The Post-American World

Front Cover
W. W. Norton & Company, May 6, 2008 - Political Science - 292 pages
One of our most distinguished thinkers argues that the "rise of the rest" is the great story of our time.

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.
 

Selected pages

Contents

The Rise of the Rest
1
The Cup Runneth Over
6
A NonWestern World?
49
The Challenger
87
The Ally
129
American Power
167
American Purpose
215
Notes
261
Acknowledgments
269
Index
273
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About the author (2008)

Fareed Zakaria was born in Mumbai, India on January 20, 1964. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in political science in 1993 from Harvard University. He was the managing editor of Foreign Affairs before becoming the editor of Newsweek International in 2000. He writes a weekly foreign affairs column in the publication and also has a weekly show on CNN called Fareed Zakaria GPS. Prior to that he worked as a news analyst from 2002 to 2007 on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos and hosted the weekly show Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. He is the author of several books including The Future of Freedom, The Post-American World, and In Defense of a Liberal Education.