Rating: 
Summary: World on bla bla...
Review: Amy Chua may be right that democracy and the market aren't the panacea for the world's ills and that they may make things worse in certain situations. Unfortunately she relies on too much emotion and opinion to justify her theory. The book is littered with references to her own family, friends, former colleagues, people she has met at dinner parties and students - quaint, but in legal terms "hearsay". What the book needs, and fails to deliver, is hard economic data on the countries she is referring to and some concise statistics that show how these nations have evolved ethnically. In the end, there is far too little in the way of hard statistical evidence to demonstrate that what she is saying is true and when figures now and then do appear they don't get us any further. Chua's emotive style of writing also grates away at the reader. Just one example, of which there are many on every page: Instead of writing that past anti-Jewish practices in Russia "were to a large extent successful in preventing Jews from propering, let alone being economically dominant", could she have just written that these practices "prevented Jews from propering"? Chua's book would be much more convincing, and significantly shorter, if she cut out all the emotion and anecdotal references and presented some hard facts. All in all, an interesting idea badly presented.
Rating: 
Summary: One curse of globalization
Review: After reading some of the Customer Reviews, I believe that some of the reviewers may have missed the point of the book. Ms. Chua does not advocate Marxism, is not anti-capitalist, is not anti-globalist and is not anti-democracy. Rather, her simple premise is that the wholesale simultaneous installation of democracy and free markets to developing countries leads to ethnic hatred and often tragic results. She convincingly illustrates this point through the various examples of countries in the book. Furthermore, she claims that her thesis is not the only cause for instability within countries. Other factors also significantly affect the stability of a country (or region).Her "market-dominant minority" is one of the major sources of a country's potential instability. This group is a minority that controls the vast majority of wealth in a nation. For example, 3 percent of the Filipino population is Chinese yet this 3% controls over 70% of the Filipino wealth. The enormous increase in wealth results from entering free markets and then the gross disproportionate distribution of wealth eventually leads to death and destruction when the poor majority gets the democratic power to physically oust (or kill) the outsider minority. The book's main shortcoming is a lack of an explanation about how to handle the "market-dominant minority" issue and ultimately avoid bloodshed. But Chua does state that a remedy is beyond her book's scope. Rather, this book provides a different and valuable insight into the rampant spread of globalization and should be read by anyone desiring greater understanding of that topic.
Rating: 
Summary: A store full of anti-Semitic canards
Review: Amy Chua collected facts but not once does she show a cause and effect to anything. On the other hand like the rest of the modern alliance of the right and left for anti-Semitism she spreads it tick and with no shame. She maybe excuse of her misinformation or avoidance of the truth is because of ignorance, But then she needs to educate herself on subjects she is far from being an authority on.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye-opening and important
Review: Francis Fukuyama famously announced at the end of the Cold War that humanity had reached "the end of history." Unfortunately, he forgot to tell history not to bother coming to work anymore. Easy as it is to make fun of Fukuyama, where exactly did he go wrong? Fukuyama's conception was formed by his expensive miseducation in the works of Hegel and other 19th Century German philosophers. History consists of the struggle to determine the proper ideology. Now there are no plausible alternatives to capitalist democracy. History, therefore, must be finished. Lenin held a more realistic theory of what history is about: not ideology, but "Who? Whom?" (You can insert your own transitive verb between the two words.) History continues because the struggle to determine who will be the who rather than the whom will never end. Amy Chua's readable and eye-opening new book "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability" documents just how pervasive ethnic inequality is around the world-and how much that drives the traumas we read about every day. Chua builds upon Thomas Sowell's concept of the "middle-man minority"-the often-persecuted immigrant ethnic group with a talent for retailing and banking, such as Jews, Armenians, Chinese, Gujarati Indians, Lebanese Christians, etc. She broadens that idea to include other relatively well-off groups, such as un-entrepreneurial hereditary landowners, like the Tutsis of Rwanda and the Iberian-descended whites of much of Latin America. She lumps them all together under the useful term "market-dominant minorities." Chua begs off explaining why economic inequality exists between hereditary groups. So let me offer a general explanation. Creating wealth is difficult. People who have wealth tend to pass down their property, their genes, and their techniques for preserving and multiplying wealth to their descendents, rather than to strangers. In countries without a reliable system of equal justice under the law, clannishness is particularly rational. Businessmen must depend upon their extended families for protection and enforcement of contracts. So they are particularly loath to do serious business with people to whom they have no ties of blood or marriage and who would thus be more likely to stiff them on a deal. "Globalization," or economic liberalization, tends to make the poor majorities slightly richer and the "market dominant minorities" vastly richer. Sometimes the masses find this an acceptable tradeoff. But sometimes it drives them into a fury. Often, the minority's post-globalization riches are honestly earned, but not always. American-backed privatization schemes in Russia and Mexico put huge government enterprises into the hands of the most economically nimble and politically well-connected operators at give-away prices. Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, is herself the progeny of a market dominant minority: the Chinese of the Philippines. Chinese-speakers make up only 1% or 2% of the Philippines' population. But they own the majority of the country's business assets. They seclude themselves in a luxurious world fenced off from the indigenous majority, whom they hold in contempt and wouldn't dream of marrying. Not surprisingly, the impoverished natives aren't crazy about the rich newcomers. Chua's beloved aunt in Manila was brutally murdered by her chauffeur. The unmotivated cops made little effort to find him. It's definitely nicer to belong to the minority than to the majority in these countries. But Chua makes clear that, to Americans used to our norms of congeniality and social equality, it would be an awfully depressing way to live. A grimmer example: Indonesia. The Chinese made up 3% of its vast population, yet owned the great majority of all businesses. The dictator Suharto, whose family had lucrative ties to the Chinese community, fell in 1998. Democratization set off a vicious pogrom against the Chinese, many of whom fled to Chinese-majority Singapore. The government expropriated $58 billion in assets. Not surprisingly, the native Indonesians proved inept at running the businesses nationalized from the Chinese, and the economy collapsed. All of which leads to a disquieting conclusion: it can be contradictory for America to demand that other countries simultaneously free their economies and democratize their politics. We are seeing this in Venezuela right now. The dark-skinned, democratically-elected Hugo Chavez is at war with the fair-skinned rich, who want the national oil company privatized. The Bush Administration ludicrously endorsed the white elite's coup against Chavez last spring as a "victory for democracy," only to be embarrassed when the majority rose up and reinstalled him. That property rights and one man-one vote democracy don't always mix well would not have surprised Aristotle, Edmund Burke, or Alexander Hamilton. Yet many Americans who call themselves conservatives have forgotten this. One reason: we are one of the fairly small number of lucky countries with "market dominant majorities." We can have our cake (capitalism) and eat it too (democracy) because our majority group is economically quite competent. This raises obvious questions about the long term impact of our immigration policy, which, with all the brilliant people in the world to choose among, manages to bring in huge numbers of people who have never seen the inside of a high school.
