Customer Reviews

Managing Global Issues: Lessons Learned

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book is an absolute must-read for a wide range of readers from foreign relations expert to absolute neophyte. As a lay person, I found it extremely readable and accessible. The book offers thought-provoking insights through thoughtfully organized essays and introduced by the authors in such a way that gives the reader a useful context for analysis. A definite 5 star publication!

I used this book 3 years ago when I took a class in Harvard. This books allows me to understand the most important subjects in politics today, and also give me a lot of bibliography, so f I was interested in one of the subjects I could go deeper. I used for my thesis and Is a very good tool to do research I extremly recomended!

This book is critically important. Well obvious before September 11, but even more so afterwards, it is clear that we are subject to global problems such as climate change which must be addressed on a global level. National contributions are vital but they must add up to a greater whole.

In a brilliant analysis Simmons and his co-author examine a wide variety on efforts on global issues, identify what has worked and what hasn't.

This is a global civics lesson!

Thomas E. Lovejoy
Chief Biodiversity Advisor, The World Bank
Senior Advisor to the President, the United Nationas Foundation

Did anyone who gave this book 5 stars actually read it? Or are they good friends of the editors? The comment attributed to Professor Gaddis located above these reviews was especially disappointing. His books about the Cold War are wonderful but this book would bore even incoming freshmen at his university. Someone must have called in big favor for that quote.

There is nothing new in this book unless you are surprised by statements like "the internet has changed the way we communicate." On the other hand, this book may be for you if you didn't realize the U.N. Security Council has five permanent members and they all have a veto. My point is this: the book is marketed to people with backgrounds in security issues but insults the intelligence of anyone who knows anything about the field (and I don't mean academic background either; reading USA Today would surpass the insight provided in this book).

If you are a professor putting together a class syllabus, please save your students' sanity and do not make them read this book. If you are just looking to buy it for fun, you need to reassess your life. Save your money and time and choose another book. Take it from someone who actually read it...one star is generous.

This book was assigned in a graduate level international relations class. While the aim of the book is laudable - to give practical solutions to foreign policy problems - the execution leaves much to be desired. The editors make each contributing author shoehorn their essays into a rather clumsy outline. There are countless "no **** Sherlock" moments when reading this book. Overall, it is not insightful and an utter waste of time.

This is by far, without a doubt, the single-handedly most God-awfully, hideously sterile, boring piece of literature ever produced by mankind. I have heard a rumor that hospitals are going to start making patients read this book in lieu of anaesthesia before conducting surgery.