Book Description
Niall Fergusson's most important book to date-a revolutionary reinterpretation of the modern era that resolves its central paradox: why unprecedented progress coincided with unprecedented violence and why the seeming triumph of the West bore the seeds of its undoing.
From the conflicts that presaged the First World War to the aftershocks of the cold war, the twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in all of human history. How can we explain the astonishing scale and intensity of its violence when, thanks to the advances of science and economics, most people were better off than ever before-eating better, growing taller, and living longer? Wherever one looked, the world in 1900 offered the happy prospect of ever-greater interconnection. Why, then, did global progress descend into internecine war and genocide? Drawing on a pioneering combination of history, economics, and evolutionary theory, Niall Ferguson-one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People"-masterfully examines what he calls the age of hatred and sets out to explain what went wrong with modernity.
On a quest that takes him from the Siberian steppe to the plains of Poland, from the streets of Sarajevo to the beaches of Okinawa, Ferguson reveals an age turned upside down by economic volatility, multicultural communities torn apart by the irregularities of boom and bust, an era poisoned by the idea of irreconcilable racial differences, and a struggle between decaying old empires and predatory new states. Who won the war of the world? We tend to assume it was the West. Some even talk of the American century. But for Ferguson, the biggest upshot of twentieth-century upheaval was the decline of Western dominance over Asia.
A work of revelatory interpretive power, The War of the World is Niall Ferguson's masterwork.
Customer Reviews:
A True Face of War.......2007-10-08
Ferguson's War of the World makes all other war history books narrow and shallow. His view covers them all: the Axis and the Allies, the East and the West, the first and the second World Wars. What is most astunishing is his war pshychology; the insight of the minds that waged, fought, suffered and traumatized by the war.
Ethnic Struggles Undermine Civilization.......2007-09-24
This major work by a British historian teaching both at Harvard and Oxford paints a dismal picture of man's inhumanity to man. More particularly, Ferguson persuasively views the 20th century as a series of deadly ethnic struggles precipitated by economic volatility, the breakup or decline of the large multi-ethnic empires (Austria-Hungary, Ottoman, Chinese, Russian, etc.), and the counter rise of ethnic nationalisms with concomitant ethnic cleansings as nationality groups try to purify the state or monopolize power. In this context, Central European pograms have much in common with Balkan, African, and Northeast Asian bloodlettings and leave the reader with limited optimism for the future. The end of the nineteenth century was an era of unprecedented globalization, free trade, and free movement, even more liberal than our own, yet the 20th century contained the largest bloodlettings yet, with the decimation of minority populations in vast areas. The century demonstrated that:
"the fragile edifice of civilization can very quickly collapse even where different ethnic groups seem quite well integrated, sharing the same language, if not the same faith or the same genes. . . . Ethnic minorities are more likely to be viewed with greater hostility when times are hard or when income differentials are widening. . . . We shall avoid another century of conflict only if we understand the forces that caused the last one -- the dark forces that conjure up ethnic conflict and imperial rivalry out of economic crisis, and in doing so negate our common humanity. They are forces that stir within us still."
We must learn from history!.......2007-07-25
Life was rapidly improving as the twentieth century began. People in the developed world had the highest standard of living as compared to their forefathers. Goods from all over the world were available to Europeans, and the advance in health care improved and extended people's lives. However, the author asks why did the rest of the century become so bloody? Among the factors he cites are ethnic conflict and economic turbulence (ethnic unrest is prone to break out during periods of economic volatility), and the decline of the old empires, and the emergence of the new empires, namely Turkey, Russia, Japan and Germany.
H.G. Wells starts his novel, the War of the Worlds, with Martians invading our planet and destroying it. Niall Ferguson successfully demonstrates in his book that it does not take aliens from outer space to destroy us. Mankind, with hatred ingrained in him, has done just that. The aliens are in our midst, and they are from our own planet!
Our history has been marked by brutal conflict and hatred towards each other... the Holocaust during World War II, the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing against Bosnians, the cruelties in Cambodia and Korea, the Japanese rape of Chinese women (The Rape of Nanking), and the Russian Gulag, to name just a few of the atrocities of the twentieth Century that killed over 100 million people!
During war, no regard is given to civilians. The American bombing of German towns during World War II, for example, killed more civilians than the atomic bomb on Hiroshima! Stalin killed far more people than Hitler. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more innocent Japanese civilians than Hitler killed Jews. Mao in China killed millions of people (some believe more than 10 million). The Tokyo bombings by the Americans killed over 100,000 civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands others. The actions of the armies of the allied forces during the 20th century wars are equated with those of the Nazis and Japanese. There are no good people or the good side in war. All parties are evil, and Ferguson successfully demonstrates this in his book.
