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Book Cover for: The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy, Robert D. Kaplan

The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy

Robert D. Kaplan

In The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan travels from the devastated countries of West Africa and the fundamentalist enclaves of Egypt and Iran to the culturally explosive lands of Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia with hardly more than a notebook and a backpack. Kaplan's intention was to investigate firsthand the effect of population explosion and environmental degradation in these countries and to see how the various cultures he encountered responded to them. But as he traveled, talking to gun smugglers and government ministers, warlords and shantytown dwellers, he discovered that the real problem, in places as far afield as Sierra Leone and western China, was the reemergence of longstanding cultural rivalries and the dissolution of national boundaries as regions redefine themselves along ethnic and historic lines. Kaplan's ground-level experiences allow him to avoid grandiose generalizations about the clash of civilizations and to replace them with intimate portraits of the men and women he encounters: Rafighdoost, Khomeini's fiercely loyal chauffeur; Ali Abdel Razag, keeper of the Aswan High Dam; and Ayshe Tanrikulu, a squatter on Golden Mountain, a shantytown on the outskirts of Ankara, who hopes that her sons will one day be doctors or engineers. It is in the squalor of daily existence and in people's fears, frustrations, and dreams that Kaplan looks for the key to a country's future. The Ends of the Earth offers an intimate portrait of the devastated parts of the world, whose cultural disasters - like those in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda today - will dominate our attention and remake the world of tomorrow.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Jan 28th, 1997
  • Pages: 496
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.16in - 5.14in - 1.01in - 0.81lb
  • EAN: 9780679751236
  • Categories: International Relations - GeneralModern - 20th Century - General

About the Author

Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including Adriatic, The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia's Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy's Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world's "Top 100 Global Thinkers."

More books by Robert D. Kaplan

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Book Cover for: Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Requires a Pagan Ethos, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the Peloponnese, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: In Europe's Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond, Robert D. Kaplan
Book Cover for: Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, Robert D. Kaplan