Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
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4.0 • 12 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
COVID-19 is speeding up history, but how? What is the shape of the world to come?
Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria helps readers to understand the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this scattershot treatise, CNN host Zakaria (The Post-American World) gleans lessons from the Covid-19 outbreak on how society, politics, and international relations could and should evolve. In the book's strongest sections, Zakaria argues that America needs a less fragmented and gridlocked government bureaucracy to cope with health threats, and he calls for more honesty and empathy from scientists, and foresees accelerated migration of work and life onto the internet. Other points seem tangential to the virus (the rise of robots and artificial intelligence to displace humans), or rehash Zakaria's already well-articulated stances (he spends many pages defending globalization and multilateralism against Trumpian nationalism). He anthropomorphizes Covid-19 as "nature's revenge" for overpopulation and human environmental encroachments, and suggests that "promoting healthier diets" will help to prevent the next pandemic. Zakaria also disparages America's Covid-19 response by cherry-picking the statistic that by July 2020 "per-capita daily death rates in the United States were ten times higher than in Europe," without noting that the continent's outbreak peaked earlier, with similarly high death rates in multiple countries. This less-than-cogent analysis of the coronavirus pandemic leaves much to be desired.
