Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Knopf (2007), Edition: 1, 464 pages
Description
"An illuminating account of the birth, the rise, and the continuing rise, of a global political and economic system that rested first on the power of Britain and rests today on that of the United States--and now faces a new set of formidable challenges"--Provided by publisher.
User reviews
LibraryThing member sabreader
This book looked to be promising, and there are indeed some quite interesting bits. But Mead has produced what is in effect a triumphalist, cheerleading text that repeats the propaganda line of US nationalism: the US system is the best in the world, others have to get used to it, and criticism of
What's especially strange about this book is that Mead knows a lot, and he should know better. He has a wide knowledge of history, including the histories of other places besides the US and UK. And he shows that he understands the different perspectives on the US/UK system, and the experiences of others in the face of this system. But he nevertheless returns to the propaganda line. This actually makes this worse than if he'd shown himself to be totally ignorant.
While parts of Mead's theses are interesting, if you want a serious and objective look at these issues you'll have to look elsewhere. If on the other hand you're looking for a feel-good US nationalistic view of the world, this is the text for you.
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it is due to hatred. (To be fair, he includes the Brits as authors of this awesome "maritime system" as well. )What's especially strange about this book is that Mead knows a lot, and he should know better. He has a wide knowledge of history, including the histories of other places besides the US and UK. And he shows that he understands the different perspectives on the US/UK system, and the experiences of others in the face of this system. But he nevertheless returns to the propaganda line. This actually makes this worse than if he'd shown himself to be totally ignorant.
While parts of Mead's theses are interesting, if you want a serious and objective look at these issues you'll have to look elsewhere. If on the other hand you're looking for a feel-good US nationalistic view of the world, this is the text for you.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stevesbookstuff
It's been 14 years since Walter Russell Mead's God and Gold was published. That's one global financial crisis, one global pandemic, one Brexit, two Presidents (and starting the first term of a third), and a US insurrection ago. Does this book still have anything to tell us about "Britain, America,
Despite that subtitle, this book is not a history of how Britain and America made the modern world order. It's not a history book at all, which the author acknowledges in his introduction. It's more of a philosophical dissertation. Mead takes as a given the "Anglo-Saxon" primacy in creating the modern world order, and proceeds to lay out what he sees as the underlying conditions that led to the leadership role of these two nations.
There's a lot to quibble with about this book.
First off, it's well documented, with appropriate footnotes, but there is much too much taken as given. Mead never really defines the "modern world order" that the whole book is about. Is it economic, legal, moral, technological, industrial, military, diplomatic? Mead, I think, might argue that it's all or at least pieces of all of the above, but by not defining it, he gives himself free rein to marshal his argument unfettered by definitional constraints.
Secondly, this book is way too long for the case it's trying to make. Mead wanders. And wanders. While wandering with him was fun in parts, you do get to the end of the book asking yourself whether all that wandering really bolstered the argument he's trying to make.
Mead does have a likable writing style - he keeps things moving and provides a "light touch" even when the topics of discussion are heavy subjects. He covers a lot of ground, he raises a number of points, he posits a number of arguments. Then, in the final chapter he tells you what it all means (the name of the chapter is literally "The Meaning of It All"). Like the rest of the book this is a pretty generalized discussion, but basically it says that global capitalism will eventually lead the whole world to, not Utopia, but to a "perpetual revolution" of higher and more transcendental human meaning. Really.
So does this book have anything to tell us 14 years later? About as much as it did when published. Which is to say - there is a lot of interesting stuff here, and it might lead you to pick up some of the works he references in his arguments, but ultimately, for me, it doesn't build to a wholistic, convincing argument.
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and the making of the Modern World"? Well, perhaps.Despite that subtitle, this book is not a history of how Britain and America made the modern world order. It's not a history book at all, which the author acknowledges in his introduction. It's more of a philosophical dissertation. Mead takes as a given the "Anglo-Saxon" primacy in creating the modern world order, and proceeds to lay out what he sees as the underlying conditions that led to the leadership role of these two nations.
There's a lot to quibble with about this book.