This book will reveal to the readers the horror man can bestow on his fellowman.
Life will end up killing us, so why do we so hastily do its job? This is a depressing thought, and is the major theme of the book. Maybe we should start learning from history to prevent these atrocities of ever happening again.
Missing The Point.......2007-07-20
the most important points of the book deal with the fact that democracy and the idea of self-determination are two concepts whose implementation often lead not in any advances of personal liberty or tolerance for the human race but simply turn loose the worst instincts of murderous tyranny. In the case of democracy, we often get what Tocqueville warned us of - the tyranny of the majority, yes, but not in domination of public opinion. Rather it assumes the form of active oppression - the majority using its power to persecute minorities and shut the minorities out of employment or other essential areas of participation in national life and their own personal and economic security.
Ferguson speaks brilliantly of a "fundamental contradiction" between the right of self determination and freedom of minorities. For example, after World War One, the Poles immediately turned against their minorities. The Poles, mainly interested in national aggrandizement, fought several wars between 1918 and 1921 including such antagonists as the Ukraine, Germany, Lithuania, Czech, and Russia, in the end extending Poland's boundaries over a great areas. Yet the hope that underlay the idea of self-determination was the hope that in forming a new state, the majority and its minorities would be able to accommodate or submerge their ethnic or religious differences in a new, collective identity. Instead, majorities used their predominance to exclude and divide and oppress the weaker party from the start. When the Poles took power, they excluded Ukrainians from employment. This resulted in Ukrainians forming terrorist organizations to retaliate. The German populations in the new states that sprang up at the war's end were persecuted because they were vulnerable. The Poles attacked them, the Czechs shut them out of the 1919 elections, Germans were bullied by Rumanians. A German in Romania wrote that "a thin foil of civilization appeared to have been superimposed on an untidily assorted ethnic conglomerate from which it could be peeled off all too readily."
But civilization is itself nothing but a thin foil too readily peeled off. I think that is the most disturbing point of Ferguson's book - it highlights the failure of so many optimistic and superficial estimates of human nature that we have tended to believe in as truth. Such an optimism is not warranted, is his message. There slumbers in human beings a horrible pitilessness, a horrible delight in inflicting pain and death on people who cannot resist. There are supposed to exist moral restraints that keep human beings from crushing the weak among the human race. F says that they do not exist. F seems to think that the desire of human beings to want to belong to a group result from feelings of individual inferiority that will only go away if people belong to a group because that membership conveys superiorities that people can't enjoy without the group. Within the group an individual must curb violent instincts (or be expelled), but the individual knows these same violent qualities can be given full range in collective action by the group towards an outsider. In brief, the group, in acting, seems to free itself from any moral curbs, rules of decency or other restraints. There is in German the word, Zivilcourage, or consideration for the weak or infirm. Such concern is part of the Western heritage of individualism. Yet Ferguson argues that any vestige of Zivilcourage disappears when a majority in a group takes power. The important, indispensable qualities of liberal democracy - kindness, a sense of humor, personal tolerance, respect for privacy and belief in the good intentions of one's neighbor, all disappear when a group gains the majority. What supplants them is a taste for power and the delights of making other obey. Groups, majorities, seem to feel that they have to free themselves from every moral rule or they will somehow end by failing. The road to do evil is the path to promotion and power. That is the tragic message of Ferguson. Few got it.
excellent - one parallel worthy of addition.......2007-07-15
Excellent!! I suggest one important parallel: the current situation in the USA where the Whistling Weasel Gang openly notoriously poisons irradiate stalks harasses tortures and murders while the corrupt or inneffectual police and governments just watch. Same mass involvement just like the Nazi party. Excellent! I wonder if this truth will evade the censors.
Book Description
In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange County, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of acceptable politics into the next century.
Suburban Warriors introduces us to these people: women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures. She describes how these suburban pioneers created new political and social philosophies anchored in a fusion of Christian fundamentalism, xenophobic nationalism, and western libertarianism.
While introducing these rank-and-file activists, McGirr chronicles Orange County's rise from "nut country" to political vanguard. Through this history, she traces the evolution of the New Right from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism. Her original contribution to the social history of politics broadens--and often upsets--our understanding of the deep and tenacious roots of popular conservatism in America.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Subject..........2006-03-09
I was assigned this book for class and therefore didn't have a huge interest in the subject before I read the book. I haven't finished it, but I also don't plan to finish it. The subject was interesting, but the book wasn't captivating.
