Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order

Warning against ``a dangerously lopsided unipolarity'' as a result of post-Soviet American hegemony, editors Bennis and Moushabeck ( Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader ) have compiled some 50 bracing essays from left-leaning academics and journalists. Though a few essays are ponderous, most are quite accessible. Marcus Raskin, calling for debate on the future of the CIA, exhorts the government not to ``mistake paranoia for intelligence.'' Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad criticizes the United States's Middle East policy as a continuation of 19th-century colonialism. In an intriguing revision of some accepted wisdom, Mary Kaldor argues that the new nationalism in Europe is a consequence of the Cold War. Others offer uncommon insights: Tatiana Vorozheikina observes that Soviet internationalism has been replaced by an absence of Russian concern for the Third World; Joseph Diescho notes that the government of newly independent Namibia has had to collaborate with past economic exploiters just to survive. Though a few essays, like those on Haiti and Cambodia, are dated, the book is a salutary, if pessimistic, collection of warnings. (Nov.)