Book Review: The Post-American World

I picked up this book ("The Post-American World") on a whim. I was traveling home from Dallas and wanted a book on tape. I went to Half Price in hopes of finding one of Obama's two books in audio format so I could learn a little bit about our new president. But they were out of stock. So, I grabbed this after I recognized the author, Fareed Zakaria.

Zakaria hosts a weekly show on CNN that I Tivo called "GPS: Global Public Square". It is always such a fascinating insight into what's happening in the rest of the world and how it all interplays and affects the world as a whole, not just America. He covers news stories and global trends like no one else on American news stations. He is an Indian immigrant in the US and is flat out brilliant. I ended up even giving this book to my dad and my friend Joey for Christmas before I even finished it.

It was a great read... not a light or easy read, but TRULY FASCINATING to dig a little deeper into the post-american world. And it wasn't wholly negative about the U.S., it just focused on the development of the rest of the world. Really cool slant. If you have the same fascination as I do about global events and the multi-cultural world in which we now live, I highly recommend it!

From the Barnes & Noble website, here is the blurb about the book... the publishers describe it far better than I could:

A Prophetic Assessment of America's Changing Place
in an Increasingly Global Age

For Fareed Zakaria, the great story of our times is not the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else—the growth of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Kenya, and many, many more. This economic growth is generating a new global landscape where power is shifting and wealth and innovation are bubbling up in unexpected places. It's also producing political confidence and national pride. As these trends continue, the push of globalization will increasingly be joined by the pull of nationalism—a tension that is likely to define the next decades.

With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, Zakaria draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past five hundred years—the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States—to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the "rise of the rest." Washington must begin a serious transformation of global strategy and seek to share power, create coalitions, build legitimacy, and define the global agenda. None of this will be easy for the greatest power the world has ever known—the only power that for so long has really mattered. But all that is changing now. The future we face is the post-American world.