Richard Haass' "A Brief Introduction to the World"

Johannes Schmidt: Viele wichtige Aspekte werden gut zusammengefasst. Für alle halbwegs gut informierten politischen Leute bietet jedoch die Lektüre nicht wirklich neues. Auch fehlt mir ein bisschen die kritische Perspektive auf viele Aspekte. So wird z.b die Rolle der USA durchweg als positiv in der Außenpolitik bezeichnet. Der Autor suggeriert das sich viele asiatische Länder vor allem deswegen positiv entwickelt hätten da Amerika so einen starken Einfluss auf diese gehabt hätten. Dies ist jedoch in der Wissenschaft eindeutig widerlegt. Auch die Rolle der weltbank und des Internationalen Währungsfonds wird überhaupt nicht kritisch beleuchtet. Da merkt man halt doch die starke Perspektive des Autors der jahrzehntelang in der amerikanischen Politik involviert war. Aber sonst liest sich das Buch sehr leicht und fluffig.

Germany on Nov 07, 2023

juan diaz: A vision of the world as per US eyes. Revealing and worth reading. Cooperation doesn’t exists. Only power matters…and money, of course.

Spain on Oct 02, 2023

Michael Fitzgerald: Very informative

United Kingdom on Apr 01, 2023

Mattia: Ottimo libro scritto da una delle massime cariche istituzionali americane. Nonostante i riferimenti continui a istituzioni, editoria e organizzazioni pro-America o comunque inglesi si nota il tono autorevole e imparziale dell'autore. La storia globale viene presentata con moltissime note di libri importanti scritti anche da persone del calibro di Kissinger.

Se siete giovani e volete farvi un'idea più chiara del mondo, o comunque volete avvicinarci alla geopolitica consiglio la lettura di questo libro che utilizza anche termini molto semplici e comprensibili ai più. Come seconda lettura consiglierei il saggio politico di Huntington : Lo scontro delle civiltà e il nuovo ordine mondiale dei primi anni 2000.

Italy on Feb 14, 2022

Dawn Carter: Admittedly, my understanding of recent history was sorely lacking after my graduation from high school and college, and this author acknowledges that this is a disheartening trend. However, this book did an excellent job of informing even the most casual consumers of world news of how to best understand the world and the challenges it faces given its history and current state. I would highly recommend this to anyone who needs to brush up on world affairs and in my opinion this should be required reading for all American citizens. The only thing preventing me from rating this more highly is its clearly liberal spin that at times is openly critical of the Trump administration, and in the "Where To Go For More" section at the end which names only liberal sources (newspapers and magazines) and nothing that is known to present fair and balanced viewpoints. He is certainly entitled to his opinions, but the criticism of non-Democratic American presidents and how their leadership and decisions have contributed to the current state of world affairs got annoying and detracted from a balanced understanding.

United States on Feb 14, 2021

Sergio M Alcocer: El libro contiene una descripción objetiva y factual de la historia del mundo y de sus retos. Es una obra muy valiosa. De lectura recomendada.

Mexico on Dec 02, 2020

Tipperaryman: This book is written by one of the authorities on international affairs who has advised several of our US Presidents and edits Foreign Affairs and has written several others books about history and foreign affairs. The World: A brief introduction is simply put: Outstanding. As its title suggests it gives a thoughtful survey of seminal events in history from the 30 Years war in Europe through the present (2020) and addressed in survey form the core areas of study to help understand our world through a geopolitical, economic, and sociocultural lens. As one other review I read before I bought this book, wrote, it reads like an eloquent college lecture. It reflects the authors broad and insightful knowledge base and history of working in foreign affairs for decades and his clear eloquent prose reflects both intelligence and clear and direct focus on key topics and understanding of each topic (organized by chapter). This book helps you understand and see the forest, versus just the trees in our world and clearly more reading is needed to understand and know the details (Mr. Haass readily acknowleges his book as an introduction and has a chapter detailing recommended options for further...

United States on Oct 11, 2020

Thomas Wikman: This book will really help you understand the world better, how we got here, where we are, and where we are going. He describes the many ways in which the world has gotten better as well as the ways in which our progress is being threatened by geopolitical forces. I already knew a lot of the information he presented. However, it was all put together in a nice understandable package, which coupled with excellent analysis and common sense created a lucid overview of how the world works. I can add that the author is an experienced diplomat and he had important positions in both Bush administrations.

This book features a brief summary of world history from a geopolitical perspective starting with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The book describes the various world orders that followed, the big wars, why wars and other things happened, and how the modern world came to be. In the next part of the book, the regions of the world, he discusses how the world works and looks like in different regions around the globe. He divides the world into six regions; Europe, Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. He describes each region, the...

United States on Oct 05, 2020