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 enlarge | Author: Parag Khanna
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $29.00
Buy New: $16.69
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 5115
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 1400065089
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1
EAN: 9781400065080
ASIN: 1400065089
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 A stellar view of the future April 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Second World" is a beautifully written view into the future of world politics and economics. It provides a comprehensive overview of cultural dynamics with very focused analysis of regional and evolving national characters. The author's vocabulary is stunning. Have a dictionary nearby.
 Is Toynbee Relevant for the Twenty-First Century? April 24, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler are no longer part of any academic curriculum, and for good reasons: they were racists and imperialists, and the worldviews that they inspired were at the origin of some of the past century's worst catastrophes. Professional historians consider their work as metaphysical speculation dressed up as history, and the huge popularity that they attracted in their lifetime is now perceived more as a symptom of the early twentieth century's zeitgeist than as a contribution to the accumulation of knowledge. Today their volumes accumulate dust in public libraries, and nobody would claim their authority to describe a world that stands almost nothing in common with the age of empires that they chronicled.
It is therefore astonishing that a young author would pack his suitcase with Toynbee's East to West and Spengler's Decline of the West while embarking on a travel to more than a hundred countries. It is even more surprising to discover that Parag Khanna is also familiar with the modern literature in international relations, which he quotes abundantly in erudite endnotes and in a bibliography that includes every work of significance published in the past ten years. What made him look at the world through such antiquated lenses, and what insights did he get from the patronage of such outdated authors?
The first reason for referring to those authors is that Parag Khanna sees the dawn of our new millenium as an age of empires, with the United States, the EU, and China as the three dominant superpowers dominating the geopolitical landscape. Like their predecessors, modern empires are subject to the laws of evolution that leads them through a cycle of rise, flowering, and decline. To the deterministic view of Oswald Spengler, who viewed the rise and fall of world civilizations as a natural phenomenon obeying historical laws, Khanna prefers the challenge-and-response framework of Arnold Toynbee, who granted more space to human agency. But he shares the pessimism of the author of The Decline of the West when he assesses the present condition and the future prospects of the American empire.
The second reason for invoking such patronage is that Khanna wants to give a new lease of life to an old body of knowledge, geopolitics, which he defines as "a discipline that looks backward explicitly for the purpose of looking forward", or alternatively as the art of "winning allies and influencing countries". Although he is well-versed in modern international relations theory, he raises questions and addresses problems that contemporary scholars have long discarded as irrelevant or obsolete. Should the center of gravity of global power be located in the Eurasian heartland, as Sir Halford Mackinder proposed, or around the rimland of the Eurasian coastal region, as argued by Nicholas Spykman, or should one consider with Alfred Thayer Mahan that "the empire of the sea is doubtless the empire of the world"? Do empires expand along an horizontal axis, as seemed to be the norm with the British empire on which the sun never set, or along a North-South vector, as the case of the three modern empires vying for supremacy seems to indicate? Viewed from such global perspective, history runs the risk of losing contact with facts and become mere speculation.
There is however an advantage in choosing a distant benchmark to assess the changes and mutations that the new international system has experienced. Imagine someone who forgot to check on the past quarter century or even the last ten years, and who suddenly discovers a world that offers little resemblance to the one he has left. Such a careless observer will be struck by four factors that he could not have anticipated based on past observations: the rise of China, the affirmation of the European Union as a global actor, the emergence of countries which stood at the periphery, and the corresponding decline of countries which formerly stood at the top. Each of these major trends is tracked across the five continents and form the common thread of a narrative that I found easy to read, but also easy to forget.
 An Decidedly Anti American Thesis April 18, 2008
6 out of 18 found this review helpful
Khanna presents a global perspective in which his disdain for the USA (and even Christianity) cannot be overlooked.
The New World Order April 7, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is a remarkable book in its scope and insight into the future of the world. Khanna is a true world citizen and brings with him a fresh perspective, meticulous research and engaging writing skills. Personally, I found the conclusion of the book worth the price of the book itself, although the entire book is valuable for anyone wanting to understand the world in the twenty-first century. The author's take on geopolitics is fresh and realistic. Khanna's view of the United States is a chilling look at what the future may hold for this great nation, as it slowly loses its world dominance in education, manufacturing, infrastructure and technology. As one who has traveled and lived abroad, it's true that many parts of the world seem to be passing the U.S. by.
The future, according to Khanna, relies on three global powers: the United States, the European Union and China. Little will be accomplished by the Second World unless one or more of the three superpowers is on board. Geographic regions and dominant nation-states (Brazil, India and Japan, for example) will be forced to align their interests with one or more superpower, with the stronger playing off each other to serve themselves. This is the closest thing I have read to a new world order and should be recommended reading for all college students in the United States.
In process March 31, 2008
2 out of 11 found this review helpful
I'm in the first few chapters of this book so I can't really offer much of an opinion yet.
What I do find strange is why the author makes no mention of the Schengen Agreement of 1985 and 1990. I checked the index, the term isn't there. I read an article about Schengen in the newspaper and it relates directly to the premise of this book.
More to follow.
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