The Clash of Civilizations

i really wish i could be paid for being smart.So i'm reading "the clash of Civilzations" by som guy. It was written in 1996, so you'd think the stuff would be out of date. Actually, i heard about it before and i'm now mad i didn't read it before. In the past year or two i've read Thomas somone or other''s book The Pentagon's New Map and the more recent the Lexus and the Olive Tree. All three of them are good books in their own right. All three of them suffer from wanting to describe the 'one big ting' in international politics. But only clash of Civilizations comes close to identifying something meaningful.

The Lexus and Olive Tree seems to want everyone to think that with the world-wide communication systems being built that the world is going to be one big happy family. The Pentagon's new Map seems to think that the US should really become not only the world's police, but also its social worker, tyring to get everyone hooked up into the information age and employable. But both of these authors i think have read "Clash" (i remember Olive tree man saying so but i'm not so sure about Pentagon man) and try to put out their own point.

The thing i love about Clash is that it not only has great analyses of civilizational disputes, these disputes go back thousands of years, if not millenia. So the cultural analysis of conflict goes when core values of civilizations conflict. As a bachelored historian and a love of world history besides, i love this book. It does get a little redundant and you feel pressured into the abstract framework until he actually starts analyzing teh balkans, Turkey and other countries.

I guess i should finish the book before i go on. If i never mention it again, please read it anyway.