Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: Through this book Amy Chua has taught me so much about the failure of free market and democracy in much of the Third World. This is an excellent book that adds to, rather than contradicts, the conventional U.S. theory about exporting our system to the rest of the world.I would point out a couple of shortcomings of the book for other readers. (1) The cultural, political and economic legacy (not to mention the brutality) of European colonialism is inadequately analyzed. The fact that the Chinese and Lebanese have become so successful in many parts of the world owes a great deal to the historical circumstance in which these immigrant minorities collaborated with and profited from the oppressive colonial regimes. (2) The comparison between Jewish people and the overseas Chinese is rather superficial. In addition to the collaborationist colonial role they played, the Chinese differ from the Jews in that the former, perhaps out of their sense of culutral/racial superiority, refuse to regard their "indigenous" countrymen as equal. Only when assimilated successfully by the indigenous government, the Chinese seem to accept the fact that they are a part of their adopted country.
Rating: 
Summary: a clever leftist
Review: I saw her on CSPAN and she said that her theory of 'market dominant minorities' doesn't apply the western world---that the majority in the west i.e. whites, should not be dominant, yet elsewhere in the world the dominant group should be. She sounds like another anti-white intellectual. It's not the west fault most of the world is backwards and stupid--that's how it was when westerners found those places. The world has been fighting for thousands of years--long before capitalism and democracy. That is the big hole in her thesis. The main cause is corrrupt government (or leaders) and superstitous or wacky religous belief amongst it's citizens.
Rating: 
Summary: A childish analysis of a serious subject
Review: I have just seen Amy Chua on Booknotes tonight (C-SPAN) and I don't know if I should feel amused or disappointed. Her premise that rapid democratization in under-developed countries leads inevitably to social strife and violence, because the poor seize the opportunity to get back at the rich, is ridiculously infantile. There is a vast body of research that pretty much proves that democracy as such, has nothing to do with the violence. Under any system, one might expect tremendous income inequalities to causes social instability. The poor, with few alternatives, might be expected to rely on violence to equalize wealth. And conversely, the rich might be expected to rely on violence to retain their place. This has been the case since the beginning of time. Look at the French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, look at the numerous rebellions against the English crown (by the Scots, Irish etc). The simple fact is that democracy or no democracy, wide inequalities and prolonged monopoly of wealth within a tiny percentage of the population, would always result in bloodshed. To lump together Russia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and the Philippines is to demonstrate a careless understanding of the particularities of the socio-political conditions of these diverse places. The reason the White minority in Zimbabwe is resented by the Black majority has nothing to do with the fact that the Whites tend to be affluent and the Blacks less so. It has everything to do with history. It just happens that when the British came to town more than 100 years ago, they slaughtered hundreds of thousand of people, took their land, put the survivors into reservations on less fertile land etc. Gee, no wonder Black Zimbabweans might be a little resentful. In fact, when Black Zimbabwean took up arms to combat the Whites in what was then Rhodesia, economics have very little to do with it. It was about liberation and self-determination. To compare Zimbabwe and Malaysia is purely farcical. I am sorry, but I find most of the author arguments lacking in scientific rigor.
Rating: 
Summary: Lets clean up our definitions and our logic.
Review: 1. When Lincoln attempted to free the slaves: the result was great instability (ie war), and greater ethnic hatred (Yanks vs Rednecks; and blacks vs whites). The lesson: some bad consequences do not necessarily invalidate of a goal. 2. If the goal is merely democracy (meaning "majority rule") then of course throughout history majorities have persecued minorites unspeakably for all sorts of false reasons. Shouldn't the goal be strictly limited government where rights of all individuals are protected from the majority? Dictatorships are always more stable than other forms of government. Ethnic groups have always hated each other. Should we therefore establish forms of government that pander to these ideas? Or should we educate people to change their ideas?
Rating:
Summary: What's Your Poison: Wealth or Poverty.
