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| http://theleaderlessrevolution.com/summary |
There are few books that attempt to interpret the world and how it is run. The Leaderless Revolution offers a refreshing and pungent contrast to the Panglossian optimism of Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat but, like that book, it offers a way of understanding the world of the 21st century that is both clear and easily comprehensible. Carne Ross takes different angles on contemporary issues - economics, politics, the state of democracy, the environment and terrorism - wrapping them into a unified explanation of how money and power function to control the lives of the earth’s inhabitants, such that they feel powerless to affect their collective future. It seems that mankind has settled upon liberal democracy as the ideal form of government. Its triumph with the collapse of communism signalled the end of ideological struggle and thus of history. The Leaderless Revolution shows however that even in democracies, many if not most of the population feel that they are excluded from any agency over the issues that most trouble them, while governments appear less and less able to influence the global problems that threaten our peace and comforts. Mining the rich but little-examined history of anarchism, and updating the philosophy for today’s needs, The Leaderless Revolution offers a refreshing and original prescription for the problems of today. Not only an antidote to our global crises; Carne Ross offers, moreover, a route to fulfillment and self-realisation.
Carne Ross was a high-flying British diplomat who worked on many of the world’s toughest issues, including Afghanistan, terrorism, and climate change. After working on Iraqi WMD and sanctions at the UN Security Council, he was one of only two British diplomats to resign over the 2003 Iraq War. That experience forced him to confront the deeper problems of a volatile, globalized world. A frequent commentator on current affairs on CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera, and a contributor to Huffington Post and The Guardian, Ross also founded, and now runs, Independent Diplomat, a non-profit advisory group that assists democratic countries and political groups around the world. He lives in New York City.
