Description
What Next? tackles the big questions about our global condition and our collective future with a verve and authority no other current commentator or political figure, on either side of the Atlantic or the Channel. could match. Energy, food, water, international crime, weapons proliferation, drug trafficking, climate change, epidemic disease, migration - the challenges facing our world are themselves proliferating rapidly. On each of them, Chris Patten digests vast amounts of information from many different sources and analyses them for the reader using his experience at the highest levels of international politics. Very little in the world, he says, has turned out as we might have expected twenty years ago. But for reasons he explains, he remains an optimist in the face of this formidable agenda.'Looking at one problem after another, the answers are usually pretty clear. The puzzle is not "What is to be done? but rather "Who is to do it and how? The issues are mostly matters of will. We know why action on this or that is needed. We know, usually, how to act. what to do. The capacity to act is the problem, not the comprehension of what we should be doing. Given our ability down the millennia to muddle through. I find that mildly reassuring.Readers of Patten's previous books will know what a penetrating analyst and engaging writer he is. What Next? is his most ambitious and impressive book yet. ISBN:9780713998566
