The Age of the Unthinkable
Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It

A book attempting to link recent terrorism and upheaval in financial markets to argue swift, significant change is upon us (and we are poorly prepared for it). The weak point is that it never really makes its case. You really just have to assume that we are in the midst of historically unprecedented......more

Resiliency. Maybe that was what was lacking. In the opening pages of The Age of the Unthinkable Joshua Cooper Ramo cites long-time Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s 2008 testimony to Congress on finding a “flaw” in his reasoning about how to manage the economy. “In other words,” Greenspan’s qu......more

I am painfully conflicted about this book. It reads like it was written by a grad student, not a former editor for Time. The writing is gimmicky and self-important, and the first chapter should be torn out and lit on fire. It steps into pretty much every cliche you can imagine about a dynamic world.......more

The world is at a tipping point, like a sand pile being created a grain at a time, which becomes a cone that at any point can have an avalanche. Sand cones look stable but are in fact deeply unpredictable. The world is becoming like a sand cone. To solve today's challenges, citizens and policymakers......more

This book is about a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s formulaic. It’s almost as if the author had the structure of a book in his mind but not much new or profound in terms of ideas. So he strings together a series of vignettes and anecdotes, no doubt re-cycled from past writings and then tries to ti......more