I found that the author sometimes became overly concerned with statistical information and details which left me (as well as my classmates) confused and frustrated. When too many facts are thrown at you at once, you just want to skip it and move along.
If you actually know about the John Birch Society and are highly interested in the Conservative Right, I'm sure you will like the book, even in spite of those "factual" sections. Historically, it's very accurate and I know that those who were interested really enjoyed the author's style.
Analyzes the 'warrior' battle plan of the 1950's and 1960's.......2005-05-30
This book is neat precisely because it takes a scholarly approach to examining the new right. Instead of writing a frenzied treatise why the right is bad, Lisa McGirr lets readers draw conclusions from her fact-based historical analysis.
The suburban new right emerged in the 1950's and early 1960's out of a desire for self-preservation. People in these newly emergent suburbs were alternating between the 'self-reliant' model of conservative libertarianism and 'big-government' social conservatism which placed its premiums on social and political conformity as a tool for ensuring order in the community. The then cold war united the two periodically disparate strains of conservatism into a unified school of thought; conformity was good for national security.
Because it upheld the values which they supported (and felt were in the best benefit for America) the people who would become part of the New Right honestly did not mind when they and/or their companies received economic subsidies from the government. They had to defend the country against the reds after all. This was not mooching off the system, but ensuring the country would be able to produce the best resources and the brightest people to outmatch 'the reds'.
The 'red-baiting' and 'race-baiting' which I and other people have publicly and psychologically associated with the right only came into existence when the status quo was being threatened.
The same people who had not protested (and in fact welcomed) government benefits for themselves became genuinely anxious upon realizing that the civil rights movement was attempting to reconfigure the American state to offer more benefits to more groups of people. This exposed contradictions in the American state as it currently existed and hinted that a reconfigured American state would not provide exactly the same order of things as they had known it to exist.
Fearful of these 'other' people, some southern states undertook the-then shocking action of voting for Barry Goldwater in 1964, disrupting the solidly Democratic south. Prior to this time, a southerner voting Republican was unthinkable. The party of Lincoln after all was responsible for both emancipation and reconstruction.
Although Goldwater would loose to Johnson, his candidacy and campaign positions (including against the civil rights act) further laid the foundations for the present day situation. Voting shifts in the 1964 presidential election ultimately encouraged the Reagan revolution of the 1980's and George W. Bush's promotion of faith based initiatives today.
Good, but not great.......2004-05-05
McGirr's book traces the rise of what I would call the (white, middle-class) suburban right and the Christian right, beginning in the early 60s. The new right coalesced around anti-Communism, laissez faire capitalism, states' rights and local government, the "traditional" family, Christian values, individual economic responsibility, and low taxes.
It was the suburban Christian right that first brought these views together. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President in 1964 against Johnson, was an early exemplar of new right views. However, his strong opposition to the Civil Rights acts won him the lower South and, along with his virulent anti-Communism, helped him lose the rest of the country.
The suburban Christian right shed the virulent and conspiratorial anti-Communism that they initially directed at domestic enemies; south-eastern politics moved away from the New Deal order and shed legal segregation and overt biological racism; they all joined their Christian and conservative forces and formed a conservative coalition behind Ronald Reagan.
McGirr's is a "bottom up" analysis that begins with the grass roots social base of the suburban Christian right, using Orange County as a prototypical case study. She also examines the interplay of grass roots leaders, rank and file members, regional business elites, and national intellectual and political leaders.
The book doesn't delve into how the suburban right teamed up with south-eastern conservatives, but their shared Christianity, shared social conservatism, and shared opposition to civil rights, busing, and affirmative action makes it fairly easy to guess what that part of the story in general looks like. However, McGirr's would be a better book if she examined some of these connections, at least briefly. This is what makes the book good but not great.
Post-script: Today, the Cold War is over, terrorism has replaced communism as America's global enemy, and George W. Bush has combined the Christian right with the post-Cold War, neo-conservative, neo-imperialist right. Bush has tried to combine anti-terrorism, neo-imperialism, and Christian conservativism without provoking Christian-Islamic antagonisms--antagonisms already strained by Christian conseravtive and neo-conservative support for Israel. These topics would make an interesting post-script to McGirr's book.
