The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation

This book contains a whirlwind history of empire and internationalism, along with Tallbott's personal anecdotes and opinions about recent history and his own vision for the future. While yes it contains the political biases that come from working in a particular administration, the biases are openly admitted, and the book still presents an interesting and refreshing point of view. The book might not be technical/detailed enough for some, the historical descriptions might get repetitive for a serious student of history, and even a casual reader like myself might wish for a more detailed framework/plan for the future; but I still recommend the book for the overall scope, enjoyable pacing and language, and the unique point of view presented.

The author of The Great Experiment is an honest to goodness intellectual with the academic bonafides and practical policy experience to back it up. He is also an unabashed liberal but nonetheless delivers a very interesting, basically fair and highly readable book. It is not really about Mr. Talbot's politics but they do surface in his choice of anecdotes (which are interesting all the same) and the sometimes telegraphed rebukes of the Bush Administration (probably deserved). The writing is consistently good throughout but the level of detail, depending on your interests, may at times be surprising (like his excellent multi-page synopsis of the evolution of the three great religions to rise from the Middle East) and at other times over-done (like his much shorter discourse on the Gypsies in Britain). He concludes with a hopeful if not fully feasible prescription for the future but, when all is considered, this is a very useful and thoughtful book that you will enjoy reading and will refer back to as well.

I read a lot. And over the years I have kept a highly select list (about 20 books) of "the best books" I have ever read. This book just went onto my "list." It provides keen insights into the nature of our world, from both a long historical perspective and from the author's close-to-events perspective (his information on key players in recent history, such as Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, is very informative). I just recommended it to my son. That says a lot, as he is "too busy" to read these days.

I was skeptical about reading this book. Many authors have tried to weave together a cogent history of the nation-state with its implications for the future. Most of those attempts have been soporific and/or permeated with personal agendas. Strobe Talbott has succeeded admirably. It is a pleasure to read something that is not only illuminating, but is also well written (something very rare these days). Moreover, the tone is erudite without being stuffy, precise without being boring. I especially appreciated how he saved his personal commentary for only those moments when it was appropriate--and even then, he does so in a way that is subtle but powerful. He adroitly leads the reader to confront conclusions within the context of relevant facts. I could go on, but suffice to say that this is probably one of the best books I have read in the last several years.

This excellent work starts with a seemingly simple question "What is a nation?" and goes from there to question of how a group of neighboring nations can get along peacefully. The "global" part of the phrase "global nation" has meant your community in your known world. As the book shows, this has grown from Biblical times where the known world was the Middle East to the present time, where the known world is everything on earth. So, what is a "nation"? A consolidation of tribes, as in the Bible? Groups joined by common interests, background, or language? Talbott shows that the OED definition isn't very helpful--and quotes Julian Huxley: "A nation is a society united by a common error as to its origins and a common aversion to its neighbors"--humorous, to be sure, but probably no worse than other definitions. Interestingly, the earliest successful empires often featured tolerance of different customs and beliefs and decentralization, so as to keep the subject nations or tribes from becoming rebellious. Talbott describes how Rome, Greece, the Mongols, etc, managed this. The second part of the book deals primarily with the 20th century--with the League of Nations and the United Nations, and the transition from imperial views to the idea of shared responsibility. The concepts are more familiar to us, so this part is not as thought-provoking as the first part, but the analysis of the successes and failures of the League and the UN in terms of conflicts, civil wars, etc is very well done. The final part of the book deals with the shift from multilateralism to unilateralism by the US, and the beginnings of a shift back to a more multilateral view. This, for Talbott, seems to be the most personal part of the book as well as being the most provocative. He quotes Truman saying that preventive war is a weapon "of dictators, not of free democratic countries like the United States", and he also quotes Bush I "We seek a Pax Universalis built upon shared responsibilites and aspirations." There's a lot in this section to think about, particularly as regards the role of the US in the world. Communication and transportation have made everything in the world very close: if a sparrow dies in Indonesia, should we care? If that sparrow was a pet and died of avian flu, and the owner arrives in the US 15 hours later, should we care? If Pakistan goes into chaos, is it our business? As Talbott notes, can the US remain aloof from problems elsewhere in the world? Talbott also talks about "a la carte multilateralism" where the US picks and chooses which tidbits it likes and ignores the rest. There's much here to make you pause and think--and that's what a fine book like this should do.