Review: The World On Fire is a brillant expose of how the world really works. The principle premise is that the relationships among and between various ethnic populations and wealth imposes a structure on every society in some form or another. Each society has a group of 'haves' who control the majority of the wealth, the opportunity for wealth and these people are
not only a minority in terms of the total numbers of people in each society, but more than likely, they are a differently perceived ethnicc group or class than the majority of people in that society. It is control of the opportunity for wealth thru ethnic, educational, class or gender exclusion that is the cause of most turmoil in the world. Globalization and the imposition of democracy when imposed on top of this inequity in wealth is a primary cause of nation-state instability. As a result free market capitialism and democracy are both destabilizing to governments and people in general. One from the side of shutting the door for most people on the opportunity for wealth, the other from the side that inequities can be remedied simply because of a majority of numbers. What most people fail to realize about free market capitalism is that one of its primary effects is to concentrate wealth at the expense of the majority of the people. What most people fail to realize about democracy is that, however you slice it, there are always more 'have nots' than 'haves.' As result, all democratic action is detrimental to the 'haves' in that they may control the wealth but their position becomes very tenuious in the wake of 'have nots' coming to power. To continue being a 'have' you have to control the political trajectory of the 'have nots.' As for the solution to this problem. Those who control the wealth have to make it possible for those who don't have the wealth to have a legitmate chance to improve their lives by attaining wealth. Those who advocate democracy and more equity for all, must realize that it's a long term process that can only work if
there are checks and balances so that everyone has a stakeholder interest in the perpetuation of the society. What World On Fire does so cogently, is point out how real and pervaisive these disparities of both wealth and power are in light of overwhelming majority populations who do not participate in the process. The information contained in this Pulitzer Prize worthy tome is critially important for everyone to understand. I highly recommend World On Fire for what it points out - life on planet earth will get a lot worse if we keep doing what we are doing - concentrating wealth in the sea of mass poverty and not doing anything to alleviate the poverty in a coherent, serious way. Read it. And think of how you would solve the problem. It's a great book that get's to the real problems that need to be solved.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible book, yet so misunderstood
Review: This book is amazingly clear and well-written (in fact its main weakness is that it is TOO clear, to the point of being mildly repetitive), which is why is amazes me that so many of the reviews here seem to either miss the point or misunderstand it altogether. Chua DOES NOT blame free markets and democracy for all the evils of the world. She DOES NOT attempt to propose some 'magic bullet' solution - she is simply providing analysis in attempt to further the discussion. She DOES NOT claim that wealth redistribution programs are the ONLY reason for the relative success of the Western democracies - ethnic homogeneity is also a major factor, as are situational idiosyncrasies. If you attempt to view this book as a narrow-minded attempt to shove the complex tangled peg of the world into a smooth round hole, you will have misunderstood it. Obviously, any book with an explanatory scope of this magnitude needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Her principle thesis is extremely powerful, but it does not explain everything since the big bang! In all the low-star reviews I have read, the criticisms have been completely misguided - do not base your opinion of this book on those reviews. What Chua is trying to show is that - for better or worse - the policies we push onto the developing world far too often result in unintended consequences. We are pushing an extreme ideology onto the world - an ideology we don't practice ourselves and in fact NEVER HAVE IN OUR HISTORY. Capitalism is about increasing returns - wealth begets more wealth. A small group of wealthy can raise the level for all people, which is generally hunkey-dorey. This book builds on the concepts of path-dependence, lock-in, increasing returns in socioeconomic networks - all ideas that have been around for years now (see Brian Arthur and the Sante Fe people) but very few, especially in mainstream 'neoclassical' economics, seem to admit these things are real. I am actually impressed with how even-handed and balanced this book is, with respect to liberal/conservative ideology. She comes off as slightly conservative(in other words, in favor of market 'liberalization') and definitely pro-market. She is NOT some leftist red commie. And the fact that Thomas Sowell - the high priest of conservate economics himself - gave this book an excellent review should be a tip-off to people on the right, who would dismiss this as some leftist rant. This is an excellent, provocative book, and should be read and understood by many more people than it probably will be, which is unfortunate...