Rhetorical, but ok.......2004-05-01
I had to read this book for a history class. It provides enough incite on the origin of conservatism in Orange County, but to me, she overemphasizes her status as a historian. Instead of telling one point just once, she repeats it again in another segment, which, as a reader, I already knew because she said it before. She is non-biased in her approach of the conservative uprooting, yet she does seem to make them out to look like the enemy rather than a large group of people that were encouraging enrollment for causes they believed in. I recommend it to anyone who likes to read the word "Knott" over and over again.
Absorbing,Thorough Analysis Of Neoconservative Ascent !.......2002-04-27
This book represents both a fascinating study of the evolution of `60s politics as well as a historical attempt to document and explain the perplexing fact that a country flirting with the danger of a social and political revolution from the left suddenly veered so much farther to the right toward a broad-based popular conservatism. Herein Lisa McGirr, a gifted author and Harvard professor comes closer to making her prose swing than one would expect of a book of this type. Meanwhile, she also spins a convincing argument regarding the origins of the American neo-conservative revival in the late `60s and early `70s. At the time, domestic conservatism had been badly eclipsed by the burgeoning youth culture and their radical leftist notions. To her credit, the account rendered here is not only academically spirited, but is written in a way that makes this serious work of scholarship accessible to the general public.
She focuses meaningfully on the activities within a specific congressional district, in Orange County California, where, she argues quite persuasively, the seeds of the neo-conservative revival were most fruitfully planted and sown. Within this district, literally thousands of affluent and educated suburban "warriors" combined to launch a powerful movement destined less than a decade later to propel Ronald Reagan into the White House. In the process they also helped to chisel a new agenda into the granite pillars of the American pantheon, one that helped to define the very nature of domestic political battles for decades to come.
This book gives us a graphic and detail introduction to these hearty, healthy and enthusiastic warriors; housewives arguing political strategy over coffee and Danish, young and well-educated defense engineers arriving to live out the American dream, impressionable young religious workers convinced that the only way to save the country and themselves from Hellfire and brimstone was to work fervently against the designs of the "godless democrats". From this well-detailed work we begin to see how the movement came into being, how it organized itself, what motivated the individuals as well as what their evolving political agenda became and why.
McGirr demonstrates that this was far from being a movement of marginalized or isolated extremists; on the contrary, from the beginning it was more accurately characterized as an intensely enthusiastic enterprise, one formed and energized by the social, economic, and political elite, people with both means and motive for becoming involved to better control their own futures as well as those of the country at large. In what is perhaps her best set of insights, she demonstrates how these young and innovative neo-conservatives established a new set of political philosophies and precepts, forged in a alloy of Christian fundamentalism, misguided nationalism, and more traditional true conservatism (i.e. an old-style libertine attitude).
This is a seminal work, an effort at true scholarship which dares to look at Rosemary's baby in the face by searching through the afterbirth of the not so immaculate birthing of modern neo-conservatism. What she discovers and demonstrates along the way may often upset our traditional notions of what happened and why, but it never fails to inform or edify us as to what transpired or why. This is an interesting and worthwhile book, and one that I can heartily recommend. Enjoy!
Book Description
Unlike most Soviet-centered histories, A Vision Unfulfilled begins with a chapter summarizing late nineteenth-century Russian history, allowing instructors to begin their course with 1894, 1905, 1914, or 1917. The book also gives fuller attention to the history of the non-Russian populations in the tsarist and Soviet empires than other texts of its kind.
Book Description
Duiker's comprehensive, balanced history of the world in the twentieth century provides you with context for interpreting the events that you hear about in the news each day. You'll view history from the broader global perspective, while at the same time gaining insight into the distinctive character of individual civilizations and regions. And to ensure that you'll have a well-rounded understanding of the most decisive moments in recent times, Duiker integrates political, economic, social, and cultural history into a smoothly written narrative. What's more, the text includes a special insert that guides you in using the text's many detailed maps, which help you make important connections between geography and the turn of historic events; timelines that highlight and contrast different cultures and nations, thus giving you an "at-a-glance," holistic perspective on eras and their defining events; photos from William Duiker's own collection that giving you a closer, more personal look at the world we live in; and primary-source documents that illustrate and clarify key points.
Customer Reviews:
Good overview of World events and patterns........2000-08-02
This book was fun to read. The narrative flowed nicely and was easy to get through. It covered all of the major events of the World however I felt there should have been a deeper discussion of Africa and Latin America. The book goes beyond a mere recitation of facts but successfully conveys the character and essence of the 20th century. The author captures the spirit and patterns of change that rocked the century and made an exciting and violent one.