Rating:
Summary: VERY POOR SCHOLARSHIP
Review: Wether you agree with Amy or not is not the point of this book. The point is this; the book is badly written, poorly researched, poorly edited, and evinces all the traits of coffee-table dillitantes. Although Amy is a Lawyer, that does not necessarily preclude her from arguing a tightly outside her discipline. Coming from a prestigious university however one expects A LOT more. The problems are manifold: 1) No real reasearch: evidence is anecdotal and butressed largely with popular magazine articles with no journals and few scholarly first sources. Burma is used as a sort of leitmotif introduction to Chinese ethnic dominance in SE Asia. She cites Steinberg's rather general history of Burma, but she does not even include Smith's "Burma: Insugency and the Politics of Ethnicity" -- this THE book on the ethnicity in Burma and she appears unaware of its existence. This glaring lack of prime importance secondary sources continues throughout the book. Of particular note is her citing of J Daimond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" (a good book, but hardly a historical reference) for the actions of Pizzaro. Seems like she just reached on the shelf for the closest book on anything dealing with South America. She has the regular dillitante habit of citing her personal anecdotes as "evidence" --- usually some dinner party, in-class student experience or cocktail party question. People like Lawrence Friedman and Kaplan do this much better and they have actually been to the troubled spots of the world. They also have deep understanding of the culture they are critiquing. Better to leave this type of story telling to those who really have "stories" to tell. 2) Amy shows all the worst habits of a particular (American?) scholarship that is gaining acceptance in its Universities ---the attempt to impose a subjective order on facts --- to take dissonant information and make it fit theories: every event seemingly magnifies her thesis, every exception proves the rule. One wonders is Amy Chou has ever read any Karl Popper? Her thesis --- that US Foreign Policy exports Globalism (poorly defined by Amy) and democracy is an volitile mix that supports economically dominant ethnic minorities --- I have no doubt that there is an element of veracity in what she says. But she is describing really: a) the nature of conflict, and b) ethinic politics. Both are constants and not new. Moreover how is "Globalism" different from Colonialism and British supporting indigenous races ---- quantitatively different? --- from what Amy proposes? To answer this would demonstrate a good grasp of history and a rigourous scientific approach to knowledge --- it would mean that she understands the importance of "falsifiability". 3) She has an extremely weak grasp of history. Good cross-discipline writers are not too hard to find: JK Galbraith, Bronowski, J Diamond, Isaiah Berlin, Keith Windshuttle, even Victor Davis Hansen (who suffers from other faults) and Paul Johnson. But Amy is really out of her depth here and it shows with her lack of citing secondary sources of repute (sometimes no secondary sources at all), and outright factual errors. Some of the facts are plain wrong and betray a gnawing ignorance of the world. eg. She states that the "British" did not intermarry with local indians in their colonies like the Spanish did in the South American. For the English this remains true. For the Scots and Irish, this is patently false. Has Amy never heard of the Metis in Canada or the Black Scots of the Carribean (who still run some of the original cane plantations), or the Eurasians of Indian (once a dominant minority). To really have trenchant social commentary on any of that requires long reading in each discipline and an ability to subject your ideas to the scrutiny of piers. History is not like a legal argument. It cannot be made to fit personal theories with little regard for "truth". She needs to demonstrate that she has a good appraisal of all the ideas at hand, and has considered them --- a synthesis of ideas -- not a linear supportive argument in favour of her theories, is what usually emerges when correct thinking is applied. 4) No citing of the Foreign Policy drivers, actions or movements in each country. Therefore there is no discernable connection between an action an its effect. There is only Amy Chou affirming that US foreign policy, with emphasis on underwriting a certain policy, made a certain thing worse or shored up the economically dominant position of a specific authority. There is little description or quanitative analysis of any US foreign policy. This is the heart of foreign affairs writing and something that Kaplan and Friedman do well. 5) Poorly edited. The book reads like one very long newspaper article. In its present form it could very comfortably be stuffed into 150 pages. Nuff said on this point. At the end of the day there is nothing that Amy could not be cured of if she took a good first-year course in History or Classics at almost any British University (or British Commonwealth University for that matter) and had to try to defend her central thesis. She would be ripped apart in the first five minutes by her tutor and fellow students. That she has achieved a position of note in a prestigious US university is truly troubling and reflects the rise of dillitentes in the decision making of US Foreign Policy. Stick to Law Amy or go back and read some History!
