Review by Choice Review
Colonomos asks whether scholars of China, as a threat to the liberal world order and American power, will get the future wrong as did think tank scholars who failed to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union as well as the rise of the Arab Spring. He explains that the perils of prediction lie within the groupthink of scholarly communities. To be taken seriously in these communities, pessimism and "linearity"--projecting current strength of obstacles to American power into the future--are the prudent options. Colonomos proposes a "public sphere of futures" to remedy groupthink. Dialogue about the future needs to be expanded to include lay people and historical normative changes beyond the competition of states. For example, the tipping point that led to the moral revolution of slavery abolition needs identification. Currently, the phenomenon of humanitarian intervention putting state sovereignty on trial is a study in waiting. Colonomos ends by pondering the ambivalence humans have toward knowing the future. Readers are induced to contemplate an age-old issue: the perfectibility of the human condition. Is the model ever upward evolution or civilizational rise, decline, and fall? Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through professionals. --Thomas M. Jackson, Marywood University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