Book Description
The ideal companion to A History of Western Music, Seventh Edition, the two-volume Norton Anthology of Western Music, Fifth Edition, includes 172 historically significant scores, 71 of them new to this edition, with a strengthened emphasis on twentieth-century music. Revised and enlivened commentaries closely examine the scores to clarify their historical significance, and professional recordings of all works in the anthology are included on CDs, many in dynamic new performances.
Customer Reviews:
its a classic.......2007-03-13
this is vol 2 of the 2 classic texts for studying the history of european music. These are a must have for the serious student of music
history.......2006-02-27
I had to buy this new volume for my last history class. I'm a tad bit pist that I had to spend so much but it is indeed alot better and more indept.
Customer Reviews:
Landmarks Help to Guide the Way.......2005-06-22
This is a Terrific encyclopedia in the best sense of the word. Each decade receives a well written, thoughtful overview that address not only design but history and social views from many perspectives. A fine read for the this reason alone.
But wait there is more, approximately 30 individual pieces of design are chosen for each section, photographed and described in 100-300 words. The effect is like a cherished museum exhibition catalog. The choices range from iconic artworks to mass produced consumer goods, but no matter the pedigree the text and photos are illuminating and enjoyable.
In addition to all of this the designer's biographies will likely seem very familiar. This book appears to be one of the most widely used, and non-credited, sources of information on the internet.
The cost of this book has crept up in the last few years; however, it is among the few reference books that I find indispensable when researching, and more importantly it just seems to make me smile when I browse through the pages.
Book Description
The Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music includes professional recordings (many brand new) of all works in the anthology on two six-CD sets, of which this is volume 2.
Customer Reviews:
Great CD collection.......2007-05-10
These CDs are great, i can appreciate them more however, through my music class.
Customer Reviews:
Powerful insights into the artistic culture of the 20th Cent.......2004-04-09
This is a unique and important book. It provides a comprehensive overview of art music in the twentieth century; a topic that is not given the attention it deserves. Mr. Watkins demonstrates a unique breadth of knowledge of the music of the last hundred plus years and he also posseses a rare depth of insight into the wonderfully rich flowering of musical styles and the connection of those styles to the larger artistic culture in painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, theatre, and dance.
This book is so rich in explanation and insight that it is impossible to take in all it has to offer in a single front to back reading. It is one of those texts that rewards deep and repeated study. You will want to return not only for its texts, musical examples, and images, but also for its rich notes and references.
The book opens by giving us wonderful background in the cultural movements in Vienna and Paris from 1885 through the first year of the First World War. The next two parts lay out the way new movements and views arose in Europe from 1909-1930. The next two sections brilliantly demonstrate the rise and aims of national movements and the way the first and second world wars caused artists to create works aiming beyond nationalism. Serialism and the search for new sounds are the subjects of the next two sections. The book closes with a survey of the art music of the late twentieth century including its movements in synthesizing earlier composers into new musical movements and the way classic forms were re-used and re-interpreted.
Mr. Watkins tells us these great stories by providing wonderful readings of aptly chosen works that connect and illuminate all these movements. It isn't a continuous narrative of one thing after another. Instead, we get the benefit of seeing great works up close and in their proper cultural context. For me, one of the great benefits of this book was the way it opened up the connections between painting, sculpture, and literature to the music of this period. I had studied that for the Baroque, Classic, and Romantic periods, but had not been given that insight into the twentieth century. And this book does it better than anything I have seen for those previous centuries. Reading this book was an electric experience for me. It is just so intensely packed with insight and revelation. At least it was for me.
Revised Edition.......2002-07-18
The initial printing, with the described editing problems, was corrected almost a decade ago. Readers are encouraged to see the result for themselves. The book has been widely and successfully adopted as a text throughout the United States.
Concise but confusing.......1999-09-17
Soundings is a good book with a great many examples and a great deal of information, but the format often leaves the reader in quite a quandry, as the author titles a chapter "Alan Berg Before Wozzeck," and the reader expects such. Then the author goes on to talk about Berg, but keeps referring back to Webern and Mahler and Schoenberg, and the reader at many points is left wondering exactly who this piece of music and that particular quote is by. Once again, much information in a format lacking in organization.
Quite good before 1945, but really needs editing.......1997-10-23
Watkins seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the first half ot the twentieth century, and does a very good job of encapsulating stylistic trends. However, his examples sometimes do not support his conclusions, although they seem sound. Often, a few logical steps seem to be left out. Finally, this book is marred by shoddy editing. Figures do not match the text, there are factual errors, and the reader is constantly being refered to "pp. 000-000".
