Customer Reviews

The World Who Wants It?

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This book takes a fresh and zany look at the world's all-to-familiar, intractable problems. The author goes after these problems by proposing detailed solutions that range from the clever to the bizarre. Though none of these solutions is practical, many are insightful and thought provoking, while others are just deliciously sarcastic. The author leads the reader down a serpentine, quasilogical path, that is a delight to follow. I thought the book was thoroughly enjoyable.

It takes a keen and courageous observer to lay bare the hypocracy of the sole world superpower, and to do so with enough irony and humor to keep a twinkle in a reader's eye. Ben Nicholson is such a writer, and this book gives hope that not everyone is being made subservient to a conservative agenda. In fact, the importance of this book is that it really takes no specific political stance, because really it is outlining a broad critique of quite fundamental American stupidities - not reserved to either Republicans or Democrats.

This book is important because its extreme suppositions and speculations are only implausible within a momentary context - America shows again and again it's ability to go beyond, (for good and for evil), everything we can imagine at this present moment.

But mostly, this is just a good read, building momentum and constructing linkages and scenarios that would make Raymond Roussel proud - had he ever written a political novel.

The 9/11 commission blamed the terrorist attacks on our "Failure of Imagination." The kind of imagination that they were referring to was one which could anticipate horrific acts against Americans.

The dismal results of our recent election indicate that we have successfully learned to imagine the worst, and expect leaders who will exploit that fear in the most cynical possible ways.

Ben Nicholson has no failure of imagination. But his imagination is positive, constructive and frequently brilliant. His training as an architect allows him to evaluate a broad array of International issues, and to generate creative and usually unexpected insights into ways of re-imagining solutions.

If you despair over America's response to the world since 9/11, this book will serve as a useful antidote, showing what is possible with a healthy imagination.

This book is really a work of speculative fiction which depicts a close parallel universe, branching off from 9/11, where the Bush administration really actively begins the business of world-building in the most conscious, constructive and peaceable way imaginable. While this is of course a fantasy it is certainly explored with such good intentions that we are drawn in from the start. Some of the chapters are a little disconnected and the overall writing is kind of dry but the author's breezily optimistic approach to global re-engineering pretty much wins you over.

I was at the Architectural Association with Nicholson in the early 70s. He was a privileged child then and judging from his absurd book is still a child now. We studied with Sue Rogers (wife of Richard Rogers) who fawned over Nicholson and organized all sorts of fancy introductions for him. In the UK privilege begets privilege. It was rumoured that he was the grandson of the famous British painter, Ben Nicholson.

What struck one about Nicholson was how amazingly stupid he was: entry into the AA was pretty competitive so Ben stuck out like a sore thumb as someone with limited intellectual abilities (though a very plummy pompous accent). As I said the British are suckers for prestigious connections and Ben had them via the purported grandfather. So he sailed into the AA and was lauded for his designs - I mean the grandson of "Ben Nicholson" must have talent so the buzz went.

So armed with these memories I approached his book thinking "here was a man well into middle age. Let's see how he has intellectually evolved and matured".

Sad to say not at all. He follows the corny extreme left wing position of blaming the US for the world's ills. Though I am not an American I am astonished at how insulting the book is to America and Americans complete with the naive believe that all people (except Americans) are good people only wanting to get a share of the cake.

Clearly he hates America and clearly the cutesy solution he proposed in not viable. For example, extreme kindness in Arabic society is taken as fear and weakness. Just the message to send after 9/11, hey Ben

The book fails to notice the delicious irony that only in the US (and a few other Western countries) would he be allowed to spout the insulting drivel while living in the country being insulted.

No doubt Mr Nicholson has tenure at the IIT and for all his spite towards the US will certainly not follow his convictions by leaving the cozy teaching establishment and the US.

I guess Ben and his silly book demonstrates the old adage, "those who can do, those who can't teach". My condolences to his students.

This incredibly interesting man, who owns the single largest collection of bread clips in the world, was my professor. Please I hope you recognized my sarcasm for such outrageous excuse for an educator. I remember Nicholson's lecture on Ash Wednesday of 2003, where he showed an image of a sculptor creating a statue of Jesus and happened to be "working on" our Lord's genitals. If you want to read a book by this atheistic ignoramus, then be my guest. As for me, I would sleep better if he was fired from his over-paying job at The Illinois Institute of Technology, knowing he no longer has the power to warp the minds of young architects. And Benny, if you hate this country so much, then take your cardigans and stained teeth back to Britain.

Ben Nicholson is a theoretical architect from Britian where I go to school at IIT. He is the worst kind of food for a young persons mind. He is an unsympathetic jerk and it shows in this book. How he sees this as a tribute to all those innocent souls that were forced out of this world world against their will's, I'll never know. When he premiered this book to us as a guest lecturer, he gleemed at the idea of having an oppurtunity to thumb his nose at every American citizen as if to say it was our own fault for being dumb enough to let our government get away with making foriegn policey that brought about 9/11, thus we brought it on ourselves.