Free World
America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“We, the free, face a daunting opportunity. Previous generations could only dream of a free world. Now we can begin to make it.” In his welcome alternative to the rampant pessimism about Euro-American relations, award-winning historian Timothy Garton Ash shares an inspiring vision for how the United States and Europe can collaborate to promote a free world.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the West has plunged into crisis. Europe tries to define itself in opposition to America, and America increasingly regards Europe as troublesome and irrelevant. What is to become of what we used to call “the free world”? Part history, part manifesto, Free World offers both a scintillating assessment of our current geopolitical quandary and a vitally important argument for the future of liberty and the shared values of the West.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Great Britain caught between America and its Continental neighbors on Iraq and much else commences Ash's look at the 21st-century's strains on relations in the West. As the eminent British scholar and journalist (The File) moves on to the Continent, he echoes several recent critiques of the call for a unified Europe to act as an alternative superpower, citing the "uneven development" of the European Union. He suggests, however, that the European community still has a vital role to play in advocating the spread of freedom around the world, and looks forward to the day when America treats Europeans as "full partners in a common enterprise" in doing so. For Ash, that enterprise is largely economic. He calls for a global "war on want" and urges Western nations to open their borders to trade from developing neighbors; emigrants from undeveloped countries in the Arab world will turn to Europe, he argues, for homes and jobs. He also points to the imminent threat of global warming, which inspires his harshest criticisms of the current American government. The combination of sweeping historical insight with journalistic immediacy, related in Ash's own conversational style, should help this incisive commentary on world affairs stand apart from its competitors.
