The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It
by Joshua Cooper Ramo
Book Summary Information
Author: Joshua Cooper RamoEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-23
ISBN: 0316118087
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780316118088
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Book Reviews of The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It
Book Review: Entertaining and thought-provoking, but short on real solutions
Summary: 3 Stars
This book is entertaining and thought-provoking. Ramos is a wonderful writer and has weaved together many interesting stories which reflect the complexity of the world we live in. But Ramos oversteps when he claims to offer a solution for the problems we face. His "deep security" solution lacks real prescriptive ideas. While it would certainly make sense to encourage our intelligence and other government agencies to be more creative and prepare themselves to flexibly deal with unanticipated problems, this will not be enough to solve America's or the world's problems. I would have been happier with this book and might even have given it 5 stars if Ramos had simply written a set of essays and told his stories without trying give them more significance than they deserve and pretending that he has solutions for the world's problems.
Ramos is right that the modern world requires governments to react more quickly and more flexibly. But the institutions that really need repairs are our political ones. America in particular is beset by total gridlock in dealing with the enormous environmental and financial problems that we face. We know that we need to rapidly convert from fossil to renewable energy sources, but we allow 17% of our potential workforce to be unemployed when they could be building and installing wind turbines, solar power, and nuclear energy reactors as fast as possible. We could be using these currently unproductive people to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and stave off global warming. But the U.S. Senate hasn't even passed climate change legislation 11 months after Barack Obama became President. And whatever they do pass will be inadequate and take too long to address both climate change and our high unemployment.
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Summary of The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It
Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail. History's grandest war against terrorism creates more terrorists. Global capitalism, intended to improve lives, increases the gap between rich and poor. Decisions made to stem a financial crisis guarantee its worsening. Environmental strategies to protect species lead to their extinction.The traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo puts forth a revelatory new model for understanding our dangerously unpredictable world. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, immunology, and the science of networks, he describes a new landscape of inherent unpredictability--and remarkable, wonderful possibility.
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