I am a regular reader of the weekly economic newsletter published by John Mauldin, both Thoughts from the Frontline and Outside the Box, which are excellent sources for macroeconomic information and education (not that I have enough money to do something on this, but learning always enriches, even if not materially). In his Outside the Box letter he regularly sends articles by a self-defined “geopolitical intelligence” company called Stratfor, which are generally enlightening and eye-opening.
“The Next 100 Years” is a book written by Stratfor’s CEO George Friedman, who tries to predict what will happen globally in the next 100 years. Just saying that you want to do this seems to me a very pretentious, and as expected I was a bit skeptic (well, more than a bit). The basic idea behind his predictions is that even while people have free wills, countries are bound by something called geopolitics, which greatly reduces the decisions they can take, their maneuvering room and of course, their future. It reminded me a lot of Isaac Asimov‘s Psychohistory, which made the book more fun to read :-). But regardless of this, the book is very well written and all the predictions made by the author are backed by well-reasoned theories (to which you may or may not agree). The book is comfortably divided into short sections (parts of chapters) that can be read before sleeping or between coding sessions, and still be able to understand what is happening – like a good soap opera which you can stop watching for two months and still be able to understand who is currently betraying who. And this came to mind because politics is a lot like a soap opera. There are a lot more things going on below the table than above it. In conclusion, it was a good book.
Support my very healthy reading habits by purchasing this book from amazon.com
