A timely, reasoned treatise by a keen observer and historian.
A pertinent study of the relationship between the United States and China, in which “a rapidly ascending China [is] challeng[ing] America’s accustomed predominance.”
Using as point of departure the ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ explanation for the start of the Peloponnesian War (“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”), Allison (Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World, 2012, etc.), the director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, refers to the “natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power”—in this case, China versus the U.S. First, the author establishes what China and its ambitious president, Xi Jinping, are after—namely, using geoeconomic strength and manipulation to become the most powerful nation in the world. Indeed, Allison informs his surprised students, China has already surpassed the U.S. as the “manufacturing powerhouse of the world” and also in other areas such as infrastructure, military spending, and investments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. China uses incrementally deployed instruments of “soft power” to establish mastery over its trading partners, employing nicely Sun Tzu’s dictum from The Art of War that “the highest victory is to defeat the enemy without ever fighting.” Relying on the work of the Thucydides Project Harvard, Allison draws on numerous examples over the last 500 years of the violent clashes between upstarts and established powers—e.g., the imperial ambitions of the U.S. under Theodore Roosevelt in challenging Spain at the turn of the 19th century and the world war sparked by competition between Germany and Britain in 1914. While the author offers numerous examples of how a fatal confrontation could erupt between the U.S. and China (e.g., the move for independence by Taiwan), he closes with a set of calming strategies to defuse tensions.
A timely, reasoned treatise by a keen observer and historian.Pub Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-93527-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
“Ideology is fairy tales for adults.” Thus writes economist and conservative maven Sowell in a best-of volume shot through with…ideology.
Though he resists easy categorization, the author has been associated with hard-libertarian organizations and think tanks such as the Hoover Institution for most of his long working life. Here he picks from his numerous writings, which have the consistency of an ideologue—e.g., affirmative action is bad, period. It’s up to parents, not society or the schools, to be sure that children are educated. Ethnic studies and the “mania for ‘diversity’ ” produce delusions. Colleges teach impressionable Americans to “despise American society.” Minimum-wage laws are a drag on the economy. And so on. Sowell is generally fair-minded, reasonable and logical, but his readers will likely already be converts to his cause, for which reason he does not need to examine all the angles of a problem. (If it is true that most gun violence is committed in households where domestic abuse has taken place, then why not take away the abusers’ guns as part of the legal sentencing?) Often his arguments are very smart, as when he examines the career of Booker T. Washington, who was adept in using white people’s money to advance his causes while harboring no illusions that his benefactors were saints. Sometimes, though, Sowell’s sentiments emerge as pabulum, as when he writes, in would-be apothegms: “Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can’t stop with just one”; “I can understand why some people like to drive slowly. What I cannot understand is why they get in the fast lane to do it.” The answer to the second question, following Sowell, might go thus: because they’re liberals and the state tells them to do it, just to get in the way of hard-working real Americans. A solid, representative collection by a writer and thinker whom one either agrees with or not—and there’s not much middle ground on which to stand.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-465-02250-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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