Preparing for the Twenty-First Century

Analyzes the transnational forces that will transform nation-states in the future--population growth, environmental degradation, technological advance--their impact, and how to cope with the challenges of the future. 100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. Tour.

As the next century dawns, the world faces interactive problems, writes Yale historian Kennedy ( The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ). These include the population explosion, technology's replacement of traditional jobs, worsening environmental degradation that jeopardizes economic growth, the dominance of multinational corporations freed from local roots and the widening gulf between rich and poor nations. This valuable book assesses the consequences of these forces on Europe, China, India, other developing nations, the former U.S.S.R., the U.S. and Japan. Kennedy identifies the nations well-positioned for the 21st century: Japan, Korea, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia. The European Community as a whole is also well-prepared. He warns that adaptation demands greater emphasis on education and stronger political leadership, which is capable of transforming entrenched structures and ideas. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After reading this gloomy exercise in futurology, even the most cockeyed optimists will feel justified in hiding under their bedcovers as the turn of the century approaches. Kennedy (History/Yale Univ.) explores again, with wider and more contemporary applications, a principal theme of his controversial bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987): that we must factor nonmilitary elements into traditional equations of national security. Kennedy can be provocative and prescient: his notion of ``global overreach'' in that earlier book, for instance, was borne out by the collapse of the Soviet Union and by the severe strains on the American economy. This time, he attempts to show how transnational forces, beyond the control of individual countries, inevitably will create world instability. Behind this unrest is a Malthusian population explosion (the world had 2 billion inhabitants in 1925, compared with 5.3 billion in 1990) that will be exacerbated by environmental dangers, the new global economy, robotics, and biotechnology. Kennedy guesses who the winners and losers will be in this changed world (Japan, with its highly educated, cohesive population and technological orientation, will fare better than the US, with its aging, multiethnic populace). Even the industrialized North will not be immune from the mass migrations and deteriorating environment of the Third World. Kennedy is most insightful in pointing out overlooked factors underlying crises: the fast-growing, youthful, impatient masses behind the Intifada and the troubles of Northern Ireland, for example, or the loss of forests and topsoil fueling the Haitian migration to the US. He regards economic growth as a zero-sum game that will damage an environmentally fragile planet, however, and he offers few remedies to avert the catastrophes he sees looming. Brilliant and discerning on the inevitable pressures on the rich North from the developing world (e.g., from Somalia)--but only hard-core Cassandras will accept Kennedy's pessimism about nations' inability to mobilize the will or resources to change the planet. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus wrote his famous treatise Essay on Population in which he gloomily contemplated the future of the West as it fell beneath the crush of overpopulation. Technology and emigration saved 19th-century England from Malthus's dire warnings. Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ( LJ 12/87), focuses his new book on a reexamination of the age-old question of whether humanity can still survive the chronic crisis of reproducing beyond its resources. Projecting a world population of nearly ten billion by the middle of the next century, Kennedy analyzes the political, social, environmental, and economic results of continued population growth. Although not entirely pessimistic about our chances of success, Kennedy presents an abundance of statistical and empirical information to get the reader's attention. A gifted historian and writer of Big History, Kennedy provides an important analysis of our future. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/92.
- Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ., Ames, Ia.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.