Book Description
"Magisterial history...one of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written."—New York Times Book Review
In 1900 international trade reached unprecedented levels and the world's economies were more open to one another than ever before. Then as now, many people considered globalization to be inevitable and irreversible. Yet the entire edifice collapsed in a few months in 1914.
Globalization is a choice, not a fact. It is a result of policy decisions and the politics that shape them. Jeffry A. Frieden's insightful history explores the golden age of globalization during the early years of the century, its swift collapse in the crises of 1914-45, the divisions of the Cold War world, and the turn again toward global integration at the end of the century. His history is full of character and event, as entertaining as it is enlightening.
Customer Reviews:
HAPHAZARD NARRATIVE; AUTHOR HAS VERY WEAK UNDERSTANDING OF SUBJECT MATTER.......2007-06-21
Of all the many books that have come out in recent years about global capitalism, finance and economics, this is certainly the worst. The author, a professor of government at Harvard, professes to specialize in international monetary history, but is really what his tenure title says he is, a professor of International Peace. He appears to be trying to reinvent his career by tackling the subject of capitalism but thoroughly lacks understanding of the subject matter, as made evident by his book.
1. The author makes the same mistake that virtually all political science professors do when they write about capitalism: he glorifies the gold standard, he glorifies the Rothschilds and glorifies everything that had nothing to do with the emergence of twentieth century capitalism. The author is using his expertise in international relations to analyze a subject that is really never about governments, or grand alliances or fancy bankers. He thus fails to root the story in the advent of technology, or of business procedures or of the individual investor, but focuses instead of John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson and Lord Halifax.
2. Wherever the subject matter is strong, the book still fails badly. It does so because political economy is better analyzed by Robert Gilpin and others, whose books are mandatory reading and well written and which do not pretend to sell that subject matter as a study of capitalism.
3. The book's sections are surprisingly badly arranged. Sometimes one feels the author may have a method to the madness but I doubt it after having read it. It is certainly not thematic, or designed to trigger thought or chronological.
4. The book refers to a poem only twice in the 500 pages and it is about the King of Ghana! I mean a professor at Harvard should surely know how to maintain balance in his subject matter. Is that the one poem he could find worth including?
5. Stunning is the lack of understanding of the issues. He describes Britain as fully supportive of free trade mid-19th century but fails to consider how colonialism could be a form of free trade. He describes China Turkey and India as the only failures of the early 20th century without making the same connection with colonialism.
6. Worse is his understanding of the gold standard. He never mentions that that relic was responsible for more misery than anything other than world wars. He fails to consider that since the gold standard was weakened in the Forties, there have been NO PANICS RAVAGING SOCIETY. He is a gold bug.
7. He repeats William Bryan's Cross of Gold speech twice in the narrative with no suggestion that he is even aware his haphazard narrative is repeating the same quote. He also fails to mention that William Bryan was not buried in the election of 1896 but actually came to dominate the 20th century, what with unionism, minimum wages, no gold standard, empowerment of the individual investor and every other idea that Bryan first espoused. TR's and FDR's reforms were nothing if not Bryanism.
8. Why would a book mention so much about Rothschild's and their family in the US without mentioning Jacob Schiff, or detailing JP Morgan, or RObert Lehman or Albert Gordon. I mean the author simply has no balance on the subject matter because he knows so little about it.
9. Finally, it is not clear what Jeffrey Frieden is doing at Harvard. Such poorly researched fare is common to COlumbia Business School and its Dean Glenn Hubbard, or to the Hoover Institution or some place like that. Harvard on the other hand puts out more balanced and far more thoughtful pieces.
BAD BOOK THAT MUST BE AVOIDED.
Almost tempted to give it a miss.......2007-04-23
I was almost tempted to give the book a miss after seeing the high ratings that were given by reviewers that seemed to be anti-globalizationists (what an awkward term!)
However, I came across the book at my library and gave it a chance, and I was not disappointed. It is a book that does a creditable job of summing up the ups and downs of the world economy over the past hundred years and more. And it also does a fairly good job of raising some issues and problems with the world economic system, and how the system had evolved to meet those issues and problems. On the whole, I think it's a balanced book, pointing out the critical need for free and integrated markets to raising millions in the world out of poverty, as well as some of the problems facing them.
The only reason why I gave the book a four rather than a five is that it is not an easy read, and it is best read with some thought and analysis on the reader's part. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not something for everyone.
By the way, do ignore those reviews that pretend to tell you what the author was saying in his book. I'm not sure that he's actually saying what they say he is saying.
Read the book for yourself. It's worth the time and effort.
