This is one of the best current events-type books I've read, if only because it is so well-written. Steyn clearly makes his points, and makes this a truly fun read with his excellent sense of humor and conversational writing style. This helps because Steyn's topic is very much dark.

The book is divided up into three parts, detailing the current state of the world, Europe's decline into a coming demographic mess, and where America fits (or doesn't). The overarching theme of the book is demographics. Europe's birthrates are disastrously low, and immigration by Muslims is very high. This will cause strain when "post-Christian rationalism" values of gay marriage, robust secularism, and neofeminist values clash with 7th century values in Islam, and the results could be extremely bad, and civil wars across Europe are not a far-fetched idea. This leaves America to fight the War on Terror by itself.

I can't recommend this book more, especially as the opposite side of globalization that Friedman's The World Is Flat paints. Globalization has an underbelly, and it ain't pretty. The West made the planes, ATM cards, internet, and boxcutters that made 9-11 possible, and the terrorists used them to their 7th century values.

Posted by Ryan S. on Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 2:57 PM | Permalink |