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| The Post-American World | 
 enlarge | Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.19
You Save: $10.76 (41%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  140 reviews
Sales Rank: 120
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 039306235X
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.49
EAN: 9780393062359
ASIN: 039306235X
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Good..BUT.......................................................... May 2, 2008
30 out of 97 found this review helpful
Zakaria has written a nice book, based upon his somewhat limited perspective. For this oversight, I cannot rate the book higher than 4 stars. While he did provide some interesting insights, he failed to give a full picture of the forces in motion that will most certainly continue to destroy America as we know it.
Zakaria sees globalization as a huge improvement for all people throughout the globe. In this regard, it appears that he is thinking more of the people of Shri Lanka or Haiti, rather than more developed nations. Certainly, those in impoverished nations stand to benefit from this globalization trend. They have little to lose. But for much of the developed world such as America, Canada, Europe, Japan, and the UK, this trend promises to strengthen the 2-class trends we see today.
As globalization strengthens, so will the momentum towards one world government, as seen in Orwell's 1984. This has already happened with the formation of the European Union. Forcing EU laws upon all participant nations is causing many societal and economic problems. In the USA, we are seeing the early stages of plans for the North American Union.
Can you not see how corporations have seized America? Can you not see how they control life and death? Look at gas prices, look at food prices. Understand that corporatization is a strategy that is consistent with globalization. Mega-corporations are partners with their respective national governing bodies.
While globalization might make goods and services more efficient, it will also operate under one power. You wont have a choice to leave if you don't like how you are being governed because every nation will be run the same way. Without individuality and freedom, we all become slaves who will answer to the government.
Preserving each nation's sovereignty is vital. Combining the world into one economic, political, and judicial system will be disastrous and it will surely enslave everyone but the wealthy elite.
In conclusion, as a stand alone the book is a nice read and offers a very optimistic look at the effects of globalization. But what it lacks is a full perspective. I would highly recommend as companions to this book, the following:
This no non-sense, data-backed look at America has already successfully predicted the current economic turmoil, with more to come
America's Financial Apocalypse: How to Profit from the Next Great Depression (Condensed Edition)
Hard-hitting, straight-mouthed views from a man who isn't that stupid afterall (despite being a former wrestler)
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
All About the forces behind the New World Order, otherwise known as globalization
The True Story of the Bilderberg Group
If you read these books along with Zakaria's, you will have a full perspective to determine whether the benefits of globalization are worth the risks.
 Are you kidding? May 15, 2008
28 out of 150 found this review helpful
Too much beating around the bush to finally arrive at Mr. Fareed Zakaria's central point: India, China and the rest - rising powers; United States not any longer. No great surprise, the author happens to be an Indian, explaining his unquestionable objectivity.
Consider the following: United States no longer has the tallest building, the longest bridge, and the biggest dam. I forgot to mention that only one of America's shopping malls even made the top ten of the world's largest shopping malls. That's some "hard" evidence pointing to the decline of America in increasingly global world. And yes, Bollywood - the entertainment power house that helps Indians develop a new sense of national pride. Are you kidding me?! It's a very, very sad story!
 Whither Go American Dreams? May 16, 2008
25 out of 43 found this review helpful
Fareed Zakaria, a brilliant journalist, maybe the last honest one left of a very sorry lot, has found a way to maneuver around America's immense but infinitely fragile egg-shell like ego to tell us indirectly what we already know about ourselves but don't want to hear: that our nation, the American Empire, is in a precipitous decline, due mostly of our making.
Sadly, for the author, this is work that must be left unsaid and insinuated from deep within the subtext of the book, unsaid and insinuated in "metaphorical relief." As he puts it, it is not "the "fall of America, but the rise of the rest."
