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Book Summary and Reviews of The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo

The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo

The Age of the Unthinkable

Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

by Joshua Cooper Ramo

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Mar 2009, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail. History's grandest war against terrorism creates more terrorists. Global capitalism, intended to improve lives, increases the gap between rich and poor. Decisions made to stem a financial crisis guarantee its worsening. Environmental strategies to protect species lead to their extinction.

The traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo puts forth a revelatory new model for understanding our dangerously unpredictable world. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, immunology, and the science of networks, he describes a new landscape of inherent unpredictability--and remarkable, wonderful possibility.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [T]his revelatory work argues that there must be some audacity in thinking before there can be any audacity of hope." - Publishers Weekly.

"A smart essay in geopolitics and realpolitik that does not foresee a rosy future for conformists." - Kirkus Reviews.

"Thought-provoking. ... Ramo questions conventional thinking and provides fresh ideas - something we deeply need these days." - Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein.

This information about The Age of the Unthinkable was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Joshua Cooper Ramo

Joshua Cooper Ramo is Managing Director and a partner at Kissinger Associates, one of the world's leading strategic advisory firms. Prior to joining Kissinger Associates, he was Assistant Managing Editor of Time and worked in the advisory and banking business in China.

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