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   Summary and Book Reviews

The Clash of Civilizations: Summary and book reviews of The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington, plus links to an excerpt from The Clash of Civilizations and a biography of Samuel Huntington.

The Clash of Civilizations

The Clash of Civilizations
and The Remaking of World Order
by Samuel P. Huntington
Hardcover: Jun 1998,
368 pages.
Paperback: Dec 1997,
367 pages.

Publication information
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Reader Reviews

Author Biography
Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  Two Stars
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BOOK SUMMARY

Based on the author's seminal article in Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is a provocative and prescient analysis of the state of world politics after the fall of communism. In this incisive work, the renowned political scientist explains how "civilizations" have replaced nations and ideologies as the driving force in global politics today and offers a brilliant analysis of the current climate and future possibilities of our world's volatile political culture.

BOOK REVIEWS

Media Reviews

Poor  New Statesman (UK) - Fred Halliday
Of all the broad-sweep books on the post-cold war world Huntington's is without doubt the worst and the most pernicious. It is the worst because it is careless with facts, ignorant of history and indifferent to the whole range of social theory that has, with due care, looked at such issues as culture, socialisation and tradition. . . . For a book that claims to be about different civilisations, it is striking that all the references are to books in English.Huntington is pernicious because he fuels myths about cultural conflict, and reinforces those who seek to consolidate relativist, community-based authority.

Good  Library Journal
This book attracted attention because of its thesis that the clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace. However, Huntington's work is important here for his second chapter on the nature and study of civilizations (with its excellent bibliographic sources), and his last chapter on the future of the West and other core civilizations.

Good  The New York Review of Books - William H. McNeill
I agree with Huntington when he argues that the commitments to particular patterns of civilization and particular religious identities are rapidly gaining importance in international affairs. But I disagree with the conclusions he draws; for it seems to me that increasing connections among civilizations simultaneously sustain a contrary trend toward global cosmopolitanism. This trend, in my view, offers by far the best hope for the future, and is therefore very much worth fostering, as the universalist strand in American foreign policy, perhaps naively, tends to do.

Good  The New York Times Book Review - Michael Ignatieff
The Huntington argument that the West should stop intervening in civilizational conflicts it doesn't understand makes a powerful claim that internationalists cannot easily ignore. The question is whether there remain certain human interests that all civilizations had better endorse for our common survival. Genocide is genocide, famine is famine, and a world where civilizations no longer intervene to save strangers from these universal threats is one that not even Samuel P. Huntington would feel safe in.

Good  The New York Times - Richard Bernstein
A benchmark for informed speculation on those always fascinating questions Just where are we in history? What hidden hand is controlling our destiny?...A searching reflection on our global state.

Good  The Washington Post Book World - Michael Elliott
The book is studded with insights, flashes of rare brilliance, great learning, and in particular, an ability to see the familiar in a new and provocative way.

Very Good  The Wall Street Journal - Francis Fukyama
The book is dazzling in its scope and grasp of the intricacies of contemporary global politics.

Author Blurb  Henry A. Kissinger
Sam Huntington, one of the West's most eminent political scentists, presents a challenging framework for understanding the realitites of global politics in the next century. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the most important books to have emerged since the end of the Cold War.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated 1 of 5 of 5 by misha
The guy is a disgrace to mankind. It seems to me that he has already made up his mind about the faith of the middle east without properly researching the facts. Any conscious human being with half a brain would know better, (especially a harvard...   Read More

Rated 1 of 5 of 5 by haha
harvard professor? well, he seems to be a patriotic <<edited>> (uhh..this word is forbidden) ...he has no idea of international knowledge. sorry, but i hope nobody will listen to what he's saying.
thanks.

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