The Return of History and the End of Dreams
by Robert Kagan
Kagan sees the battle-lines of the 21st century drawn between highly successful autocracies and highly ineffective democracies. The relief is that finally it told me that this whole obsession that pitted Islam against modernity and wanted to see Islam as the Manichean double, as the opposite of the West, has flown. That idea is no longer as powerful as it was. It is a sign that the debate has moved on – perhaps we should also thank the recession. We now have more pressing problems to think about.
Recommendations from our site
” it’s a book that represents the different terms in which the West is now beginning to think about the 21st century’s big themes. And what a relief: no more Islam vs Modernity, far less ‘evil Muslims’, a real quietening of the cultural discourse that invented these fake ideas of a monolithic ‘West’ or ‘East’ or ‘Islam’ or ‘Modernity’. Kagan is a neo-Con thinker who was close to the Bush administration and is married to an ex-ambassador to NATO.” Read more...
The best books on Islam and Modernity
Turi Munthe, Journalist
