Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave [Paperback]

Alvin Toffler (Author), Heidi Toffler (Author), Newt Gingrich (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1995

Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave Alvin Toffler (Author) Heidi Toffler (Author), Newt Gingrich (Foreword)

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Turner Publishing; First Edition edition (1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570362238
• ISBN-13: 978-1570362231
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creating a New Civilization---Politics in the 3rd Wave, October 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Hardcover)

Speaking as a college student I may not be the best candidate to give a literary critique but I can tell you that this book should be taught to students in our high schools and universities. The predictions made in this book are not merely predictions but rather observations that have already begun in our world. Any educated person can tell that the changes Toffler expects in our world have already begun. Toffler's major principles for the 21st century include: disappearance of anything resembling a factory-based production system, empowering the home rather than society, decentralization of ideas and duties, and the ideal of congruence between the private and public sectors. Once you read this book, you begin to realize how much the world has already changed and how much farther we can progress if not for our "second world" ideals that hold our society back from ultimate progression and discoveries. I recommend that if you love politics as much as I do, buy this book and be amazed!

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Vapid, November 23, 2011

By 

Prince "chartreuse" (right here, right now) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Paperback)

When I was in my early 20s I read a book called 'The Third Wave' by Alvin Toffler. It completely changed my life. It made clear the things I felt happening in the world and explained them in a way I still carry with me today. I became a Toffler devotee and read everyone of his 1000+ page books. Then in 1995 he wrote a small 200 word book with Newt Gingrich about the future of politics. It was the worse piece of crap I had ever read. It made no sense. It's ideas were vapid and muddled. Someone recently said that Newt is "a stupid guys idea of what a smart person sounds like." I completely agree. Knowledge without ethics, empathy or vision does not make you smart. It makes you dangerous.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A too narrow lens to encompass the big picture, July 11, 2008

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave (Paperback)

Toffler's great book was the first one 'Future Shock'. What came after did not have the newness, and the freshness- and it did not shock.
This work too is a replay of Tofflers' often repeated notion of human development in three great phases, an Agricultural , Industrial and now Information Age. There is truth in this picture but it is far too simplistic and one- dimensional to encompass the realities of our world. Take for instance the Energy question which the Tofflers seemed to feel would have a relatively easy solution when they wrote this book in the early nineties. Here we are well into the first decade of the twenty- first century and the non- renewable fossil fuel resource is causing havoc with Civilization as a whole.
Morever even when there are developments which reenforce the Toffler picture of our living in an 'Information Age' they come in surprising unpredictable ways which raise serious questions on many fronts. The development of the Internet would seem to strengthen Toffler's main idea of our moving into an Information Age Economy, one in which customization, and de- massification are central. Consider the multiplication of Media and of human expression which the Internet has allowed. This would seem to be a kind of consummate proof of the Toffler thesis. Yet look also at the possible 'dumbing down' of the population, at the undermining in certain areas of the integrity of the 'knowledge industry' in the Academy. Consider such political phenomena as the rise of Radical Islam and the way their terrorists make use of 'information age' technology to threaten and attack others.
The Tofflers' view of the Future is too one- sidedly optimistic. And it too in my opinion , 'arrogant' in its assumption that their idea or ideas understand it all.
Their book has some interesting suggestions about what the human future will look like, but they certainly do not 'see it all'- not even the half of it.