Customer Reviews:
 Comments by Michael Calum Jacques, author of '1st Century Radical'. December 2, 2008
Michael Calum Jacques (UK)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a good book, entertainingly written and both stimulating and challenging in terms of its topic and content. Published recently (towards the end of September)and weighing in at in excess of 500 pages it is also an absorbing read. But what exactly is it about? Like the rest of the book, the title is pretty clear and open about this.
Even so, it would be easy for certain readers to take one look at the book's topics and shudder; these include the vexed subject of globalisation, energy shortages, international crime syndicates, the worry of both nuclear proliferation and small arms proliferation, international drugs 'trafficking', climate change, water shortages, varieties of population migration, various epidemics, the denigration and deterioration of the nation 'state' concept as well as that old burner, weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The author, Chris Patten, makes a point, it seems to this reviewer, of tackling this demanding and, to some, actually threatening range of subjects with a great deal of honesty and candour. There are no easy solutions and there probably or possibly, at least, may never be. We begin our path to solving a problem by looking it squarely in the face and acknowledging its existence. So the author acknowledges that precious little of recent history has 'turned out' as we probably expected it would say twenty years ago, and then he moves on to make suggestions of what an individual (and collectively, 'society') can do in order to begin a recalibration and 'setting right' of all these apparently modern ailments. Patten writes with the insight of bridalled experience and the perception of a careful listener and observer of society's traits and characteristics.
This work has already been described as Chris Patten's "most ambitious and impressive yet". This reviewer, for one, would agree with that assessment and commend this book to potential readers, especially to those who are tentative about recent history and those who find themselves pessimistic and fearing what they perceive to be a forbidding future.
Michael Calum Jacques (author of 1st Century Radical: the shadowy origins of the man who became known as Jesus Christ)
 Disappointing December 28, 2008
Nosretap (Hong Kong,)
I was very disappointed by Patten's politically correct views which were shallow and conventional. His comments on Climate Change and World health issues were unimaginative and were frankly a waste of paper and ink. Any 10 year old could have written these chapters. He was on better form when discussing terrorism and globalisation. This book is nowhere up to the high standard of his previous books. I would give the book a miss.
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