What Next?: Surviving the Twenty-first Century - Hardcover

Patten, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067004539X ISBN 13: 9780670045396

Publisher: Penguin Group Canada, 2009

Synopsis

What Next? tackles the big questions about our global condition and collective future with a verve and authority no other commentator could match. Energy, food, water, weapons proliferation, climate change, epidemic disease—the challenges themselves are proliferating. Chris Patten digests information from a vast number of sources and analyzes the issues using his experience at the highest levels of international politics. The capacity to act is the problem, he says, not the comprehension of what we should be doing—but for reasons he explains, we have good reason for hope

About this title

Review:

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practised now than three or four thousand years ago. (John Adams)

About the Author:

Chris Patten is currently co-Chair of the International Crisis Group and of the Anglo-Indian Round Table, and is Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle Universities. As a British MP 1979-92 he served as Minister for Overseas Development, Secretary of State for the Environment and Chairman of the Conservative Party, being described afterwards as 'the best Tory Prime Minister we never had' (Observer). In 1998-99 he chaired the Independent Commission for Policing in Northern Ireland, and from 1999-2004 was European Commissioner for External Relations. He is probably best known for being the last Governor of Hong Kong 1992-97, about which he wrote in East and West (1998). Both that and his most recent book, Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths about World Affairs (2005), were No 1 international best-sellers. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1998 and a life peer in 2005.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Group Canada
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 067004539X
• ISBN 13: 9780670045396
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512