Rating: 
Summary: A window to the future
Review: Absolutely prescient...Although written in the late eighties, it rings a resounding bell today. In my humble opinion, it's a window on the past, present, and future - a condensation of controversial, yet seminal truths. It is a must read for any person with an inquiring mind. It is required mental luggage. Read it!
Rating: 
Summary: Time to re-read
Review: All those who, in 1999 and 2000, rated this book 1-star should sit down and re-read this greatly informative and prescient book! Because its "timing" was off by a decade does not render this book useless, though it may indeed have cost investors lost profits. For this reason only do I give it 4-stars. HIGHLY recommended read!
Rating:
Summary: Time to re-read
Review: All those who, in 1999 and 2000, rated this book 1-star should sit down and re-read this greatly informative and prescient book! Because its "timing" was off by a decade does not render this book useless, though it may indeed have cost investors lost profits. For this reason only do I give it 4-stars. HIGHLY recommended read!
Rating:
Summary: Great political & cultural analysis - Poor Investment Advice
Review: I first read this book in the early 90's and was struck by the in-depth scholarship and research the authors had invested. I felt then and still feel today that they made an insightful analysis of the forces at work in the world today as we grapple with the end of the cold war, the "new economy" and the developing clash of civilizations. I have been even more amazed over the years as the trends and forces they presented evolve along the lines forecast in the book. Especially salient are the chapters on the struggle with Islam replacing that with Marx and the effects of technological change on the scale of effective military operations. That being said, had you followed the investment advice in the book since its pubication you would have lost a significant amount of money over the last few years. This is the only reason I rated it four stars instead of five. The investment analysis is solid, and in fact identifies facts that should be taken into account when structuring a financial portfolio, as a portion of it should be designed for worse case scenarios. The conclusions the authors arrived at were incorrect however, although it may just have been bad timing rather than incorrect prediction. As the Terrorist war heats up, (as forecast in the book), we may see an acceleration of the forces the book points out. In sum, read this book because it will help you understand the forces going on in the world and how the real world works. Also recommended is their follow-on work, "The Sovereign Individual"
Rating:
Summary: A little silly, but fun...
Review: I read it in 1994. I would skip the analysis (which begins in Roman Times, if you can believe something so stupid!) and just read their predictions for doom and gloom in the late 1990's. This book does an excellent job of explaining the 60-year long-wave cycles (where was the U.S. congress in 1790 ?? They were in hiding in the countryside!!! all the citizens of the 13 colonies wanted them DEAD !!! the depression of that 60-year cycle was very bad ...) Most of this book hasn't come true here, but I think that the koreans, malaysians, thais, and indonesians would differ on that with respect to their home countries !!! After reading this book in 1994, I earned only about half as much in the stock market as I could have, in the ensuing years !!! I think that the main thing that changed since the book was written is that Clinton did a lot to balance the budget, and so the doom and gloom became something like down and brown - not as bad as it could have been...
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting to read in hindsight
Review: It is interesting to read this book years after its original printing and get a perspective on how difficult it is to make predictions of the future. Today, when I hear experts in their fields make predictions I'll refer to this book to get a perspective on how difficult this can be. The concerns about the future explained in this book were clearly a product of the times.
Rating:
Summary: An economic and political analysis that changed my worldview
Review: James Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg have developed a truly
novel way of viewing world political and economic events.
Using their theory of "megapolitics", they bring numerous
seemingly unrelated current events into sharper focus, and
show how all are part of a broader, more basic trend. Thoroughly researched and well written, "The Great Reckoning"
deals with such issues as the collapse of communism, the
information revolution, the vast accumulation of both
private and public debt, the impending collapse of the
welfare state, the rise of violence around the globe, the
signs of a coming world depression, and many other timely
topics. Add to this Mr. Davidson's wonderful writing style,
and what could have been a very dry analysis becomes an
enthralling read. I churned through the approximately 1000
pages of this book in only two sittings! This is absolutely
my favorite book of all time. If you have a keen interest
in economics, politics, or even your own personal
investments, I urge you to read this book. I think you will
enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: An economic and political analysis that changed my worldview
Review: James Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg have developed a trulynovel way of viewing world political and economic events.Using their theory of "megapolitics", they bring numerous seemingly unrelated current events into sharper focus, and show how all are part of a broader, more basic trend. Thoroughly researched and well written, "The Great Reckoning" deals with such issues as the collapse of communism, the information revolution, the vast accumulation of both private and public debt, the impending collapse of the welfare state, the rise of violence around the globe, the signs of a coming world depression, and many other timely topics. Add to this Mr. Davidson's wonderful writing style, and what could have been a very dry analysis becomes an enthralling read. I churned through the approximately 1000 pages of this book in only two sittings! This is absolutely my favorite book of all time. If you have a keen interest in economics, politics, or even your own personal investments, I urge you to read this book. I think you will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Long but Great read
Review: The Great Reckoning is a long but great read. It will NOT appeal to those who focus on 30 second sound bites and 120 second interviews on Good Morning America. If that's your bag, forget this book. It also requires thinking, so if you don't like to think about things in general, or dismiss history and the liberal arts in general, this book will be a total turn off. A number of people bought this book when first published as a "trading" strategy book. I don't know where they got that idea from, perhaps they simply assumed to much. Rather, it is about probabilities and possibilites in the 1990's on the macro level with plenty of caveats. In retrospective hindsight, the authors had some outstanding hits, and some complete misses. However, on the whole, those who dismissed this book during the tech bubble are now looking at themselves in the mirror and wondering how stupid they were to dismiss it out of hand. If you think through what they have to say, you begin to realize that some things will take longer to work out than others. A "must" book to read if you enjoy looking beyond the daily "noise".
Rating:
Summary: a bite in the [butt]
Review: This book has enough truth to make you loose sleep at night. What I found most interesting was that this country can't possibly continue much longer the way it is: Keeping people of african descent down. People in this country actually think that they are independent from the poor people in this country. Those same people they're oppressing will one day rise up and bite them in the [butt]. We all didn't come over here on the same ship but we're all in the same boat!
| 
