Excerpts

  • Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China

    Stephen Roach
    Yale University Press, 2014
    ISBN: 0300187173

    Analysts have long warned that the US-Chinese relationship is imbalanced – with the US borrowing heavily for wasteful consumption and China saving and investing more in manufacturing and infrastructure and less in consumption. Spurring China to act are the global economic recession, triggered by a US housing bubble and debt crisis; ongoing uncertainty about US willingness to control spending and make timely debt payments; and US propensity to blame others for its own mismanagement . China has begun taking steps to rebalance and end the...

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  • The End of American World Order

    Amitav Acharya
    Polity, Cambridge UK, 2014
    ISBN: 0745672485

    The United States remains a major force in world affairs, but can no longer call the shots on shaping world order. Emerging powers, regional forces, multinational corporations and others have their own ideas for a world order, explains Amitav Acharya in “The End of American World Order.” In this excerpt, Acharya explains why hegemonic regionalism or collective security arrangements like NATO are resisted by the developing world. He describes three broad styles of how emerging powers engage with neighbors and suggests that “one of the key...

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  • Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century

    Orville Schell and John Delury
    Random House, 2013
    ISBN: 978-0-679-64347-0

    Contentment and stability go hand in hand. The Chinese people will sacrifice much if their leaders ensure steady jobs, security, and growing potential for prosperity and national respect. Despite great progress in recent years, the Chinese – and and their leaders – are lacking in self-confidence, suggests Orville Schell and John Delury in their book Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century. Economic and social crises can instigate or block individual and collective achievements.This excerpt details the longtime quest...

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  • The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World

    Kishore Mahbubani
    PublicAffairs Books, 2013
    ISBN:

    The world is slowly eliminating poverty and seeing a rising middle class, which along with education and technology, brings an unprecedented convergence of interests, cultures and standards. Kishore Mahbubani is the dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, and in his book he urges countries to abandon inefficient national policies and agree on a fair system of global governance with rule of law. As he notes in the conclusion to his book, the global information revolution exposes hypocrisy and lack of fairness. Institutions that...

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  • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less

    Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor
    PublicAffairs, 2013
    ISBN: 978-1-61039-209-9

    The United States invests more in its health care system, spending $8000 per capita in 2011, and yet achieves less satisfactory outcomes than many other industrialized nations and some small developing nations, too. Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor delve into the many reasons – and values – behind the contradiction in their book The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less. When investment in social services is considered, US expenditures appear more moderate, and another finding is that increased...

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  • Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism

    Elizabeth Becker
    Simon & Schuster, 2013
    ISBN: 978-1439160992

    Since the middle of the 1990s, international tourism has taken a great leap, the number reaching one billion in 2012. Elizabeth Becker, a veteran reporter who covered the Indochina War for The Washington Post and later became a correspondent for The New York Times, explores how this “invisible” tourist industry exploded. From eco-tourism to medical tourism, backpacking to mega cruise liner visits, the tourist industry has transformed the travel scene, bringing revenues, creating jobs and at the same destroying nature and traditional...

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  • Why Growth Matters

    Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya
    PublicAffairs, 2013
    ISBN: 9781610392716

    In its history since Independence, India has seen widely different economic experiments: from Jawharlal Nehru’s pragmatism to the rigid state socialism of Indira Gandhi to the brisk liberalization of the 1990s. So which strategy best addresses India’s greatest moral challenge: lifting a great number of extremely poor people out of poverty?  Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya argue  that the only strategy that will help the poor is economic growth. Their radical message has huge consequences for economists, development NGOs and anti-...

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  • A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East

    Dilip Hiro
    Olive Branch Press, 2013
    ISBN: 978-1-56656-904-0

    Author and journalist Dilip Hiro outlines the complex history, politics, religions and issues of the Middle East in a simple dictionary format, 750 pages in length. The reference book details country profiles, resources, wars, treaties and more. The section on Arab Spring, for example, is organized by most countries in the region yet also offers analysis on multiple pressures and the many intricate connections for each, including internal political forces and foreign relations at all levels.  

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  • China Goes Global: The Partial Power

    David Shambaugh
    Oxford University Press, 2013
    ISBN: 0199860149

    China is a fast-rising power, but there are many forms that global influence can take, ranging from hard forms that focus on international security to soft forms that emphasize amenable trade, culture, education, innovation and more. With the world’s largest population and strong economic growth, the country is formidable. In modernizing, China has pursued power in its many dimensions, yet except for a few areas still absorbs more influence than releasing it, and hence the subtitle for David Shambaugh’s book to be published in February 2013...

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  • The Price of Inequality

    Joseph E. Stiglitz
    W. W. Norton & Company, 2012
    ISBN: 0393088693

    The increasing speed of currencies, trade and investments has spurred prosperity but for a few. Entrenched in top tiers of government and corporations, the wealthiest follow fast-moving economic forces and reinforce inequality in policies and laws. The unrelenting quest for profits in free capital markets is intense and imposes pressure on workers’ wages. In essence, inequality weakens markets that ultimately generate wealth, heightening competition and reinforcing the political divide. In The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided...

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