First off, it's well documented, with appropriate footnotes, but there is much too much taken as given. Mead never really defines the "modern world order" that the whole book is about. Is it economic, legal, moral, technological, industrial, military, diplomatic? Mead, I think, might argue that it's all or at least pieces of all of the above, but by not defining it, he gives himself free rein to marshal his argument unfettered by definitional constraints.
Secondly, this book is way too long for the case it's trying to make. Mead wanders. And wanders. While wandering with him was fun in parts, you do get to the end of the book asking yourself whether all that wandering really bolstered the argument he's trying to make.
Mead does have a likable writing style - he keeps things moving and provides a "light touch" even when the topics of discussion are heavy subjects. He covers a lot of ground, he raises a number of points, he posits a number of arguments. Then, in the final chapter he tells you what it all means (the name of the chapter is literally "The Meaning of It All"). Like the rest of the book this is a pretty generalized discussion, but basically it says that global capitalism will eventually lead the whole world to, not Utopia, but to a "perpetual revolution" of higher and more transcendental human meaning. Really.
So does this book have anything to tell us 14 years later? About as much as it did when published. Which is to say - there is a lot of interesting stuff here, and it might lead you to pick up some of the works he references in his arguments, but ultimately, for me, it doesn't build to a wholistic, convincing argument.
Show Less
LibraryThing member brett_in_nyc
I really enjoyed this book, and particularly the discussion about how religious themes and demonizing "enemies" who are little more than economic competitors was a staple in the Anglo-American discourse since Cromwell, Louis XIV, etc. and then later Hitler, McCarthy, Reagan, and then Bush. Telling
It won't work any better to say "so Exxon Mobil can get richer, and you stay dependent on foreign oil in your car" either! The talk about how religious myths have been used on people to go fight, or even the suitability of texts of Judeo-Christianity-Islam to perpetuate this system for use by ruling elites. It is fantastic! What is left out though is that this system continues in our "open society", but it has always been the MO of the British Empire even though Mead claims we've always been about "democratic capitalism". History shows that really only a very few people back in England lived under the "democratic" part of this capitalism, and only then begrudgingly by a well preserved ruling elite, he describes them as a strong "parliament". I agree, they mostly ran Parliament until the post-war era, seats being musical chairs for the cousins put forward by the Conservative Party. This book is full of references, and I intend to use them. The system has been "demonstrably more effective", but he fails to be honest about the many backs on which that effectiveness arose. Anyone reading this literally, and without other sources, would believe exactly what he has to say, and go off merrily believing things are just fine the way they are.
The book is full of misleading language like "religious strife between....the resentful Catholic peasants of Ireland and the British State". Notice no adjective to describe the British State, but I can think if a few. There's no mention of denuding Ireland of timber for Bess's ships, nor the potato monoculture that might have arisen anyway by these Anglo- invisible hand ideas, just like our corn monoculture (oh that's subsidized, I forgot), but other sources suggest conflicting information about just how "invisible" was this hand in all of this exploitation of Ireland.
The best part for me, was "Wars of religion are largely an Abrahamic trait, found among the Abrahamic peoples, and in self-defense, their neighbors." Mead mentions how Sioux, Shawnee, Boxers, Carlists, or Xhosa chiefs used religious myth to get fighters to go down against unbeatable odds, but nothing about the same tactics used today on Americans of simple faith to fight a desperate war for the world's remaining oil, masked as existential and religious for the voters and soldiers who are "created equal" under the Constitution and this Anglo-American tradition, but not treated as so by the FCC licensed media, nor elected Congressmen. Evidence suggest military commanders are using this language on young people, and recruitment is focused on social classes for which this would be central. We also can connect the dots between funding sources of 501c3s or religious organizations that produce Islamophobic dogma, and concentrated owners of FCC licensed media. These funding sources are also the same ones who give campaign contributions to Congressmen, most notably "the family" on C Street. Mead must have known about these people. Since only 1% of the population control most wealth and income both in the US and the UK, it is pretty easy to see who is behind funding all these ventures. None of this comes out in this Paean to Anglo-American "dynamic open society" supporting maritime control and achievement.
