Another masterful, often counterintuitive, relentlessly entertaining geopolitical thrill ride.
Geopolitical strategist Zeihan (The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America, 2017, etc.) delivers his latest unsettling prognostication.
The author begins after World War II, when the U.S. reigned supreme. Ramping up anti-communism efforts, the U.S. led an alliance of nations that were either like-minded or happy to go along in exchange for protection and aid. Protection took the form of a nuclear standoff, which produced a remarkably war-free era, and for the first time in history, the Navy freed sea lanes for unfettered worldwide trade. The result was an explosion of prosperity that continued until recently. In his earlier book, The Accidental Superpower (2014), Zeihan concluded that “2020 would look a lot like 1950, albeit without the whole fear-of-nuclear-war-thing.” He has changed his mind. No alliance lasts without a common threat, he admits, and this disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, George H.W. Bush (the last president the author admired) launched a national conversation on what might come next. “So of course the Americans voted him out of office….Bill Clinton found foreign policy boring and did his best to avoid it,” writes Zeihan. No Bush successor has provided “the necessary guidance to American military, intelligence, and diplomatic staff as to what America’s goals actually are.” Consequently, nations are beginning to look after their own interests. As a result, writes the author, the U.S. will turn inward, and post-Brexit Britain will shrink to a U.S. client state. Russia’s demographic collapse is well under way. Zeihan’s more controversial projections will keep readers squirming, usually with pleasure, at his expert, often cynical insights. France, self-contained and with a far more “expeditionary-themed military,” will dominate a declining Germany. Absent U.S. love of its oil, Saudi Arabia (essentially a gangster state) will duke it out with Iran unless an expansive Turkey becomes the dominant local power. Hypertechnology will return Japan to preeminence in Asia when China’s unsustainable bubble economy collapses.
Another masterful, often counterintuitive, relentlessly entertaining geopolitical thrill ride.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-291368-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the...
Lewis (The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, 2016, etc.) turns timely political reporting he published in Vanity Fair into a book about federal government bureaucracies during the first year of the Donald Trump presidency.
At first, the author’s curiosity about the relationship between individual citizens and massive federal agencies supported by taxpayer dollars did not lead him to believe the book would become a searing indictment of Trump. However, Lewis wisely allowed the evidence to dictate the narrative, resulting in a book-length indictment of Trump’s disastrous administration. The leading charge of the indictment is what Lewis terms “willful ignorance.” Neither Trump nor his appointees to head government agencies have demonstrated even the slightest curiosity about how those agencies actually function. After Trump’s election in November 2016, nobody from his soon-to-be-inaugurated administration visited federal agencies despite thorough preparation within those agencies to assist in a traditionally nonpartisan transition. Lewis primarily focuses on the Energy Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Commerce Department. To provide context, he contrasts the competent transition teams assembled after the previous elections of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Displaying his usual meticulous research and fluid prose, the author makes the federal bureaucracy come alive by focusing on a few individuals within each agency with fascinating—and sometimes heartwarming—backstories. In addition, Lewis explains why each of those individuals is important to the citizenry due to their sometimes-arcane but always crucial roles within the government. Throughout the book, unforgettable tidbits emerge, such as the disclosure by a Forbes magazine compiler of the world’s wealthiest individuals list that only three tycoons have intentionally misled the list’s compilers—one of the three is Trump, and another is Wilbur Ross, appointed by Trump as Commerce Secretary.
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the government serves citizens in underappreciated ways.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-324-00264-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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