Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)In this book, author and political thinker Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) posits that the world was at that time moving rapidly towards a socialist, one-world government. Examining various trends then occurring, he found that this movement was overwhelmingly supported by the bulk of the world's population, and he went on to suggest how the new world order would function and what it would look like.
This book was first published in 1939, when Mr. Wells was into his 70s. By this time in his life, he was already considered behind the times, and this book clearly shows that. He is surprisingly attached to the Nazism, which he imagines as a step in Germany's movement from democratic capitalism towards international socialism. (It wasn't until the end of the war that he found out that the SS had compiled a list of prominent Britons to be liquidated after Operation Sea Lion, and that near the top was his own name!)
In point of fact, what this book is is Wells' taking his love of international socialism and viewing then-current trends with the idea that everyone else was as enamored of it as he was. The analysis, seen from seventy years on, looks more like wishful thinking than like clear-eyed analysis. He was correct in his view of the dangers of Russia's "Tyranny of the Proletariat," but he failed to understand the nature of the men in charge of the Soviet Union - writing, for example, "Stalin, I believe, is honest and benevolent in intention..."
But, does it now, in the twenty-first century appear that Wells was right, and that the world is moving towards a socialist, one-world government? And, does that not mean that this book is as prescient as any of Wells's other works? I would argue that it doesn't, and that while trends may be moving towards one-world socialism, that Wells did not truly understand what was going on in his world and what the changes then occurring were and what they meant.
Overall, I found the book to be uninformative wishful thinking masquerading as serious analysis. It does not tell you anything about what was happening in 1939, nor does it tell you anything about how we got to today and where the world is going. I think that the book is an interesting look into Mr. Wells' worldview, but one that has nothing for anyone who is not interested in him personally. As such, I do not recommend this book.
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