Thursday, December 11

A note about Nils Gilman's "Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America"

Reference the December 10 post. I should have mentioned that Mandarins of the Future was published in January 2004 then published in paperback in February 2007.

At first I was shocked to learn how long the book had been out. But on reflection it’s no great wonder that the book did not get as much as attention as it merited when it was published, given the era, which seems a thousand years ago considering all that's happened since then. It was at the time when the Iraq expedition, and all the expectations that went with it, were falling apart, and Iran was taking center stage.

But to everything there is a season. I think that those of us who have kept informed about the struggle around the globe for democracy, the spread of transnational terrorism and crime, and the scaling back of expectations that globalization would solve all the world’s ills, are much better prepared than in 2004 to absorb the history covered in Mandarins, and its lessons.

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