.
Recently I finished reading a book which begins to take a look at the forest (i.e. the world) from a unique perspective.
Book Review of: THE POST- AMERICAN WORLD
Author: Fareed Zakaria
The author begins the book by assuring the readers that this book is not about the decline of America, but it is about the rise of the others. Phew! what a relief. By others he means the BRIC nations (i.e. Brazil, Russia, India & China). The gist of the book can be summed up in one phrase i.e. 'Hare & Tortoise', the old Aesop's fable. Through out the book Zakaria mentions statistics which convince you that America is the hare and will continue winning the race. Here are a few of them:
- With 5% of the world's population, the USA has generated between 20 - 30% of the world output for 125 years.
- USA remains the most competitive economy in the world, ranks first in innovation, ninth in technological readiness, second in company spending for research and technology and second in the quality of its research institutions.
- In virtually every sector that advanced industrial countries paticipate in, US firms lead the world in productivity and profits.
But where the book differs from all others and brings out some original thinking is when Zakaria draws parallels in history. Remember the old saying 'those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it'. Keeping the wisdom of this old adage in mind, his parallels are quite prophetic. In the 1880's the British empire was at the peak of its glory. It had colonies spread out all over the world. Its reach was such that it was said "the sun never sets on the British empire". And yet it did. Then he investigates the tipping point of its decline. In the 1890's the British were engaged in a war with the Boers (Boer is the Dutch and Africaans word for "farmer") in South Africa. By 1902 the war was over and although the British won, the victory came at a heavy cost. Then he says that the analogy is obvious. In today's world USA is Britain and the Iraq war is the Boer war. The other important parallel he makes between old Britain and USA today is that of "broader cultural problems". In the former the emphasis had shifted from chemistry and engineering to history and literature. In USA today " we're losing interest in basic math, manufacturing, hard work, savings and becoming a post industrial society that specializes in consumption and leisure." Just these two parallels act like a warning to the hare (USA), that history may repeat itself.
Two chapters are devoted to China and India (the two tortoises) that explain the booming growth there. But there are so many positive statistics about USA, peppered throughout the book, that the reader is led to believe that the hare will continue winning. Here is a typical example: In 2025, most estimates suggest that the US economy will still be twice the size of China's in terms of nominal GDP.
As for the narration, it seems a little incoherent at times. Many times you feel that the author is rattling off interesting statistics, to keep the reader awed. But if you see the flow of the chapters , the coherence appears in the totality of the book. The last two chapters on 'American Power' and 'American Purpose' are well written. They explain the greatness of this unique nation and how it can use its potential and resources to improve the world.
Change is the only thing that is constant in nature. India and China are also in the race, with the spread of capitalism and globalization. With so many changes going on in the forest, we sure are living in interesting times. (For a more detailed analysis of this book, please see the 'reading' category in my blog:[...]
Ratna
The Post American World September 2, 2009
James J. Maun (Key West, FL USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a must for anyone concerned with the United States in our modern world. Fareed Zakaria is an honest, educated, well informed man whose writing shows analitical depth and analysis. What a joy to see the human mind at such constructive work.
Brave New World. September 1, 2009
David Marshall (Seattle area)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I arrived in the city pictured on the cover of this book -- Hong Kong -- two years after Zakaria came to the United States. Watching Asia change, year after year -- I spoke at several churches in Hong Kong this summer, and the skyscrapers of Central spread out before the window of my hotel room are now the most impressive on earth -- Zakaria puts into words, and hard statistics, realities that I have been pondering for many years now.
In 1984, I remember watching people in a small town outside Hong Kong snapping together little pieces of plastic to make Christmas toys. It's hard to imagine seeing that sort of poverty there today. Education, hard work, the export of technology, and free enterprise have brought increasing prosperity to countries around the world, as Zakaria shows. He does a wonderful job of melding stats, telling facts, quotes from statesmen, to present a case for a reality that Americans need to get used to: there will be no "second American century." The United States will be one of several great powers within a few short years.
I don't much agree with Zakaria's politics. He's a moderate democrat, I'm a conservative Republican. To me, the greatest American blunder is not anything George Bush did overseas, but the suicidal binge spending the Bush, and especially Obama, administrations have engaged in. But nothing we can do could have stopped the laws of mathematics anyway, and as free trade and the spread of techonology evens out per capita production, "we must decrease (relatively) and they must increase."
I think if anything, Zakaria underestimates the extent of that change. Within a few years, China will be the world's richest superpower in GDP. (As I predicted 25 years ago.) Our vast borrowing from the Chinese has probably excelerated the transition. With 4-5 times our population, in a generation we will be roughly to China what the UK is to us, and India will surpass the US as well.
Zakaria is right to look at the last time such a transition occurred, from the UK, to put this in context, but wrong in some of the conclusions he draws. It is unreasonable to blame the moralizing of British evangelicals for weakening British power, for example. Was Britain weaker because it banned the slave trade and began to educate Indians instead of merely exploit them? Such policies were largely responsible for the "soft power" Zakaria admires, and did not cause Britain's relative decline.
What Zakaria says on page 109 about East Asian religious beliefs is also misleading, IMO. (See David Aikman's Jesus in Beijing for a more reasonable discussion, or my True Son of Heaven.) Strangely, Zakaria expresses surprise that 72% of Chinese deny that one must believe in God to be moral. Doesn't he know that young Chinese have been educated by communists, who are atheists, for the past 60 years? What's remarkable is that it's only 72 % -- the real story is the renewel of and spread of religion in China, including Christianity -- and what Zakaria says about Confucianism is mostly nonsense. (The Chinese don't even call it that -- they call it the "teaching of the scholars," so Zakaria's point about Confucius not believing in God is moot -- besides, Confucius did believe in God, and the writers of the Classics he edited, and that were the basis for "Confucianism," really are rather theistic -- I've been pouring over them for the past few months.)
But Zakaria gets the big picture mostly right. He demonstrates that we are in a transition phase, entering not into a world in which America is irrelevant, but in which America is just one great power of many. On the off chance that the greatest of those new powers behaves itself (one can dream), perhaps we Americans can go back to minding our own business again pretty soon. (And start paying back all that massive debt our foolish politians have accumulated.)
Obama should read this book! August 31, 2009
David Amchai (Los Angeles, CA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
People might get the wrong idea if they see him carrying it around though.
They should read it too.
Showing reviews 21-25 of 258
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