Michael Arthur Ledeen

"In 1831 Alexis De Tocqueville, a twenty-six-year-old French aristocrat, spent nine months traveling across the United States. From the East coast to the frontier, from the Canadian border to New Orleans, Tocqueville observed the American people and the revolutionary country they'd created. His celebrated Democracy in America, the most quoted work on America ever written, presented the new Americans with a degree of understanding no one had accomplished before or has since. Astonished at the pace of daily life and stimulated by people at all levels of society, Tocqueville recognized that Americans were driven by a series of internal conflicts: simultaneously religious and materialistic; individualistic and yet deeply involved in community affairs; isolationist and interventionist; pragmatic and ideological."--BOOK JACKET.

A controversial look at the end of globalization and what it means for prosperity, peace, and the global economic order globalization, long considered the best route to economic prosperity, is not inevitable. An approach built on the principles of free trade and, since the 1980s, open capital markets, is beginning to fracture. With disappointing growth rates across the Western world, nations are no longer willing to sacrifice national interests for global growth; nor are their leaders able-or willing-to sell the idea of pursuing a global agenda of prosperity to their citizens. Combining historical analysis with current affairs, economist Stephen D. King provides a provocative and engaging account of why globalisation is being rejected, what a world ruled by rival states with conflicting aims might look like, and how the pursuit of nationalist agendas could result in a race to the bottom. King argues that a rejection of globalization and a return to "autarky" will risk economic and political conflict, and he uses lessons from history to gauge how best to avoid the worst possible outcomes.

The first salvo was the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran in the fall of 1979. The war continued with the assassination of American diplomats and military personnel in Europe and North Africa. The latest fronts in that war are in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran arms, funds, trains, and directs a variety of terror groups, numbering tens of thousands of terrorists, regardless of their religious or ethnic makeup. It is a mistake to believe that Iranian mullah leaders think like those of traditional nation states. They are religious zealots. They openly welcome the end of the world, which would usher in the millennium, under the sway of the long-vanished 12th Imam. They say they intend to precipitate the millennium by using atomic bombs on Israel. That is a chiliastic vision that embraces the murder of millions.--From publisher description.