Rating:
Summary: world on fire
Review: REVIEW OF WORLD ON FIRE
by Amy Chua
This is a book of great importance to anyone who cares to engage in a serious examination of the strategic goals of American foreign policy toward the third world. Its central thesis is that the simultaneous effort to create free market economies and democracy invites disaster. Amy Chua presents massive evidence of the way these procsses have recently unravelled throughout the impoverished lands of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Her style is clear and vivid. Her account of these unfolding disasters is gripping. The central thesis of World on Fire is that the free market system, minus the social welfare institutions of the modern world, has led to vast concentrations of economic power in the hands of tiny ethnic minorities
throughout the third world. Chua shows case after case where these minorities have had their property expropriated, their homes torched, their women raped and they themselves expelled or massacred by enraged, impoverished majorities. She argues that our national zeal to impose democracies on these countries often leads to misrule by demagogues who attain power by appealing to the envy and hatred of the
masses. It can be argued, however, that dictatorships may be just as likely to stir up xenophobic frenzy as democracies. The minorities which have attained this enormous economic power
in the third world and whose rise to power is so brillianrtly descibed in this book include the ethnic Chinese throughout southeast Asia, the Indians in Burma and east Africa, the Lebanese in west Africa, the Tutsis in Rwanda and the Jews in post-Soviet Russia. These ethnic minorities
may have lived in the countries where they succeeded for generations, but this does not protect them. Visible differences in language, culture, physical appearance and perhaps religion conspire to set them apart and
make them far more vulnerable targets than a native economic elite. I finished the book with a few critical reservations. Dr. Chua does
not shed any light on why these minorities were able to achieve
preponderant wealth and economic power in these developing nations.
Yet if one looks at the record which she reveals, it is clear that the ethnic groups which have succeeded so conspicuously have significantly higher IQs than the impoverished majorities which resent them. This reinforces the thesis of Lynn and Vanhanen (IQ and the Wealth of Nations, 2002) that whether a people is poor or rich depends more on their average IQ than on any other variable. If this is so, the vast disparities in wealth which Amy Chua discusses are caused by the increasing need for intelligence of a modern world of growing technological complexity. The free market system does not cause
growing inequality; it merely accelerates the process. The rise of the ethnic minorities to preponderant economic power is then merely an instance of a larger and more deeply embedded process. The growing
polarization of wealth and income in the modern world is accelerated by
near-zero population growth in the high-IQ regions (China, Japan, Europe,
Russia, U.S., Canada, Argentina, etc.) which produce the labor force
most in demand and rampant population increase in the countries which
produce the sort of labor force for which there is little demand.
Rating:
Summary: Detailing the Volatile Mix of Globalization and Ethnicity
Review: Amy Chua has written an important book on how the accumulation of wealth by what she calls "market-dominant minorities" threatens globalization. By looking at a series of case studies, some of which she has personal experience with, Chua shows that the tendency of some minorities to benefit disproportionately, when their countries' markets open up to the world, inflames ethnic hatred among the ethnicities who make up the bulk of those countries' populations.
Ethnicity is used as a sociological concept in this book, not a genetic or national concept. Thus, the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in Russia, whites in Latin America and Africa, and various African tribes in Africa are all considered as case studies of market-dominant minorities, despite their various differences.
Some ethnicities are thoroughly assimilated by their host countries; some are not. Some are citizens of their host country; some are not. Some rely on key cultural differences to take advantage of globalization while others simply had an advantageous history that allowed them to fill key niches in expanding markets. But however you define ethnicity, and whatever allows these fortunate minorities to take advantage of spreading markets, the key point is that certain minorities, separate from and identifiable to the bulk of the population, have a hugely disproportionate influence in these expanding national economies. And the bulk of the population sees what is going on and is not happy about it.
