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The End of History and the Last Man Paperback – March 1, 2006
| Francis Fukuyama (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
- Print length464 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateMarch 1, 2006
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.1 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-100743284550
- ISBN-13978-0743284554
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Editorial Reviews
Review
-- George Gilder, The Washington Post Book World
"Bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant. Until now, the triumph of the West was merely a fact. Fukuyama has given it a deep and highly original meaning."
-- Charles Krauthammer
"Clearly written...Immensely ambitious...A tightly argued work of political philosophy...Fukuyama deserves to have his argument taken seriously."
-- William H. McNeill, The New York Times Book Review
"Provocative and elegant...Complex and interesting...Fukuyama is to be applauded for posing important questions in serious and stimulating ways."
-- Ronald Steel, USA Today
"Extraordinary...Controversial...A superb book. Whether or not one accepts his thesis, he has injected serious political philosophy into the discussion of political affairs and thereby significantly enriched it."
-- Mackubin Thomas Owens, The Washington Times
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Product details
- Publisher : Free Press; Reissue edition (March 1, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 464 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0743284550
- ISBN-13 : 978-0743284554
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #7,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Historiography (Books)
- #7 in Modern Philosophy (Books)
- #10 in Political Philosophy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University, and Mosbacher DIrector of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Dr. Fukuyama has writtenon questions concerning governance, democratization, and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. His book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment will be published in Septmer 2018.
Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, and was a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.
Francis Fukuyama is married to Laura Holmgren and lives in Palo Alto, California.
March 2018
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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In my case, I've mainly been listening to it as an audio book, but needed the kindle version to dig out a few references. The argument rests on Hegel's theory of a directional history but being written a century and a half later includes many contemporary examples, new insisghts, and critiques and extensions of later theories.
I was surprised to see that both the analysis and the predictions seem to be holding up well--this because the end of history is not really the "end," as many critiques assume, but an institutional setup that is approached asymptotically with many zigs and zags.in his theory. It winds up being a version (or perhaps many) of what 19th century liberals had pushed for--liberal forms of representative democracy with extensive markets.
Fukuyama is false to claim no other democracy in 1776, though the pretense that the Native American, in particular the Haudenosaunee, do not exist and have no rights nor treaties nor land is certainly one school of thought (and, especially, action) in America. Granted, a participatory democracy with communal ownership would doubtless be as unacceptable to the Western man as was the Iranian democracy they kicked over in 1953.
Now while the spread of the liberal democracy may seem impressive, the 2009 coup in Hondouras and various military hijinks abroad by the one nation that supported said coup raises the question whether graduates of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about represent some final form, or are simply another telling of the Athens trope—democracy at home, empire abroad. More time, as Toynbee indicates, would certainly be in order.
On the economic front, many of the woes of the USSR also apply elsewhere; it is not too difficult in America today to find a hotel, shopping mall, or countryside where "one can find the most abject poverty". Whether abstract principles will suffice to render the rent affordable or reverse the vanishing act of the middle class is an interesting question; Fukuyama is rather optimistic on this point, and appears to hold to the most curious notion of infinite growth on a finite planet. Where are the drawbacks and diminishing returns of flapping with ever increasing acceleration towards the sun?
"none of America's ethnic groups constitutes historical communities living on their traditional lands and speaking their own language, with a memory of past nationhood and sovereignty." How very strange a claim! The Haudenosaunee live on their traditional lands (what is left of them, anyways) and speak their own language and have a past memory of their nationhood and sovereignty. One could weasel out from this falsehood by claiming the Haudenosaunee are a separate nation, which then leaves the awkward fact of America (and Canada) stealing their land and forcing Americaness (or Canadianess) on them.
Science is less cummulative than claimed (and the author seems to mix science and technology?); theories change: in geology neptunism and volcanism were tossed in favor of uniformitarianism tossed in favor of punctuated equilibrium. Global deluge out, tectonics in. Techniques change: tasting chemicals is now frowned upon, and how many slide rules are used in the design of the F-35 fighter? Roles change: there is perhaps a greater demand for environmental geologists than petroleum. And what ever happened to commercial supersonic transport, speaking of accumulation?
As scholars were blind to the fall of the Soviets (which Fukuyama does well document), the claim that "we are now at a point where we cannot imagine a world substantially different from our own" is as blind. Toynbee and others point out that civilizations can rot away from within or fall to ecological challenges, and a failure to imagine a better world is just that, a failure of imagination. Liberal democracies have woes aplenty, and are hardly "free from the contradictions that characterized earlier forms of social organization", given the divide between the Dominant Minority (the 1%) and the Internal Proletariat (the precariat), mounting ecological woes (how fares the Ogallala aquifer?), and the rather rapid consumption of various concentrated energy stores.
A more realistic text with far better predictive value is Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"; that text better explains such stress points as Turkey, the rise of China, or why America meddles so incessantly in some areas of the world (South America, Africa, and the Middle East) but not others (say, the petro state of Norway).
Bill
Top reviews from other countries
He argues that with the victory of Western Liberal Democracy, following the Cold War (1945–1991) and the breakup of the Soviet Union (USSR) humanity has reached "not just... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." In the book, he expands on his essay, "The End of History?" (1989). Fukuyama draws upon the ideologies and philosophies of Hegel and Marx. In his opinion, they define human history as a linear progression, from one socio-economic epoch to another.
Far from viewing the USA as the victor, he put forward yet another socialist vision for the West, based on the European Union. He later expanded on his views: “The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organization. Following Alexandre Kojeve, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty and their military.”
This view has dominated the Western governments since the nineties. Yet more recently, the European Union has been shown to be little more than a utopian dream, with Britain voting to leave it in 2016. However, many people continue to wish to remain in this dream, despite it being riddled with so many obvious flaws. The wish that the EU would be the model for a better future for all mankind, lies in shambles, yet another failed socialist project.
My three-star rating is based on his envisioning a totalitarian future for humankind. That is a supranational world government rather than intergovernmental cooperation between nation states.
Capitalism should, of course, never be confused with Democracy - but as the author points out both ideals seem to be the most compatable with human nature, therefore the dominant ideologies... for now!
The end of History ? No THE text pointing us to a new era - definately!!
A must read for anyone with a wish to broaden their political, philosophical or historical horizons and frankly who doesn't!?







