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

~ (Author) "The thick coffee, in two small gilt-edged cups and with that bitter bite of near-burnt Arabic chicory, has gone cold..." (more)
Key Phrases: democratic peace theory, sandpile world, deep security, United States, World War, Tugela Ferry (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Former foreign editor of Time, Ramo pushes the reader into uncomfortable yet exhilarating places with controversial ways of thinking about global challenges (e.g., studying why Hezbollah is the most efficiently run Islamic militant group). His book, which lays bare the flaws in current thinking on everything from American political influence to the economy, is designed to change the physics of the way we think. Analyzing the failure of the Bush administration's Democratic Peace Theory and the fruitless efforts at a Mideast peace process, Ramo suggests that people must change the role they imagine for themselves from architects of a system they can control to gardeners in a living ecosystem. Ramo's message—that the most dynamic forces emerge from outside elite circles: geeks, iconoclasts and maligned populations—is persuasively argued. And while the author doesn't explicitly offer up solutions, he goads readers to approach problems in unexpected ways. His revelatory work argues that there must be some audacity in thinking before there can be any audacity of hope. (Apr.)
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From The New Yorker

In this “revolutionary era of surprise and innovation,” Ramo argues that America needs a new “grand strategy” that resembles an immune system in its flexibility and resilience. To illustrate the methods he has in mind, Ramo entertainingly examines subjects as diverse as fish ecology and Hezbollah guerrilla tactics. Unfortunately, he never quite supports his claim that the world faces an unprecedented “avalanche of ceaseless change” that renders existing approaches obsolete. The two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall don’t seem more tumultuous, for example, than those between the Crash of ’29 and the Berlin Airlift. More significant, Ramo’s charge that the current policy bureaucracy has failed us rings false. From the Iraq insurgency to the housing bubble, our expert planners warned us what was coming; politicians and the public chose to ignore them.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (March 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316118087
• ISBN-13: 978-0316118088
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,300 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

100 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting ideas, but a superficial treatment, April 20, 2009

By	Irfan A. Alvi (Towson, MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ramo's background is primarily in journalism, and it shows.

On the positive side, Ramo is a good storyteller and he knows how to keep the book lively and engaging. He does it well enough that he can even be convincing, and his not-so-subtle name dropping certainly ties in with that.

But the negative side is that the book seriously lacks rigor. Ramo spends so much time on telling his stories that he fails to clearly lay out his arguments, and it's often not even clear what his key conclusions are. And as far as presenting and responding to opposing points of view, that's not even on the radar.

Ramo also refers to all sorts of ideas from science, history, political science, etc., and this all shows that he's at least reasonably well read, but he usually touches on these ideas rather superficially, using them as analogies at best, rather than as any sort of solid evidence or arguments.

Because of all this fuzziness, I had a hard time distilling Ramo's thesis, but let me try. As I could best glean it, we live in an increasingly rapidy changing and decentralized world, with resulting profound instability which renders it impossible to reliably predict the future in any real detail. To deal with this, we need to be flexible, adaptive, collaborative, creative, structurally resilient, and willing to proactively try things (even if that means risk), in the hope that we can withstand minor shocks and continually nudge the future in a general direction which suits our preferences and broad goals, thereby hopefully avoiding major shocks and catastrophes (especially manmade ones).

If the above summary is reasonably faithful to what Ramo is saying, I do think the thesis has some merit, so we should consider it carefully. But a better book is needed to argue for the thesis more rigorously (and therefore more credibly), to flesh it out, and to spell out its implications more specifically.

Given that I'm lukewarm about the book, I can't recommend it strongly, but I do think that people who are interested in this general topic could get something out of the book (I certainly did). Just don't set your expectations too high if you decide to read it.

68 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating ideas, sophomoric writing skills..., March 20, 2009

By	Eggcrate "glodphlex" (New York City) - See all my reviews

Ramo is obviously one well connected gentleman, a point he isn't adverse to reminding his readers, and he has the mindset of rather glib, yet also well informed and paradigm hopping media culture man. He aims for a certain gravitas then relaxes into a breezy, well, not superficiality by any means, but a kind of surface gloss of his material that suggests a preference for breadth over depth.

Having said that, his best side is taking the contrary perspective and acknowledging that some basic aspects of academic and political (not to mention media) culture may be fundamentally broken and the factors we take to be solutions could actually be acting as accelerants of social breakdown or systemic catastrophe...

For example, Alan Greenspan expressed that he had discovered "a flaw" in his basic worldview, perhaps a fatal flaw... although he tantalizes us with this point, we never learn exactly what this flaw consists of or what Greenspan did with his increased understanding.

He lauds Hans J. Morgenthau as a seminal thinker in international relations and the rise of the Realist school as opposed to an Ideological framework and then expresses a belief that Morgenthau's model also might contain an essential flaw, it excludes the power of moral certitude and what could be counted as irrationality as ordering force. Witness Hezbollah, a far geekier and strangely hip organization than the western media can either comprehend or accept.

Then we take a small tour of some of the newer branches of physics... and "physics" is a concept quite dear to Ramo, how is it that these sudden shifts and instabilities lead to a new permanent order of constant change, and how do we form institutional structures to work with these processes ?

All in all, a thought provoking, diverting book, however, given the potentials of his subject, it feels as if it were written far too quickly to have the necessary rigor of a significant work.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Do You Suffer From Static Cling? No More! Try Mashup!, May 1, 2009

By	G. Charles Steiner "Charles Steiner" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very much like the book by National Security Affairs Professor Zachary Shore: "Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions," published in 2008. Both books are disquisitions on the need for leaders as well as citizens to exhibit greater creativity given the increased complexity and instability of the world we now live in and both books offer clear, well-written examples either from war history and/or from contemporary life and business illustrating improved modes of thought and perception that go beyond sedentary absolutism or "static cling," the refusal to work with or deal with change so that a more empathic, more resilent, creative and happier, adaptive individual and society emerges.

While Zachary Shore's book is the more didactic in that the lessons he teaches are clearly demarcated and classified by chapter, Joshua Ramo doesn't attempt to lecture the reader directly so much as he tries to persuade the reader with his journalistic war and business stories that certain core ideas such as resiliency, effects-based strategizing, contextual thinking, and mashups (which is literally putting two unrelated items together forcibly to form a new unity) are very much de rigeur today -- if you care about the future of your family and the world. Ramos states that, in a manner of speaking, today, because of technology and increased interconnectedness, we each can be like a Picasso or a Stein and have a huge impact on changing our fragile, rigid culture and political structure.

Interestingly and appealingly, Mr. Ramos likens the chaotic age we now live in with that Cubistic time-period of the early 20th century where Gertrude Stein and Picasso were creative behomeths who knew their place on the contemporary scene as witnesses to the incredible change taking place as the 20th century emerged out of the 19th, whether that change be in regard to war-making, to painting or writing, or to music. Both Gertrude Stein and Picasso took the energy of that transitional period and utilized it for creative expression and mirroring.

I give this book four-stars because the writing is wonderfully and refreshingly clear, frequently entertaining and always conversational throughout -- with no typographical errors anywhere. The book has an energy that seems to resonate with the radical excitement of Stein's prose or Picasso's paintings could we have been freshly on the Paris scene at that time; that is, this is a book that is highly caffeinated yet produces no jitteriness but a pleasant "with it" sensation. Joshua Ramo, however, isn't offering any particularly new or politically radical ideas. The ideas presented here are, however, positively presented and they clearly are ones that offer the best chances to deal with this often very frightening and definitely change-spasmed age we now found ourselves in.