Anyone who takes that backhanded insult at face value, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you? This demeaning backhanded way of telling us that our country is in very serious decline sounds like the kind of reverse psychology one uses on a young child who will not eat his vegetables. But it is the only way to get any kind of self-criticism down the ultra-sensitive American palate. Its the same maneuver that Denish d' Souza, one of the darling of the rightwing, used so deftly in his equally insulting "What's so Good About America?" Again, under the pretext of praising America, he too had to tuck the truth in between the lines amid so much insincere "pro-American groveling."
And why not? Somehow, no matter how untrue or how superficial, we tend to eat fawning compliments like they are breakfast cereal. But any criticism is un-patriotic and un-American. Fareed is no ones fool.
As brilliant as he is, the author has never been allowed to tell the full truth, even on the weekend news pundit shows. The inferior minds among his colleagues just keep censoring him into non-existence. I notice that even though he is clearly the most brilliant in our generation of journalists, his appearances are becoming less and less frequent. I wonder why?
This is not a "Zakaria problem," but an "American problem." And to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in one of the most famous lines in all movie-dome: "Americans can't handle the truth!" Fareed, to repeat another of my favorite cliches from the movie Munich, is just "the voice in our heads telling us what we already know: That while America has led the world into the 21st Century it has suddenly and abruptly made a u-turn ducking its head back into the sands of its own dark ages. Beating its breast with all kinds of new weapons but scared to come out of its hole: [The world is going off and leaving us in the dust: Is this really the way we want to go down? Has anyone seen Kuala Lumpur, or Dubai, or even Singapore or Seoul lately? They all make America cities look like something from the Middle Ages.]
The evidence of our decline is everywhere: (1) In the 21st Century, we are still fighting the Scopes trial, and are losing? Intelligent Design is slowly gaining an undeserved prominence on par with the Science of Evolution. Four of the Republican candidates admitted in the Presidential debates on international television that they do not believe in evolution. (2) Like the most famous modern day Neanderthal we love to hate, Saudi born, Osama bin Laden, we too love our guns, god, and hate gays, and just for good measure, also throw racism into that mix. (3) The very fact that GW Bush was elected for two terms should have been a strong enough hint that something is terribly wrong with the "last standing superpower." Even if we were trying to, we could not have picked a worse representative of the best America has to offer. (4) But worse of all, America has become a "fair weather democracy." It no longer completely believes in it founding ideas and ideals. It only believes in them when they benefit certain protected American subgroups, otherwise, all bets are off. To wit, we will cheat to win elections; torture prisoners and throw away due process; neglect our own poor; turn the clock back on hard won civil rights; and sell out not just our democracy, but all of our seed corn too -- our future -- to the highest bidder. Our politicians have become whores for the moneyed interests.
If we were half the nation we tell ourselves we are, then Fareed Zakaria would not have had to "dumb-down" this book and write in reverse psychological diplomatic code to tell us what we already know.
Fifty stars.
America Must Realize the World is Catching Up May 9, 2008
21 out of 32 found this review helpful
One of the biggest problems we have as Americans is the inability to realize that many of our former industries are now the equivalent of blacksmiths --- they are becoming overshadowed by new technologies and inventions from other countries. This isn't bad if we allow new ways of doing things to dominate our economic life but instead we attempt to save the old at the expense of the new.
This book is a great read.
Nonsense May 27, 2008
20 out of 84 found this review helpful
In writing as if American decline were a fait accompli, Zakaria engages more in wishful thinking than in principled analysis (of which he, ever eager for acclaim and influence, seems constitutionally incapable). So long as men exist who cherish freedom and individual rights and will defend them unto death, America will always lead the world, morally and politically, if not economically. What was true in 1776 holds true today: America, founded on the rights of a sovereign people to pursue their own happiness apart from State or Religion, is the last, best hope of earth. If Zakaria had a deeper respect for his adopted homeland, he would stop being the crusader boy for national self-deprecation and attempt a genuine contribution to political thought. Alas, from this Harvard Ph.D. we get only a hash of warmed-over Newsweek magazine articles.
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