- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.,U.S.; 1st Vintage Departures Ed edition (31 Dec 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679751238
- ISBN-13: 978-0679751236
- Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 2.8 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 636,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan travels from the devastated countries of West Africa and the fundamentalist enclaves of Egypt and Iran to the culturally explosive lands of Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia with hardly more than a notebook and a backpack. Kaplan's intention was to investigate firsthand the effect of population explosion and environmental degradation in these countries and to see how the various cultures he encountered responded to them. But as he traveled, talking to gun smugglers and government ministers, warlords and shantytown dwellers, he discovered that the real problem, in places as far afield as Sierra Leone and western China, was the reemergence of longstanding cultural rivalries and the dissolution of national boundaries as regions redefine themselves along ethnic and historic lines. Kaplan's ground-level experiences allow him to avoid grandiose generalizations about the clash of civilizations and to replace them with intimate portraits of the men and women he encounters: Rafighdoost, Khomeini's fiercely loyal chauffeur; Ali Abdel Razag, keeper of the Aswan High Dam; and Ayshe Tanrikulu, a squatter on Golden Mountain, a shantytown on the outskirts of Ankara, who hopes that her sons will one day be doctors or engineers. It is in the squalor of daily existence and in people's fears, frustrations, and dreams that Kaplan looks for the key to a country's future. The Ends of the Earth offers an intimate portrait of the devastated parts of the world, whose cultural disasters - like those in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda today - will dominate our attention and remake the world of tomorrow.
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"THE THIEVES ARE very violent here. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
"THE THIEVES ARE very violent here. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A previous reviewer made the following comment: "At times I wondered if his hersay stories like the one about members of a street gang in Africa wearing wedding dresses while they killed were actual events or just modern urban myths." It isn't an urban myth: this actuallly too place in Liberia at the start of the civil war in July/August of the year that Iraq invaded Kuwait. I remember it well because I saw bizzar pictures of fighters with dresses pulled over their uniforms or clothes. Sometimes they even sported wigs. BBC, Time or The Economist might have photographs on file. What I like about Kaplan is that he tells us the truths our civil society tries so desperately hard to hide, i.e. that life isn't a guaranteed little house with a white picket fense; that our Western lifestyle is limited to a very small percentage of the world's population; and that this lifestyle is generally (but not always) at the expense of the majority (inadvertantly or otherwise). What is trully frightening is that this balance will correct itself violently if no attempts are made to mitigate the differences in life styles across the globe. I honestly think that we are too far down our chosen path to do anthing about the anarchy that awaits us.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Robert Kaplan leads you through an intelligent survey of some of the globe's nastier places. This is good book. It is smart, interesting, and should make people think about some problems most of us would rather ignore. It is not a great book. I would say Kaplan got too ambitious, and it shows. He tried to pack too many things - too many countries, too many ideas, too many stories - into one book. As a result it's a very reportorial work - it tells you the basics, it surprises you with interesting bits, and it even digs a little bit beyond the surface. But when it comes time to say "but what does it mean, Dorothy?" - zoom! We're off to the next hellhole on our tour. There's nothing wrong with reportorial, but Kaplan seems to promise something more. He doesn't deliver. He would have been better served by devoting more time to fewer countries. For instance, by his own admission he spent very little time in Laos and did not get a good picture of the country as a whole. Then why write about it? Would this be a worse book without the sketchy Laotian chapter? Hey, I've been in Malaysia for week, but I'm not writing a book about it. The holes in the book are filled with Kaplan's self-important wishy-washy musings. He's full of ideas, only they conflict with each other, and he can't decide which one is the best or how they should all fit together. After a couple of hundred pages, I was yelling "Look, do you have a conclusion or not? Because if you don't, why not have a lie down, figure out an answer, and THEN write it down!" It's fine to write "I didn't know what to think," it chapter 1, but by the end of the book, well, you should have a better idea what to think. You shouldn't endlessly pose the same answerless questions. Far too many chapters end with something like "There was no more time. I was off to (Togo/Turkmenistan/Laos)." Hmmm. Maybe he should have spent some more time thinking of some answers. I have to say I would have liked this book more if I had not read "Balkan Ghosts". With that book I felt Kaplan actually knew the area and understood the passions and fault lines that tear the Balkans apart. It raised my expectations for this book. In "The Ends of the Earth" we have to be content with what we see on the surface. We're not going anywhere, but we're making good time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Over the past year, I have recommended this book to anyone and everyone interested "Third World" societies and their fate at the foot of the 21st century. I managed to aquire it in South America, and while not discussed in the actual text, it was absolutely appropriate for what I was experiencing. The book forced me to look deep into things I never considered, and sharpened my eye as I traveled around the Andes. Kaplan has an eye like an eagle and a manner of writing that thrusts you into his experiences. Moreover, he offers a critical look at and a profound understanding of areas on the globe that most fail to even recognize on a map. Absolutely fantastic - I've read it three times.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Disturbingly Good
This is not a travel book and should not be judged as such. No superficial talk here of pretty buildings, uncomfortable hotels or quaint wildlife. Read more
Published on 8 Oct 2002 by "talba"
Don't be fooled into thinking this is a simple travel book..
It seems aparent that many people look at this book thinking it is a travel book for possible vacationers. Read more
Published on 9 July 1999
Beltway Talking Heads book disguised as travel narrative
I was severely disappointed. Other than the Togo sequence early in the book, Kaplan isn't interested in "travel" at all; he hardly ever talks to people on the streets,... Read more
Published on 3 April 1999
A good miserable book
Well crafted, insightful, wretchingly poetic, and horribly realistic. The ends of the earth, a slice of the misery from which Americans and other fortunate individuals in ordered... Read more
Published on 22 Feb 1999
a scary view of the future
Robert Kaplan takes the reader on a journey to faraway countires most of us will never have the opportunity or desire to visit. Read more
Published on 5 Aug 1998
amazingly thought provoking
This was one of those books that is hard to put down. Kaplan provides insight to the decay of the nation state and how boundaries in much of the world are being redrawn according... Read more
Published on 22 July 1998
he doesn't quite get it
i enjoyed this book on many levels. it provided looks into parts of the third world summarily ignored by the mainstream media. Read more
Published on 5 July 1998
It feels like your traveling along with Kaplan.
A great book, Kaplan is good at using words and expressions that appeal to your senses and makes you feel like you were there with him. Read more
Published on 22 April 1998
A complex, yet highly readable and pertient book
This is not an ordinary "travel book", the author explores the culture, politics, history of parts of the world few westerners know exist. Read more
Published on 4 Dec 1997
Interesting travel tales of the developing world.
I learned so much about life and current issues in the countries Kaplan covers by reading this book. Read more
Published on 2 Dec 1997
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