While he goes on and on about the failure of the centralized French state versus the decentralized British and American states, and emphasizes the importance of a dynamic open-society at home to support US provided security of the global "maritime system", he covers up the truth that US wealth and political power is now more concentrated than it was during the 1920s in both the US and UK (and Australia and Canada hmmm pattern here?). The current collapse, brewing just under the surface in 2007 when his book was published, exemplifies what happens when too much economic and political power is held by too few minds, just like the French state under Louis XIV which missed so many innovations, later including the telephone evidently, but also the white elephants like the Yangtzee River Dam of another centrally concentrated power system like the Chinese Communists. We may have a few white elephants of our own now, like TARP banks for example?
For me, the biggest thing about this book is the meta-story that while conservatives in the Council on Foreign Relations can espouse in print these Anglo-American values of "democratic capitalism" and "open society" as predestined to dominate the world, these values are collapsing in this country under the weight of conservatives' very own campaign finance laws, Supreme Court case law about political speech and money from the 1970s, and non-prosecution of anti-trust laws during the Bush Administation.
Other conservative writers espouse the Atlas Shrugged model, the brilliance of JP Morgan raising capital in this Dutch finance system for John D Rockefeller, Henry Ford, or Andrew Carnegie to create the "Age of Oil" and Big Capital we live in to serve them. They write to justify bailing out too big to fail Wall Street firms that enable Big Oil and Big Everyone Else's run around this planet in search of low-cost, low-rule-of-law, high-profit countries and people to exploit (increasingly "resentful" people would that be the adjective to use?). Now we are dependent on their "Age of Oil", and the system isn't open enough, nor the Dutch finance system capable of successfully forming capital around useful new technologies (plenty of un-useful technology bubbles though).
Mead's plea to protect the "maritime system" seems like a masked one to protect access to Central Asian oil, which is the big CIA play now, since supertankers and cargo ships don't run on wind power or fuel cells. This masked plea precludes moving democratically as American families need toward "slow food" or "slow money" or "locally produced goods". With conservatives producing and reading between the lines in manifestos like this one, it doesn't look like a sustainable future for American families is in their powerful hidden cards!
This book reinforces a growing question about anything written by these people explaining our Anglo-American "ideals". In fact, those "ideals" shrouded in old fashioned religion just whitewash for us taxpayers and voters a commercial empire based on exploitation like slavery, CIA "interventions" against trade unionism, taxes, democracy, indigenous rights, or social reform, or today's recent coup in Honduras against Zelaya for the Chiquita Banana company, their Cincinnatti Board Members, and their wealthy Honduran buddies from the country club in Miami (or Naples more likely)!
All of those details are well hidden from us taxpayers by this book and a disciplined media elite who write for Foreign Affairs, and talk to us on Meet the Press, etc!
Show More
people straight up that we want their sons to die so the King can get richer, just wouldn't sell enough to make a war really work.It won't work any better to say "so Exxon Mobil can get richer, and you stay dependent on foreign oil in your car" either! The talk about how religious myths have been used on people to go fight, or even the suitability of texts of Judeo-Christianity-Islam to perpetuate this system for use by ruling elites. It is fantastic! What is left out though is that this system continues in our "open society", but it has always been the MO of the British Empire even though Mead claims we've always been about "democratic capitalism". History shows that really only a very few people back in England lived under the "democratic" part of this capitalism, and only then begrudgingly by a well preserved ruling elite, he describes them as a strong "parliament". I agree, they mostly ran Parliament until the post-war era, seats being musical chairs for the cousins put forward by the Conservative Party. This book is full of references, and I intend to use them. The system has been "demonstrably more effective", but he fails to be honest about the many backs on which that effectiveness arose. Anyone reading this literally, and without other sources, would believe exactly what he has to say, and go off merrily believing things are just fine the way they are.
The book is full of misleading language like "religious strife between....the resentful Catholic peasants of Ireland and the British State". Notice no adjective to describe the British State, but I can think if a few. There's no mention of denuding Ireland of timber for Bess's ships, nor the potato monoculture that might have arisen anyway by these Anglo- invisible hand ideas, just like our corn monoculture (oh that's subsidized, I forgot), but other sources suggest conflicting information about just how "invisible" was this hand in all of this exploitation of Ireland.