Globalization 2.0.......2006-07-12
Jeffrey Frieden, a Harvard professor specializing in international trade and finance, has written a masterly and comprehensive history of capitalism from 1870 to the present. His history of globalization reminds us that it is not a recent develpment and that its current success is not guaranteed.
The first era of globalization (1870 to 1914) had many of the same characteristics as today's. There was an unprecedented cross-border movement of goods, capital, and labor. (Labor more so in the first era.) During these years huge amounts of capital moved overseas to America, Canada, and Argentina mainly due to the reduced costs of communication and transportation. The technologies driving this globalization were the telegraph and railroads. It was also facilitated by the fact that most currencies were convertible to gold. The investment in the Americas was also followed by a huge immigrant population. In these years, America, Canada, and Argentina had much larger immmigrant populations at the turn of the 20th century than today.
The main thing that distinguishes the present globalization from the first is what happened in between. After the Great Depression and World War II remedies were put into place to mitigate the damaging effects of these economic and social catastrophes. Social benefits such as unions, minimum wage, healthcare and pensions were established as safety nets. In the era between the two globalizations when economies were mostly national the safety nets were part of the social contract between capital and labor.
In 1980, when our current era of globalization begins, capital began to move overseas again in order to find countries with lower labor and social costs. This time, however, labor did not follow. The industrialized countries now have large middle classes with social benefits promised who are not certain about how they are going to be paid. This is causing many in the industrialized world to have second thoughts about our current phase of globalization.
Frieden has a guarded optimism about global capitalism and thinks it is still the best system for distributing wealth. Yet, his last chapter "Global Capitalism Troubled" points to some more clouds on the horizon. There seems to be a growing gap between those who control capital and those who work for a living. People understand that globalization is inevitable but they want a new set of rules to address the growing inequalities.
Frieden is a cheerleader for a more equitable capitalism that can deliver both social benefits and robust economic growth.
Bottom Line: Unfettered Capitalism is Destructive, Need Government.......2006-06-27
I read books in groups, and bought this one along with David Walsh's "Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations" which I recommend above this one is you are only buying one book. I also read and have reviewed "Global Class Wars" as well as all other books I recommend below.
Although I was less interested in the history, which is very well documented and clearly explained, and more in the lessons for the future, I found two clear bottom lines in this book that are supported by its extensive research:
1) Open societies and open democracies generate more money and more opportunity and more innovation than closed or failed societies; and
2) Keynes was right, there is an urgent vital role for government to play in addressing the social networks, including education, transportation, rules of commerce, and so on, that allow capitalism to work.
The author distinguishes between individual, cooperative, and competitive capitalism, and I found validation in this book for my concept of communal capitalism, a capitalism that is guided by government in avoiding the exportation of jobs, the importation of poverty, and the impoverishment of the middle class.
Unlike David Walsh's book, this book has more of a focus on what is moral and pragmatic, and so I recommend William Greider's "The Soul of Capitalism" as well as John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."
I have a very strong feeling from this book and others, that the era of "out of control" capitalism is drawing to an end. We may even see the end of the corporation as a separate legal personality in the next 12 years. The transparency of information that is available when people attach themselves leech-like to a corporation and hold it accountable (see my review of "No Logo") is creating a powerful antidote against the Enrons and Exxons and Wal-Marts of the world who bribe elites and screw over the publics on both ends. I also see Wall Street losing its ability to "explode the client" (see my review of "Liar's Poker"). A great deal of good will be done in the next quarter century, and it will come from a combination of good government and educated engaged citizens working together across all boundaries.
Very Pleasing to Read (Even for a Proletariat like Me).......2006-06-25
I read this book for a graduate-level economics course. It's not an "Econ for Dummys" book, but it really enightens the reader about the history of economics in the 20th Century. It's smart and straight-forward. The author does not interject his personal perspectives, which is nice. He just puts it out there. A definite must-read for those entering the field of economics/history.
Book Description
In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "the Negro problem" became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson.
In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress.
Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of people: an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam.
Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs.
Customer Reviews:
An enlightening book on public diplomacy .......2007-01-11
If you think Las Vegas tourist ads and "listening tours" are components of public diplomacy and international relations, you need to read this book. If you think media coverage is intense now, you need to read this book. Dudziak gets into the reality and impact of media coverage forty years ago and its impact on the global information war of the time that is remarkably similar to today: "Following World War II, anything that undermined the image of American democracy was seen as threatening world peace and aiding Soviet aspiration to dominate the world... Nations were divided between a way of life 'distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression' and a way of life that "relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms."
