596
pages, Scribner Book Company, ISBN-13: 978-0684193496
The Pacific
Century: America and Asia in a Changing World is a broad, rich survey of the Pacific that is well-written,
insightful about all the major issues of economics, society and politics,
rooted in history, full of scholarly references and lavishly illustrated with
photographs. The author – who has written five books on Asia – is a veteran
observer of East Asia who has spent a lifetime traveling in and writing about
the region. He is now president of the Pacific Basin Institute in Santa
Barbara, California, and one of America's foremost experts on the region.
A
definable image of the Pacific Basin would include, on the eastern shore of the
ocean, the principal states of North America: Canada, the United States, and
Mexico. On the western shore we have China, Japan, Russian Asia, Taiwan, Hong
Kong and Macao, both South and North Korea, Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and
Laos included), and the ASEAN group: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand,
the Philippines, and Brunei. Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands
round out the list.
Lavishly
illustrated, with hundreds of black-and-white and color photographs, The Pacific Century traces the past one 150
years of the Pacific Basin region, from colonialism to nationalism, from
military clashes to economic ones. The book also examines in depth the future
of the Pacific Basin – its social problems, pollution, population growth, trade
friction, and immigration – as well as the growing interdependence of the
Asia-Pacific nations. As the author notes, “our Pacific interconnections mark
our common destiny.”
This
volume should become a standard text for college courses on East Asia and for
the general reader interested in going deeper than the usual journalistic
survey. It needs also to be read by the “Atlanticists” in the U.S. foreign
policy establishment, who have consistently neglected a region that is destined
to play a much greater role in shaping world affairs.
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