Time
’s Africa bureau chief, Perry belongs to a cadre of journalists who thrive in the thick of a war zone; he admits that his editor once commented that “someone had died in the opening paragraph of every story I had written.” Because he’s seen so much, the book would have hit the mark had he fully probed the stories of his subjects, among them Indonesian pirates, Bombay’s vacuous elite and a Muslim Indian terrorist who “predicts a future of relentless violence.” Unfortunately, his book is poorly organized and dizzyingly disjointed; he dissects the prodigious growth of Asian cities, jets north to comment on the reign of the Nepali king and flies south to interview a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. The stories don’t build to any concrete conclusion, individually or collectively. Perry is sincere but his analysis is simplistic; he dismisses the opinions of academics who haven’t first traveled extensively in Asia and Africa and concludes China will “make it” because China’s central government “gets it” while India “looks a lot shakier.” Perry’s firsthand experience provides one necessary piece but not enough of the puzzle to construct an accurate picture of the consequences of globalization. (Oct.)
