Aleksa's Book Review: The Future is Asian

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Many people forget that Asia was the centre of pretty much everything for most of human history, and this book hammers that point home and them some. I can't blame the author for it (as he is an adviser in a business I'm involved with), but it does sound a bit pandering to Asia from time to time. In any case, the book is stellar in every way.

It just barely manages not to overstay its welcome, but the length is more than justified: the opening of the book is a full abridged history of Asia, followed by a categorical examination of Asian societal vision when compared to that of Europeans. The key difference is that the Asian way of looking at history is more aware of the cyclical nature of history.

Then comes a description of the various types of leap-frogging that Asia is undertaking against Europe and the Americas, as well as the Belt And Road initiative. The most relevant aspect of this part of the book is that Asia does not follow where China points, but rather that Asia (as always) is a behemoth made of many people that goes separate ways.

This book definitely does everything that "Silk Roads" by Peter Frankopan does, but better. Expert dissections of foreign policy, tech innovation, societal design, and monetary theory are all subsumed in just under 150,000 words of coherent and potable goodness. I think this book more clearly than most explains the nature of Asia in the 21st century, making it my BANGER OF THE WEEK.
10/10