Tuesday 10 August 2010

A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization And How to Save It Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed


A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization
And How to Save It
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Available to buy here at Pluto Press

We have been following the author/Proffessor Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's excellent The Cutting Edge blog for quite some time and so suggest anyone interested in this subject to check out his new book.

"It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilisation. This book argues that financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as part of the same ailing system.

Most accounts of our contemporary global crises such as climate change, or the threat of terrorism, focus on one area, or another, to the exclusion of others. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their own fields explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about particular crises. This book attempts to investigate all of these crises, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single global system. We are therefore not dealing with a 'clash of civilisations', as Huntington argued. Rather, we are dealing with a fundamental crisis of civilisation itself.

This book provides a stark warning of the consequences of failing to take a broad view of the problems facing the world and shows how catastrophe can be avoided."
- Pluto Press

About The Author

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in London. He has taught international relations, contemporary history, empire and globalisation at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex and the Politics & History Unit, Brunel University. His previous books include The War on Truth: Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (2005) and Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (2003).

1 comment:

sarah said...

I am very excited to read this book. I am not a college graduate...but it seems like all of these terrible disasters are symptoms of a larger disease. Industry, greed, racism... I believe if people started to think of those around them, and respecting the beautiful gift we have been given. We live on a planet that provides every single thing we need to survive as a species. Yet we want more.. and we want it easy...and without a price. I dont believe it works that way.