Review by Choice Review
Zakaria, a political commentator for CNN, has written a novel history of the world since 1600, centering on comparative revolutions: the Dutch Revolt, England's Glorious Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolutions in England and the US. He pinpoints the Dutch Revolt as a model for its time--divorced from Spain, the Netherlands adopted a non-monarchical and early stage democratic-capitalist approach to create a new economy. The Glorious Revolution was a turning point and the start of a new economic and political course for Britain. By contrast, Zakaria sees the French Revolution as a failure, in which Lafayette's desire for modernism and liberalism was suffocated by Robespierre's Reign of Terror and Napoleon's imperial march for European domination. From the Industrial Revolution he turns to the present. Despite acknowledging that some countries became more liberal after WW II, he sees Russia and China leading a new illiberal, autocratic order since the Cold War's end. Zakaria blames neoliberal US policies under Reagan, which led to the US becoming involved in unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with the 2008 economic crash, these wars endangered Pax Americana. Fearing that a second Trump presidency could cause American influence to decline worldwide, he urges the West to pay attention to the ongoing struggle with illiberal nuclear powers to survive. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty. --Andrew Mark Mayer, emeritus, College of Staten Island/CUNY
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
A prominent journalist considers historical dramatic changes and twenty-first-century geopolitical trends in a search for perspective on our current "revolutionary age." Concerned by Trumpism and the broader global trend away from liberal ideals (Enlightenment principles of personal liberty and laissez-faire economics, not left-of-center politics), Zakaria (Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, 2020) first turns to the past. Adopting new technologies and rejecting the prevailing Spanish model of top-down colonial governance in the 1600s, the Dutch destabilized and transformed Europe. Drawing on historian Eric Hobsbawm's similarly titled 1962 work, The Age of Revolutions, Zakaria emphasizes the failure of the French Revolution relative to the transformative British Industrial Revolution. Returning to the present, Zakaria identifies economic globalization, information technology, and identity politics as intertwined factors driving today's geopolitical turbulence. In part, this is a cautionary counterargument to those agitators who romanticize illiberal backlash and fan the flames of violent conflict. It's also an earnest plea for a return to third-way political centrism informed by classical liberal values at a time when middle-ground stances are increasingly rejected by a polarized electorate.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Of revolutions good and bad, born of intentions good and evil. In this wide-ranging historical survey, political commentator Zakaria, author of The Post-American World, considers the present era to be "revolutionary in the commonly used sense of the word," involving fundamental changes marked not necessarily by advances but instead retreats into ideologies once overcome. Donald Trump, in this regard, is "part of a global trend," the proponent of a politics of resentment against the other, whether nonwhite newcomers or members of the so-called urban elite. Some revolutions have had better angels at their hearts. The establishment of the Dutch Republic, for example, brought with it a "celebration of individual rights…[and] toleration of religious minorities," along with an entrepreneurial spirit that made Holland the wealthiest nation on the planet. Similarly, the British government supported inventors and technological innovation after the Glorious Revolution, which introduced "parliamentary rule and market capitalism," giving the nation a decided leg up on more hidebound neighbors. Throughout this intellectually stimulating book, Zakaria asks and answers large questions, such as why the U.S., alone among industrial nations, never developed a socialist movement. (One part of the answer is that the U.S. never experienced feudalism as such, and its ruling class "obscured the strict lines of class conflict that fed socialism.") Absent socialism, the country instead developed a liberal democracy along the lines of the old Dutch Republic, for better and worse. Zakaria writes, "Liberalism's great strength throughout history has been to free people from arbitrary constraints. Its great weakness has been the inability to fill the void when the old structures crumble." That's about where we are today, with old structures collapsing on every side and no fresh solutions in view--certainly, the author concludes, not from the right wing. A thought-provoking tour of recent history and its considerable discontents. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
