A novel, sobering approach to geopolitics that invites rethinking how the world is ruled.
A provocative thought experiment in what might succeed the nation-state.
As novelist and essayist Dasgupta writes, the default mode of social organization in the world today is the nation-state, which governs “99.75 percent of our species.” It has not always been so: In 1900, most people lived in empires, colonies, principalities, and the like. Yet, in the post–World War II order, and under the influence of the U.S., most exceptions to the nation-state—among which Dasgupta numbers duchies, caliphates, dependencies, and protectorates—gave way to this default mode of governance, which “produced an astonishing expansion of equality, democracy and material security.” Against those who saw the nation-state as a Platonic ideal that would bring about a vaunted “end of history,” though, processes and practices emerged that challenge the nation-state, from the de facto rule of megacorporations to globalism at various scales. Dasgupta digs deep into history to examine this evolution, with contributing factors that, significantly, include the breakaway of European Protestant states during the Reformation and the development of the “Westphalian” system, which granted rulers “sovereign power within their territories, free from outside interference.” In the end, Dasgupta writes, these developments weakened transnational entities such as the Holy Roman Empire in favor of national states—national all too often signaling ethnostates. Dasgupta suggests that the collapse of communism led to nation-states controlled by private interests, with liberty interpreted to mean “freedom of capital” and governments increasingly trending toward class systems in which citizenship was the key currency of the realm—and with much political energy devoted to rooting out noncitizens. Challenges to the nation-state are also coming from China, Dasgupta notes, intent on “introducing a coherent global order whose organizing principles were incommensurate with America’s own,” an order all too likely to prove victorious.
A novel, sobering approach to geopolitics that invites rethinking how the world is ruled.Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9780399563676
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