Dudziak looks at the impact of race and the civil rights movement in the United States on American public diplomacy and foreign policy. The impact of America's "color bar" on foreign relations is astonishing and Dudziak helps contextualize the movement and government responses within contemporary pressures.
Indiscriminate actions against foreign and American dignitaries reinforced the accessibility of race-based norms to all and played into Soviet propaganda and provided a painful counternarrative that impacted US foreign relations. The US Ambassador, Chester Bowles, to India, speaking in 1952 at Yale University said, "A year, a month, or even a week in Asia is enough to convince any perceptive American that the colored peoples of Asia and Africa, who total two-thirds of the world's population, seldom think about the United States without considering the limitations under which our 13 million Negroes are living."
As we attempted to project democracy and its emphasis on equality and freedom, in opposition to Soviet tyranny, discrimination in the US was well known beyond our borders. Dudziak presents "With Us or Against Us" examples with Louis Armstrong and Josephine Baker as examples, among others. In the case of Baker, State Department officers justified censorship and hardship imposed on Baker by discounting her personal beliefs. Her "derogatory" remarks "concerning racial discrimination in the United States" were deemed to be "presenting a distorted and malicious picture of actual conditions." If we do not practice democracy, how well will our promotion of it be received? This was a real question of the time that other history books ignore and was the very question Ambassador Bowles asked.
As Dudziak wrote, "Domestic difficulties were managed by US presidents with an eye toward how their actions would play overseas." Disingenuous or factually misleading statements to justify domestic policies and opinions are not the mainstay of any single generation. While not intending to be destructive to the nation, these policies have a severely detrimental affect on domestic cohesion and leadership within the foreign relations. Dudziak implies the race issue in the international press was the seed of negative views of the US. The golden temple of American democracy was seen as something falling short, even hypocritical. Locksley Edmunson, writing in 1973, could be speaking of today with our Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and alleged secret CIA prisons when he wrote, "Those states best technically equipped to maintain world order are not necessarily the ones whose credentials recommend them as the most appropriate guardians of a global conscience."
You can read different things out of Mary Dudziak's book. As a student of public diplomacy, my take-away centered on the impact on foreign policy, which the author does a good job investigating. The take-away? Practice what you preach, or at least be effective in making them think you're trying to.
Causes and Effects.......2001-06-05
Upon first consideration one would think that the reciprocal influences of the Cold War and American civil rights activity would be self-evident. Perhaps, but Dudziak's book is full of surprises and details how galling the "American Dilemma" was to U.S. foreign policy-makers and various presidents and how each responded to the concerns of African, Asian, American, and European countries regarding the United States civil rights struggle over several decades. Why was civil rights legislation important to American foreign policy? How was Eisenhower's response to school desegregation in Little Rock influenced by foreign perceptions? How did the international attention to civil rights activity affect John Kennedy's domestic policies? Why was the State Department so concerned about Asian and African criticisms of the United States' record on civil rights? How was the Civil Rights Act of 1965 viewed by the international community? How did the views of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X affect United States foreign policy efforts? Was the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to an American activist also an international signal that worried a president and the State Department? These questions and many more are answered by Dudziak.
Dudziak deserves recognition and commendations for clearly demonstrating that the United States civil rights movement had a global as well as a national impact on America's foreign policy efforts and placed the United States squarely between the demands of a persecuted domestic minority and the scrutiny of the nations to which it declared itself the leader of human rights, liberty, and freedom in contrast to the totalitarian regimes of communist countries.
This book is well worth reading and an important addition to the growing number of books on the history of race relations that was not, and is not,taught in school. Kudos to Dudziak for an important job well done.
Eye Opening and Important -- A Great Read!.......2001-01-11
Mary Dudziak revisits a familiar chapter in American history--the civil rights movement--but provides readers with a completely new perspective on it.
We know about the work that was being done in the streets. But now Dudziak helps us see the movement through the eyes of America's cold war policymakers. For them, civil rights was a foreign policy problem, and Dudziak helps us see how this explains many of the movements successes and (maybe more important) many of its defeats.
Essential reading for everyone interested in American history, civil rights, constitutional law (yes, even Brown v. Board of Education must be seen in light of this analysis), and foreign policy.
Excellent!.......2001-01-08
This book is fabulous. Clear and articulate, it reads like a story and explores an aspect of the civil rights movement most authors and historians have neglected. It is meticulously researched and filled with information from sources ranging from presidential telephone conversations to news wires to official publications. The civil rights movement cannot be fully understood without reflecting upon the information contained in this book.
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COLOSSUS
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
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