Almost exactly 400 years ago, Galileo looked through his telescope at the moons of Jupiter revolving around that planet, and realized that Earth could not possibly be at the center of the universe. He was visited by the Inquisition 2 years later for his trouble. Fareed Zakaria is now making the same observation about the role of Washington and the U.S. in world affairs: international politics and economics no longer revolves around America. The Inquisition awaits.

Zakaria discusses not the "demise" of the U.S., but rather the "rise of everyone else". His global-centered perspective provides an understanding of 21st century international relations, politics, and economics, with a focus on events in China and India.

His last section looks at the role of America in the 21st century, and how this has changed after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. His suggestions for course correction are excellent. ( )

Informative, thought provoking view of America as other countries rise in the world. ( )

Sweeping with broad strokes and brilliant yet easy to read prose, Fareed Zakaria clearly establishes himself among the giants of foreign relations, politics, and economics. With this book, Zakaria outlines the 'Rise of the Rest' - that is how the rest of the world has caught up to America in many important ways. This presents both large opportunities and challenges that America must face in the present, in addition to the challenges of terrorism, and foreign and domestic issues. He argues that things are not as dire as they look, in terms of America's world standing in technology, education, and military and political capital, but that the world is shifting, geopolitically, economically, technologically, socially, and that to maintain relevance and learn from global powers and struggles of the past such as the British and Roman Empires and the Cold War, priorities must be set since the USA cannot do everything everywhere all the time, sole global superpower or not.

Whether Democrat or Republican, American or not, this book has an important message of global change which means that no one and no country can rest easy in this day and age of a 'flattened' world with a more level playing field and shifting geopolitical and economic realities. An important and relevant book, even though the hardback came out before the mortgage crisis, global economic meltdown and 2008 American election. Highly worth reading and positively recommended. ( )

Very little data used to substantiate the declarative statements promulgated here.

(Alistair) And now the next book in my non-fiction reading, Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World - actually a Christmas present from my brother-in-law.

Well, it's a very well-written (albeit short, and in places somewhat overtaken by the events of the economic crisis) and interesting book. I can hardly say that I agree with it entirely, but then, outside the hard sciences, I would deem it very unlikely that any book could be written with which I'd agree entirely. More importantly, he provides you with many interesting things to think about, and I would recommend reading it on that basis.

(For those interested in what I think of the actual politics of the book, I would stipulate that his central thesis, the "rise of the rest", and thus our decline in relative terms as other countries rise, despite maintaining and/or improving our absolute position, is essentially undeniable. Likewise, one can hardly disagree that we need to adapt in many ways - often involving quick and probably painful reform - to function effectively in a world defined by a polyarchy of Great Powers rather than as a singular hegemonic power.

The devil, as ever, is in the details...

...and, for my money, we're heading in the wrong direction.)

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ce... ) ( )