An astute analysis that illuminates many of today’s critical international issues.
Former Secretary of State Kissinger (On China, 2011, etc.) considers the prospect for order in a world without agreed-upon rules.
At a time when many nations differ on the meanings of democracy, human rights and international law, the 21st-century world is in a state of flux regarding the concepts of power and legitimacy—the foundation of world order. In fact, the world has never achieved world order, writes Kissinger. It came closest four centuries ago when warring European states, under the Peace of Westphalia, recognized state sovereignty and principles of international relations. Those rules and limits diminished greatly after World War II, when the United States dominated the Atlantic Alliance. They never reigned globally in a world of divergent cultures, histories and theories of order. In this erudite view of our disordered world, Kissinger views each region from a historical perspective to reveal the forces behind differing views of world order. In the Arab world, he finds that Islam is “a religion, a multicultural superstate, and a new world order,” where, in the case of Iran, for example, negotiation is seen as part of “an eternal religious struggle.” The “ominous” disintegration of Arab nations into tribal and sectarian units, writes the author, recalls the religious wars in pre-Westphalia Europe. Kissinger traces the rise of America’s idealistic vision of world order—one based on the universality of American principles—and credits the U.S. with many contributions to global order while noting that America “has risked extremes of overextension and disillusioned withdrawal.” The author also discusses the role of science and technology in shaping world affairs, urging that the instant information afforded by the Internet be viewed within the broader context of history. Regions must agree on their own concepts of order before they can relate to one another.
An astute analysis that illuminates many of today’s critical international issues.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1594206146
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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