- Hardcover: 356 pages
- Publisher: Macmillan (16 Jan 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0230706886
- ISBN-13: 978-0230706880
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.8 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 788,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Falling Off the Edge
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Product Description
Product Description
An exhilirating journey to some of the planet's remotest and most dangerous places to explore the sharp end of globalization
Book Description
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, international corporations and governments have embraced the idea of a global village: a shrinking, booming world in which everyone benefits. What if that's not the case? Alex Perry, award-winning foreign correspondent, travels from the South China Sea to the highlands of Afghanistan to the Sahara to see first-hand globalization at the sharp end -- and it's not pretty. Whether it's Shenzen, China's boom city where sweatshops pay under-age workers less than $4 a day, or Bombay, where the gap between rich and poor means million-dollar apartments overlook million-people slums, or on the high seas with the pirates of southeast Asia who prey on the world's central trade artery, or South Africa, where Mandela's dream for a Rainbow Nation is being crushed by a new economic apartheid, Perry demonstrates, vividly and chillingly, that for every winner in our brave new world, there are hundreds of millions of losers. And be they Chinese army veterans, Indian Maoist rebels or the Somali branch of al Qaeda, they are all very, very angry. Falling Off the Edge is an adrenaline-charged journey through the developing world, which reveals with clarity that globalization starts wars. Far from living in a time of peace and prosperity, Perry suggests, the boom is about to go bang.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Alex Perry's Falling of the Edge was a speculative buy. I assumed from the spiel on the back of the book that it would be a collection of interesting reportage on the Developing World in the context of Globalization. Instead, Perry delivers mediocre reportage at a rattling pace and some crude, banal analysis.
The range of areas covered is fairly large- South Africa, Somalia, Afghanistan, China, India, Nepal. The pieces on the vast new mega-city on Chinas coast near Hong-Kong, South Africa and Bombay are moderately interesting. There is an awareness of the other side of the Indian and Chinese economic miracles. Its not particularly deep but at least it's there.
Other parts, such as the massacre of prisoners near Mazar-i-Sharif (where Perry later admits he "fell in love with war"?) or the account of a U.S. attack on Karbala in 2003 begin to seriously irritate. Outside Mazar-i-Sharif an idiotic-CIA interrogation (in Russian and English!) of several hundred maltreated Taliban prisoners triggers an insurrection in which one of the CIA men is killed. Perry describes the ensuing slaughter of 300 prisoners - "I saw American and British commandos and barefoot Afghani soldiers courageously and skilfully slaughter 300 of their enemies in the single bloodiest battle of the Afghan war." Must be terribly courageous to point a laser targeting device while 500lb and 2000lb bombs rain from the skies? The incident in Karbala is little better, U.S. troops shoot everything that moves. In one case shooting an old man who is attending to a wounded Iraqi fighter, in another shooting two 8 or 9 year old boys for nothing more than picking up a RPG round lying outside their house. Unlike others violence, say Maoists in Nepal or Naxalites in India, all this passes without much comment. The same for a U.S. soldier who comments after the fighting in which dozens of civilians must have been killed along the lines of - they had no business being here? Well, after all it is only their homes and nearby streets they were in. Where exactly should they have been?
Much of the rest of the writing is little better, there is a shallowness to the quality of the reportage, and the analysis at times is weak. In the end chapter- "Is War Good?" Perry eschews weak analysis for a callous wackiness. He appears to celebrate war and violence as some sort of Darwinian struggle and essentially human if not humane activity? - the observant reader will notice echoes of Hitler; draws a parallel between U.S. a hundred years ago and India now that frankly doesn't hold much water; pontificates on how beautiful your average war zone is for reasons that are not entirely clear to this reader at any rate, before ending with a few hollow platitudes from the Dali-Lama.
There are much better books available in terms of reportage and analysis than this shallow, callous, illogical book that is best left on the shelf.
The range of areas covered is fairly large- South Africa, Somalia, Afghanistan, China, India, Nepal. The pieces on the vast new mega-city on Chinas coast near Hong-Kong, South Africa and Bombay are moderately interesting. There is an awareness of the other side of the Indian and Chinese economic miracles. Its not particularly deep but at least it's there.
Other parts, such as the massacre of prisoners near Mazar-i-Sharif (where Perry later admits he "fell in love with war"?) or the account of a U.S. attack on Karbala in 2003 begin to seriously irritate. Outside Mazar-i-Sharif an idiotic-CIA interrogation (in Russian and English!) of several hundred maltreated Taliban prisoners triggers an insurrection in which one of the CIA men is killed. Perry describes the ensuing slaughter of 300 prisoners - "I saw American and British commandos and barefoot Afghani soldiers courageously and skilfully slaughter 300 of their enemies in the single bloodiest battle of the Afghan war." Must be terribly courageous to point a laser targeting device while 500lb and 2000lb bombs rain from the skies? The incident in Karbala is little better, U.S. troops shoot everything that moves. In one case shooting an old man who is attending to a wounded Iraqi fighter, in another shooting two 8 or 9 year old boys for nothing more than picking up a RPG round lying outside their house. Unlike others violence, say Maoists in Nepal or Naxalites in India, all this passes without much comment. The same for a U.S. soldier who comments after the fighting in which dozens of civilians must have been killed along the lines of - they had no business being here? Well, after all it is only their homes and nearby streets they were in. Where exactly should they have been?
Much of the rest of the writing is little better, there is a shallowness to the quality of the reportage, and the analysis at times is weak. In the end chapter- "Is War Good?" Perry eschews weak analysis for a callous wackiness. He appears to celebrate war and violence as some sort of Darwinian struggle and essentially human if not humane activity? - the observant reader will notice echoes of Hitler; draws a parallel between U.S. a hundred years ago and India now that frankly doesn't hold much water; pontificates on how beautiful your average war zone is for reasons that are not entirely clear to this reader at any rate, before ending with a few hollow platitudes from the Dali-Lama.
There are much better books available in terms of reportage and analysis than this shallow, callous, illogical book that is best left on the shelf.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Well worth a look for anyone whose life experiences rarely get more exotic or dangerous than a trip in the 4x4 to Worcester Racecourse or an evening stroll on Highbury Fields. Based on material drawn from Perry's extensive front-line international reporting, in places ranging from remote conflict zones to some of the modern world's major urban economic centres, the book tells us more about the reality of life as lived by most people on the planet than a thousand pontificating New York Times op-eds. I'm sure the author will be both flattered and delighted to know that Amazon recommends it, based on current buyer purchases, as a joint buy with Robert Fisk's latest book.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
No more topical than today, Falling Off The Edge has much to offer. Perry trains his journalistic kaleidoscope across a diverse decade of foreign correspondence through countries and continents, some warring, others aggressive in their pursuit of economic progress. A satisfying symmetry is shaken from this colourful and humorous narrative; for every economic winner feted by the fans of the globalising project, an equal and opposite number of the disaffected are born. Perry's point? With each passing year these 'losers' are less inclined to sit tight waiting for oblivion, while the world they know shrinks, and flattens. Our leaders must address the paradox at the heart of their globalising effort, or bloody consequences will continue to blight the quest for a more peaceful planet.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
I consider it a good lecture
For me personally was a good reading. I'm not a specialist on the subject to tell how professional this book is but I'm eager to learn, to read and to listen how others are living... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Cristina Catalina Pop
Eye opening
A dizzying and compelling journey between continents and crises, Falling Off The Edge manages to mix adrenaline-fuelled narrative and thoughtful commentary, with occasional flashes... Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2008 by Colin Portion
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