Chua is comprehensive (perhaps too comprehensive -- more on that later) but doesn't get bogged down in details; as a result, this is an easy book to read. She looks at numerous aspects of ethnicity and globalization, from the economic and political implications, and even examines the question of assimilation and mixed blood with the fascinating case of Thailand's Chinese population. But "World on Fire" begins to lose some of its force as Chua takes on too many cases. Near the end, she looks at the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. While she clearly qualifies her remarks here by saying that the problems in these areas do not stem from globalization alone, she nevertheless is too eager to show some connection between them. She would have been better served, I think, to understand the limits of her theory and to apply it only where it clearly had some explanatory power.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting examples, unnecessary and poorly written thesis
Review: The problem with Chua's book is that the thesis can't really be tied to anything. The fact that whites are an upper class in South Africa isn't the result of globalization; it's the result of a lasting legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Her examples are good, but they don't really fit her thesis. The idea that free markets somehow lead to ethnic instability in any way which is more significant than other factors do isn't valid, and certainly can't be proven across borders. As in every situation where ethnic hatred against a powerful minority exists, economics is an issue. Chua also seems to be bandwagoning on the phenomnenon of "globalization." It's not necessarily globalization that economically empowers these market-dominant minorities. I would cautiously recommend Chua's book, but not if you're interested in globalization. It provides a fine outline for an understanding of some lesser-known ethnic problems, especially in the developing world. (Her chapters on Jews in Russia and Israel in the Middle East are absolutely ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned. As someone with a lot of experience in the Middle East, I'm never going to be convinced that Israeli Jews' wealth is the main reason for the conflict.) If you don't read it, you're not really missing out. If you do read it, take it with a grain of salt, and don't be afraid to laugh. Some of the examples are really a stretch, and the thesis comes together poorly.
Rating:
Summary: Analysis encourages ethnic hatred and discimination
Review: The basic argument here is simple. Globalization exported to non-western countries enriches minorities, forcing the majority to commit acts of genocide and therefore creating chaos. So basically the argument would be that if it weren't for globalization then the semi-fascist majorities would remain in power, dictatorships would be rampant, but at least their would be 'order' and no 'chaos'. This book is basically one long trilogy blaming the hard working victim who happens to prosper because of liberalized markets. In most of the countries examined, from Russia to Rwanda to Indonesia, their were minorities who took advantage of the equality granted them under new laws and liberalized markets to branch out of the jobs forced upon them by tradition and in some cases did disproportionately well. According to this account the Chinese of Indonesia deserved to be attacked in race riots. Why? Because they dared to become middle class, and not be servants. And yet the book describes them as "suppressed indigenous majority.". Which indigenous majority? The Muslims who attacked Chinese owned businesses were new arrivals, since only a few hundred years ago their weren't Muslims in Indonesia, but their were Chinese. So basically this book is just one giant excuse for genocide, blaming the west because our evil ideas of 'equality of minorities' dared to allow the yoke to be taken off the heads of such disparate groups as the Jews of Russia or the Indians of Burma. Apparently western ideas like 'freedom of religion' created chaos and forced the majorities in countries like Lebanon to commit genocide, and here we have a whole litany of excuses as to why the majority Hutu had to go and slaughter their neighbors. Basically the reasoning is simple: how dare minorities ever break out of their ghettos and become independent, because if they do then they have to be crushed, and the excuse can be that they became western. The reality is that the Tutsi of Rwanda never became western and neither did the Chinese, rather they simply became economically successful, and to the majority who were racist, that meant they had to trampled. This book blames the west where it should be blaming the cultures that produced such ethnic and religious discrimination. In the end this book leaves no real compromise, arguing that apparently the world would be better off if these cultures were allowed to just commit genocide, suppress religious and ethnic minorities and have rampant totalitarian dictatorships. Seth J. Frantzman
Rating:
Summary: VERY DISSAPOINTING SCHOLARSHIP: NOT WORTH THE TIME
