Research Catalog

Title

Preparing for the twenty-first century / Paul Kennedy.

Author

Kennedy, Paul M., 1945-

Publication

New York : Random House, c1993.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 428 p. : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

• Human history has always been shaped by the growth and migration of populations, by the opportunities and constraints provided by the environment, and by the rise of new technologies. Today, these forces are enmeshed in a state of unprecedented turbulence. World population has more than doubled in the past forty years to reach its current level of 5.5 billion, and it will exceed 8 billion and perhaps even 10 billion early in the next century. How will these vast numbers reshape the world's borders, strain an already fragile ecosystem, and remake politics? New technologies are even now replacing traditional work with radically new systems of production and communication, promising enormous changes in both industrial and traditional agricultural societies.^
• Will potential developments in biotechnology render traditional food producers obsolete? What is the role of robotics in a world where millions of new jobs are needed each year to absorb the fast-growing population? And what will the roles of women be? How will the spread of AIDS affect the rapid growth of population in countries like India or those of central Africa? And how will all these complex, mutually dependent changes affect individual nations as they struggle with their own ethnic and economic pressures, including the inevitability of ever larger migrations from poorer to richer parts of the world as populations explode in less developed regions and decline in such areas as Japan, parts of North America, and the European continent? Given their historic behavior, how will Japan, the United States, and Europe - as well as the countries of Asia, Africa,^
• and Latin America - be likely to respond to these unprecedented circumstances? What is the role of education in a two- or three-tier world? Professor Kennedy's classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers considered the forces within nations that led to their rise and fall. In Preparing for the Twenty-first Century Kennedy addresses a larger and uniquely modern question: how will transnational forces in a world of scarce resources, instant communications, and exploding population affect the nations of the world and the people who inhabit them as the new century dawns?

Alternative Title

• Preparing for the 21st century.
• Preparing for the 21st century

Subjects

• Twenty-first century
• Forecasts
• Prognoseionaler Vergleich
• Twenty-first century > Forecasts
• Economic forecasting
• Social prediction
• Forecasting

Genre/Form

Forecasts

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 389-405) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Awards (note)

• New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
• RUSA Notable Books

Contents

Prologue : old challenges and new challenges -- The demographic explosion -- The communications and financial revolution and the rise of the multinational corporation -- World agriculture and the biotechnology revolution -- Robotics, automation, and a new industrial revolution -- The dangers to our natural environment -- The future of the nation-state -- The Japanese "plan" for a post-2000 world -- India and China -- Winners and losers in the developing world -- The erstwhile USSR and its crumbled empire -- Europe and the future -- The American dilemma -- Preparing for the twenty-first century.

ISBN

0394584430 :

LCCN

^^^91052668^

OCLC

26768284

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library