Has the West Lost It? By Kishore Mahbubani

This book’s full title is Has the West Lost It? A Provocation. He thinks that they have not lost it yet, but it still can. Throughout most of history, India, and China each produced about a third of the world’s GDP. However, Europe, then the US (i.e., the West) has dominated the world since 1800. However, this is coming to an end and the US (and the West) will have to deal with the changing world. Kishore Mahbubani has his own web site .

I quite liked this book. Kishore Mahbubani certainly has a different view of the world. But this is what I would expect from him. He is a Singaporean citizen. I felt the book was well written and interesting. I like to read people who have a different world view that what I generally hear. I live in Canada. The world is changing and we need to hear from non-westerners.

There are a surprising number of very negative reviews on Good Reads. Hilton L. Root writes a great review of this book at Independent Institute. Masih Ullah Khan at India Quarterly, Journal of International Affairs writes a balanced view of this book. There is another good review by Sir Richard Jolly at the Institute of Development Studies. Kishore Mahbubani at World Economic Forum on how Asian wisdom can complement western thinking.

Bill Emmott & Kishore Mahbubani talk at Ideas Abu Dhabi about A Clash or Fusion of Civilizations and the state of our world. This is an interesting discussion only about 22 minutes long.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.