Review: Wether you agree with Amy or not is not the point of this book. The quality of its scholarship is however: the book is badly written, poorly researched, poorly edited, and evinces all the traits of coffee-table dillitantes. Although Amy is a Lawyer, that does not necessarily preclude her from arguing tightly outside her discipline. Coming from a prestigious university however one expects A LOT more. The problems are manifold: 1) No real reasearch: evidence is anecdotal and butressed largely with popular magazine articles with no journals and few scholarly first sources. Even credible secondary sources are lacking. Of particular note is her citing of Jared Daimond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" (a good book, but hardly a historical reference) for describing the actions of Pizzaro. Seems like she just reached on the shelf for the closest book on anything dealing with South America. And this lack of feel for history extends virtually through even topic she covers. She has the regular dillitante habit of citing personal anecdotes as "evidence" --- usually some dinner party, in-class student experience, or cocktail party question. But she doesn't really pull it off because most of her experieces are... well frankly boring. People like Lawrence Friedman and Kaplan do this much better --- and they have actually been to the troubled spots of the world and have a story to tell. They also have deep understanding of the culture they are critiquing. Better to leave this type of story telling to those who really have "stories" to tell. 2) Amy shows all the worst habits of a particular (American?) scholarship that is gaining acceptance in its Universities ---the attempt to impose a subjective order on facts --- to take dissonant information and make it fit theories: every event seemingly magnifies her thesis, every exception proves the rule. One wonders is Amy Chou has ever read any Karl Popper? Her thesis is that US Foreign Policy exports Globalism (poorly defined by Amy) and democracy is a volitile mix that supports economically dominant ethnic minorities and exacerbates tensions between then and the economic underclass in their respective countries. I have no doubt that there is an element of veracity in what she says. But she is describing really: a) the nature of conflict, and b) ethenic politics. Both are historical constants. Moreover how is "Globalism" different from Colonialism and British supporting indigenous races ---- quantitatively different --- from what Amy proposes? To answer this would demonstrate a good grasp of history and a rigourous scientific approach to knowledge --- it would mean that she understands the importance of "falsifiability". 3) She has an extremely weak grasp of history. Good cross-discipline writers are not too hard to find: JK Galbraith, Bronowski, J Diamond, Isaiah Berlin, Keith Windshuttle, even Victor Davis Hansen (who suffers from other faults) and Paul Johnson. But Amy is really out of her depth here and it shows with her lack of citing primary and secondary sources of repute (sometimes no sources at all), and outright factual errors. Some betray a gnawing ignorance of the world. eg. She states that the "British" did not intermarry with local indians in their colonies like the Spanish did in the South American. For the English this remains true. For the Scots and Irish, this is patently false. Has Amy never heard of the Metis in Canada or the Black Scots of the Carribean (who still run some of the original cane plantations), or the Eurasians of Indian (once a dominant minority). Trenchant social commentary with historical analysis requires long reading in many disciplines and an ability to subject your ideas to the scrutiny of piers. History is not like a legal argument. It cannot be made to fit personal theories with little regard for "truth". She needs to demonstrate a good appraisal of all ideas at hand, consider them --- as a synthesis of ideas -- not a linear supportive argument in favour of her theories. 4) No citing of the Foreign Policy drivers. There is no discernable connection between a foreign policy action and its effect. There is only Amy Chou affirming that US foreign policy, with emphasis on underwriting a certain policy, made a certain thing worse or shored up the economically dominant position of a specific ethnic group allowing them to dominate, persecute or be persecuted. There is little description or quantitative analysis of any US foreign policy (or any other country for that matter). This is the heart of foreign affairs writing and something that Kaplan and Friedman do well. 5) Poorly edited. The book reads like one very long newspaper article. In its present form it could very comfortably be stuffed into 150 pages. Nuff said on this point. At the end of the day there is nothing that Amy could not be cured of if she took a good first-year course in History or Classics at almost any British University (or British Commonwealth University for that matter) and had to try to defend her central thesis. At its best Amy Chuo's writing exhibits all the worst effects of the rise of dilletentes in the making of US Foreign Policy. The gruel was so thin that I could not justify my time in reading beyond 200 pages....Even Chomsky is much better than Chou, at least he is consistent and interesting, and makes one consider things -- even if he is wrong most of the time !
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