The Ends of the Earth (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is journalist Robert D. Kaplan’s fleshing-out of his controversial cover article published in the February, 1994, issue of ATLANTIC MONTHLY, “The Coming Anarchy.” At the same time, he goes several steps further, discussing and depicting his visits to parts of the world not treated in the article. In this urgently important book, Kaplan has realigned the intellectual and geographic landscape in such a way as to compel other journalists henceforward to refer to his work, whether they want to or not.

At the beginning of the book, Kaplan pauses only briefly to respond to his many critics. “In 1994, immediately after this article was published, I began a journey by land—roughly speaking—from Egypt to Cambodia: through the Near East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia,” he writes. “While ’The Coming Anarchy’ was being debated at home, I was already engaged in the mop-up operation. This mop-up operation did not so much disprove ’The Coming Anarchy’ as it showed me how culture, politics, geography, history and economics were inextricable. Rather than a grand theory, the best I could now hope for was a better appreciation of these interrelationships.”

The tone of diffidence and wisdom nicely highlights the contrast between Kaplan’s approach to understanding the world and those of many of his detractors, who too often write from cherished ideological positions rather than from experience. THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is a genuine “must-read” book for anyone who would understand where the world is heading at the end of the twentieth century.

Sources for Further Study

Los Angeles Times Book Review. March 17, 1996, p. 1.

The New Republic. CCXIV, April 15, 1996, p. 32.

The New York Times Book Review. CI, March 31, 1996, p. 7.

The New Yorker. LXXII, April 8, 1996, p. 96.

Technology Review. XCIX, November, 1996, p. 70.

The Wall Street Journal. March 27, 1996, p. A20.

The Washington Post Book World. XXVI, March 3, 1996, p. 1.

World Policy Journal. VIII, Spring, 1996, p. 83.