Francis Fukuyama

Dear Reader: Are you ready for a wild ride? When six-year-old Sam Kettering is kidnapped and manages to save himself, everything's over, right? Not by a long shot. Sheriff Katie Benedict contacts Sam's father, Miles Kettering, ex-FBI agent, and he and Savich fly to eastern Tennessee to determine why Sam was kidnapped and brought to such an unlikely locale as Jessborough, Tennessee. The kidnappers just don't give up. They try again. The question remains: Why do the kidnappers want this little boy so badly? The investigation leads to a charismatic, intense, twenty-first-century Rasputin, Reverend Sooner McCamy, and his gorgeous, enigmatic wife, Elsbeth. As if the kidnapping case weren't enough, Savich and Sherlock are at the same time desperate to find the cold-blooded killer of three high school math teachers in the Washington, D.C., area. I absolutely guarantee you will be scratching your head while checking to be sure your doors are locked as you try to figure out these two very different mysteries. Enjoy, Catherine Coulter FBI - 8

"The technologies emerging from the information technology and biotechnology revolutions present unprecedented governance challenges to national and international political systems. It is clear that technological innovations are not always benign, and regulation can be an effective way to serve societal objectives. But regulating new technologies can be challenging and can have unintended consequences, which may be as troublesome to society as the problems the regulations were intended to prevent. Accommodating both perspectives raises difficult and complex issues for those who would offer governance approaches. To gain perspective on these issues, the authors coordinated a study group that met in late 1998 and early 1999 to examine aspects of these revolutions that might pose specific challenges for governance. This report summarizes the presentations made at group meetings, presents an overall assessment, and offers possible approaches to governance. Ultimately, because the technologies emerging from the information and biological revolutions are inherently global, success in governing them is likely to depend on involving all stakeholders--states, nongovernmental organizations, interest organizations, and citizens--to cooperate in developing governance norms or structures."--Rand Abstracts.

A series of writers examine the economic and moral issues surrounding immigration.

Observing totalitarian and authoritarian governments falling around the world, Fukuyama develops an hypothesis that the end state of all this change will be liberal democracy everywhere (The End of History), and considers how people will react (The Last Man).

The Great Disruption begins by observing that over the past thirty years, the United States and other developed countries have undergone a profound transformation from industrial to information societies; knowledge has replaced mass production as the basis of wealth, power, and social interaction. At the same time, Western societies have endured increasing levels of crime, massive changes in fertility and family structure, decreasing levels of trust, and the triumph of individualism over community. Just as the Industrial Revolution brought about momentous changes in society's moral values, a similar Great Disruption in our own time has caused profound changes in our social structure. Drawing on the latest sociological data and new theoretical models from fields as diverse as economics and biology, Fukuyama reveals that even though the old order has broken apart, a new social order is already taking shape. Indeed, he suggests, the Great Disruption of the 1960s and 1970s may be giving way to a Great Reconstruction, as Western society weaves a new fabric of social and moral values appropriate to the changed realities of the postindustrial world.

An overview of the traditional mode of Soviet behavior in the Middle East as it evolved between 1955 and 1975, with special reference to its difficulties in Egypt and Iraq. The paper then analyzes the steps that the Soviets have taken over the past half-decade to ensure that their expulsion from Egypt would not be repeated elsewhere, and concludes with a discussion of the implications of this shift for the Western alliance.

Behandeling van de politieke, sociale en culturele consequenties van biotechnologie.

"The second volume of the bestselling landmark work on the history of the modern state Writing in The Wall Street Journal, David Gress called Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order "magisterial in its learning and admirably immodest in its ambition." In The New York Times Book Review, Michael Lind described the book as "a major achievement by one of the leading public intellectuals of our time." And in The Washington Post, Gerard DeGrott exclaimed "this is a book that will be remembered. Bring on volume two." Volume two is finally here, completing the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so-called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West. A sweeping, masterful account of the struggle to create a well-functioning modern state, Political Order and Political Decay is destined to be a classic"--

Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order.