This is a must-hear podcast.

http://wordforword.publicradio.org/programs/2008/05/30/  or
download MP3 (Right Click, Save Target As)

Link to Newsweek article if you want to read rather than listen.

I haven’t read the book yet but it is definitely on my list. It was reviewed in the New York Times:

The New New World
By Josef Joffe
May 11, 2008
In this examination of power, Fareed Zakaria focuses not so much on the decline of America, but on the rise of China and India.

Excerpt:
“We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now—science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. The second shift (19th century) was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations.  The third great power shift of the modern age— This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else.

A series of positive trends over the last 20 years have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

I know. That's not the world that people perceive. We are told that we live in dark, dangerous times. Terrorism, rogue states, nuclear proliferation, financial panics, recession, outsourcing, and illegal immigrants all loom large in the national discourse.

Looking at the evidence, [scholars claim] that we are probably living "in the most peaceful time of our species' existence."

Why does it not feel that way? Why do we think we live in scary times? Part of the problem is that as violence has been ebbing, information has been exploding... Today any bomb that goes off, any rocket that is fired, any death that results, is documented by someone, somewhere and ricochets instantly across the world. "That could have been me," you think. Actually, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are tiny—for an American, smaller than drowning in your bathtub. But it doesn't feel like that.”