The best part for me, was "Wars of religion are largely an Abrahamic trait, found among the Abrahamic peoples, and in self-defense, their neighbors." Mead mentions how Sioux, Shawnee, Boxers, Carlists, or Xhosa chiefs used religious myth to get fighters to go down against unbeatable odds, but nothing about the same tactics used today on Americans of simple faith to fight a desperate war for the world's remaining oil, masked as existential and religious for the voters and soldiers who are "created equal" under the Constitution and this Anglo-American tradition, but not treated as so by the FCC licensed media, nor elected Congressmen. Evidence suggest military commanders are using this language on young people, and recruitment is focused on social classes for which this would be central. We also can connect the dots between funding sources of 501c3s or religious organizations that produce Islamophobic dogma, and concentrated owners of FCC licensed media. These funding sources are also the same ones who give campaign contributions to Congressmen, most notably "the family" on C Street. Mead must have known about these people. Since only 1% of the population control most wealth and income both in the US and the UK, it is pretty easy to see who is behind funding all these ventures. None of this comes out in this Paean to Anglo-American "dynamic open society" supporting maritime control and achievement.
While he goes on and on about the failure of the centralized French state versus the decentralized British and American states, and emphasizes the importance of a dynamic open-society at home to support US provided security of the global "maritime system", he covers up the truth that US wealth and political power is now more concentrated than it was during the 1920s in both the US and UK (and Australia and Canada hmmm pattern here?). The current collapse, brewing just under the surface in 2007 when his book was published, exemplifies what happens when too much economic and political power is held by too few minds, just like the French state under Louis XIV which missed so many innovations, later including the telephone evidently, but also the white elephants like the Yangtzee River Dam of another centrally concentrated power system like the Chinese Communists. We may have a few white elephants of our own now, like TARP banks for example?
For me, the biggest thing about this book is the meta-story that while conservatives in the Council on Foreign Relations can espouse in print these Anglo-American values of "democratic capitalism" and "open society" as predestined to dominate the world, these values are collapsing in this country under the weight of conservatives' very own campaign finance laws, Supreme Court case law about political speech and money from the 1970s, and non-prosecution of anti-trust laws during the Bush Administation.
Other conservative writers espouse the Atlas Shrugged model, the brilliance of JP Morgan raising capital in this Dutch finance system for John D Rockefeller, Henry Ford, or Andrew Carnegie to create the "Age of Oil" and Big Capital we live in to serve them. They write to justify bailing out too big to fail Wall Street firms that enable Big Oil and Big Everyone Else's run around this planet in search of low-cost, low-rule-of-law, high-profit countries and people to exploit (increasingly "resentful" people would that be the adjective to use?). Now we are dependent on their "Age of Oil", and the system isn't open enough, nor the Dutch finance system capable of successfully forming capital around useful new technologies (plenty of un-useful technology bubbles though).
Mead's plea to protect the "maritime system" seems like a masked one to protect access to Central Asian oil, which is the big CIA play now, since supertankers and cargo ships don't run on wind power or fuel cells. This masked plea precludes moving democratically as American families need toward "slow food" or "slow money" or "locally produced goods". With conservatives producing and reading between the lines in manifestos like this one, it doesn't look like a sustainable future for American families is in their powerful hidden cards!
This book reinforces a growing question about anything written by these people explaining our Anglo-American "ideals". In fact, those "ideals" shrouded in old fashioned religion just whitewash for us taxpayers and voters a commercial empire based on exploitation like slavery, CIA "interventions" against trade unionism, taxes, democracy, indigenous rights, or social reform, or today's recent coup in Honduras against Zelaya for the Chiquita Banana company, their Cincinnatti Board Members, and their wealthy Honduran buddies from the country club in Miami (or Naples more likely)!
All of those details are well hidden from us taxpayers by this book and a disciplined media elite who write for Foreign Affairs, and talk to us on Meet the Press, etc!
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
The Economist Best Books (2007.25)
Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History (Shortlist — 2008)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2007 (1st edition, New York, Knopf)
Physical description
464 p.; 5.85 inches
ISBN
0375414037 / 9780375414039