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Thesis, But Not Solidly Presented
Review: Amy Chua's main thesis in this book, which can be seen in the subtitle on the cover, is indeed a strong and useful one. The doctrinaire democracy and capitalism that the US is pushing on developing nations, usually as a condition for financial or military aid, is nonsensical and barely rooted in reality. First, there has never been unrestricted (laissez-faire) capitalism in the US or any successful Western nation, given minimum wages, subsidies, and other aspects of a social safety net. There also has never been 'pure' democracy in the US, as it took generations for women and minorities to achieve suffrage. One must also consider the structure of the Electoral College that was disastrously evident in the 2000 election (though Chua misses the opportunity to use this very pertinent example). In fact, total democracy and capitalism, which have even been rejected by the US, are extreme ideologies with as little hope for success in the real world as any other type of extremism. However this is exactly what we are forcing on the developing world, with plenty of disastrous consequences. Chua's main tool of reference here is 'market dominant minorities' which are the main beneficiaries in societies where capitalism is still developing, such as the Chinese in all of the nations of Southeast Asia, or whites in most of Latin America. These peoples are usually seen as greedy outsiders who are concentrating wealth in countries where the ethnic majorities are increasingly exploited and humiliated. Adding unrestricted democracy to this troublesome situation gives political power to the oppressed majority that they can then use to enact revenge on the exploitative ethnic minority. Horrific examples are the confiscation of Chinese businesses by Indonesia (which indirectly led to the Asian financial collapse in 1998) and even the genocide in Rwanda. This ethnic structure is not a problem in the Western world, but breeds instability and violence in non-Western developing nations when extreme American ideals are forced on unready societies. However, this strong thesis is not the end-all explanation to the world's ethnic problems, and this can be seen in the weaknesses in Chua's presentation. She is a rather repetitive writer, with the same examples popping up again and again in an attempt to beef up the argument. Also, Chua is far too worried about avoiding critics and continuously tries to prove that she is not anti-American or anti-globalization. In the process she wavers politically and indirectly shoots down many of her own points. Examples are her forced analyses of examples that don't quite fit her thesis but that she tries to use as support anyway, especially Yugoslavia (chapter 7) and her attempt to expand the argument to explain worldwide resentment of America (chapter 11). Chua's thesis in this book is certainly a very strong and believable one, but it probably requires more focus and political muscle to gain acceptance among policy makers.
Rating:
Summary: Minorities vs. Majorities
Review: The problems with Amy Chua's very interesting and original book are that 1. Even if most of the material is true, it fails so offer a solution (i.e. you cannot reverse democracy unless you substitute it by some kind of dictatorship, and then you would have most of Ms. Chua's readers crying foul too!)...And 2. that readers might take Ms. Chua's book too seriously and come to the conclusion, as Ms. Chua does herself (analyzing the Venezuelan case, for instance), that if you are dealing with a third world political crisis, it must necessarily be of ethnical nature, and democracy must have been imposed by "the west". The Venezuelan case has nothing to do with ethnic wars. This country is a veritable melting pot and most presidents, since 1959, have been of mixed race as most Venezuelans are, anyway. President Hugo Chavez has appealed to the gullibility and ignorance of the concerned citizens of other countries (including America's black caucus) to portray his country's popular uprising against his inept and corrupt government, as a coup orchestrated by the white oligarchies...These white oligarchies, for Ms. Chua's information, all but disappeared in Venezuela after more than a century of civil wars during the 19th century...Oil provided later a fast track for people of all origins (and skin hues) into high degree education and opportunities (this land of opportunity stopped being so about 20 years ago due to a smothering statism that has arrived to its final crisis with Mr. Chavez)...Globalization, on the contrary, is what keeps the majority opposition alive and kicking in spite of the enormous resources (and the support of the army) at the disposal of this president in a country where the wealthiest entity, by far, is the State. Ms. Chua does not seem to realize that the only way to better democracy is...more democracy!
Rating:
Summary: Simplistic and Boring
Review: This a case of a scholar desperately seeking tenure on the wave of the anti-globalization movement, writing a half-cooked simplistic generalization of facts an trying to pass it as a theory. Particularly weak on Latin America. It is not best-seller material either because it is boring.
Hope Yale knows better...
Rating:
Summary: A Highly Questionable Assertion
Review: If I understand Chua's argument, her primary assertion is that "free market democracy" is the principal cause of "ethnic instability and violence throughout the non-Western world." Regrettably, at least in this book, she offers no credible evidence to support that assertion. Indeed, current circumstances in most of the countries to which she devotes her attention in this book (i.e. Bahrain, Burma, Chile, Russia, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe) suggest that quite the opposite is true. A free market democracy by nature cannot exist without a political structure which grants and protects common rights for everyone. Moreover, a free market democracy is by nature unrestrained by protectionist trade policies. I share Chua's concern for ethnic instability and violence throughout much of the world but are they not the result of decades (if not centuries) of totalitarian corruption and inefficiencies? I find it curious that Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, seems to attach so little importance to rule of law. In its absence, ethnic hatred and social instability are inevitable. Rather than enflaming them, a free market democracy offers perhaps the best means by which to alleviate them.
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