Big deal....it's a great book by Fareed Zakaria
Do a little research before you start squealing, " The Yankees are coming"
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but the rise of everyone else, readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweek editor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India's greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
See all Editorial Reviews
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazon.com Review
Book Description
"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.
Zakaria was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress and an Islamic scholar. His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was for a time the editor of the Sunday Times of India.
Zakaria attended The Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University[1], where he studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann.
[edit] Career
After participating in a research project on American foreign policy at Harvard, Zakaria became editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. In October 2000, he was named editor of Newsweek International.[1] and writes a weekly foreign affairs column in it.
Zakaria is the author of From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton, 1998), The Future of Freedom (Norton, 2003), and The Post-American World (2008); he has also co-edited The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World (Basic Books).
Zakaria hosted the weekly TV news show, Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, for PBS, and, from 2002 to 2007 was a news analyst with ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. His new weekly show, Fareed Zakaria GPS premiered on CNN in June 2008.[1]
[edit] Views
Zakaria is regarded variously as a political liberal[2], a conservative,[3] or moderate.[4] In his book, The Future of Freedom, Zakaria argues that democracy works best in societies where it is preceded by "constitutional liberalism." He has written that liberty has historically preceded democracy, that countries which simply hold elections without broad-based modernization—including economic liberalization and the rule of law—end up becoming "illiberal democracies". Consequently, he has been critical of the George W. Bush administration's emphasis on holding elections in the Middle-East without equal regard to building institutions of law, governance, and liberty.
After the 9/11 attacks, Zakaria argued that Islamic terrorism had its roots in the stagnation and dysfunctions of the Arab world. Decades of failure under tyrannical regimes, all claiming to be Western-style secular modernizers, had produced an opposition that was religious, violent, and increasingly globalized. Since the mosque was a place where people could gather and Islam an institution that was outside the reach of censorship, they both provided a context for the growth of the political opposition. Zakaria argued for a inter-generational effort to create more open and dynamic societies in Arab countries, and thereby helping Islam enter the modern world.
Although Zakaria initially supported using military force against Iraq, he argued for a United Nations-sanctioned operation with a much larger force—approximately 400,000 troops—than was actually employed by the administration of President George W. Bush. He also called for a Bosnia- or Kosovo-style occupation that was international in composition.
More recently, Zakaria has also criticized the "fear-based" policies employed not only in combating terrorism, but also in framing immigration laws and pursuing trade, and has argued instead for an open and confident United States.[5]
In October, Zakaria endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election.
I guess you're shocked cause this President CAN & WILL READ...and Bush bragged about he didn't read.