Max Shafer-landau

Loved this book, needs to be augmented by others

Revisado: 01-25-21

I loved this book. First off, the narration is superb. For a nonfiction book, albeit one with clarity of voice, humor, and opinion by the other, the narrator does a fantastic job adding flavor, nuance, and ton of voice to the narration. One of the best narrations I've listened to. This is paired with an authorial style that makes the subject both fascinating but also "light" in that it feels like you're talking to Zeihan on the couch in your living room than being subjected to instruction at an academic institution.

Second, this book is a fabulous analysis of the underlying fundamentals dictating geopolitics. While it has certain myopic flaws (which I'll get to), these are easily outweighed by insight into factors that most people write off in favor of whatever is capturing the headlines of the day or week. Zeihan focuses on geography above all, but also demographics, historical alliances and enemies, energy security, and other attributes of nations that I find most interesting, but so frequently go ignored.

This book takes its premise from the belief that America is vacating its role as guarantor of global peace and prosperity, leaving the world to return to the regional squabbles that have defined human history since civilization developed several millennia ago. With this premise, Zeihan uses historical wisdom to look at how different regions are going to breakdown and break out into conflict, expansionism, and disruption.

The most glaring omission in my mind is Zeihan's complete sidelining of climate change and renewable energy. Renewable energy factors in almost not at all to his analyses of different countries. The two instances I can recall are to write off China's renewable energy potential in a couple sentences and one sentence on how Argentina and Chile stand to gain from its unrolling. For someone as focused on energy policy as Zeihan (he makes much about access to fossil fuels), to ignore renewables seems glaring.

Furthermore, given that he's writing an analysis of how the next geopolitical generation or two will develop, the fact that he makes no mention of climate change, a conflict multiplier bar none, is pretty heinous. To be fair, it's a complete uknown, but at least a section in the foreword would be extremely appropriate. But again, I don't recall a single mention of how much climate change is going to exacerbate the conflicts and problems he foresees.

That all said, this book is phenomenal. Do supplement it, of course, but this is a better analysis of geography and its social consequences in the 21st century than any other I've read. Absolutely recommended, so long as you acknowledge its particular deficiencies

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Stunning overview of a distant yet similar era

Revisado: 11-10-18

This is a great but dense overview of American history not for the faint of heart. It grapples with the political transformation of America from an agricultural republic to a diverse democracy, the effects of the transportation revolutions, remarkable social progress by abolitionists, women, and evangelicals, and so much more

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Blandly toeing the line between macro and micro

Revisado: 10-17-17

I took issue with the scope of this book. No doubt, David Cannadine has set himself a monumental task by tackling an entire century of Britain's greatest achievements, but to do so effectively, I believe this work should have been twice as long or constructed differently. Victorious Century reads like a continual list of names and abstract verbs, none of which we get to know very well. Even important ministers are easy to forget when they're immersed in myriad other names and quickly disappear. There is also no talk of tangible history at all. Even when an embarrassing incident at a coronation is explicitly mentioned, there's no exposition that details the episode and the narration plows ahead ceaselessly. There are few quotes and those there are last no longer than one or two sentences. Nearly every sentence contains at least one proper noun, but at no point do we ever get an idea of who or what that noun really was. This takes away from the gripping nature of the history and if you zone out or snooze for a little bit, it doesn't feel like anything is lost.

I wish this would either be more macroscopic and delve deeper into the large trends and forces at play or actually illustrate some amount of the history as it occurred. As it stands, I can't say this is anything more than a good, comprehensive introduction that must be accompanied by further, more in depth reading for any of this history to stick or be meaningful.

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Well argued introduction to the "Great Divergence"

Revisado: 05-03-15

I only wish the quoted sections weren't read in such ridiculous accents. Otherwise, terrific book.

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