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The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
Maybe someday
27
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
54/100Critics
1/100Scholars
Author:
George Friedman
Publisher:
Doubleday
Date:
February 25, 2020
The founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures, which specializes in geopolitical forecasting, prognosticates a bumpy ride for the nation, both socially and economically, for the next decade before emerging into a calmer future. Examining "cycles" through which the United States has developed, upheaved, matured, and solidified in the past, Friedman examines our present moment through the lens of the past.
What The Reviewers Say
Like other works of prognostication, this one depends heavily on a forced reading of history, often expressed in oracular truisms. Are we really to believe that the second 'socioeconomic cycle' ran right through the Civil War and its immediate aftermath despite the fact that roughly a third of the economy, namely the South, was utterly destroyed more than a decade before it ended? Then there are the banalities.
The Storm Before the Calm...is a provocative attempt to connect past, present, and future, that, in my judgment, shines a spotlight on the flaws of futurology. Mr. Friedman’s examination of American history, the foundation of his theory, is a mix of conventional wisdom and vague, simplistic and dubious claims.
To me these cycles, lasting as short as Friedman specifies, might as well not be accounted for at all. He does not make the case they are distinct and recognizable to anyone but him.
... [a] probing and ultimately hopeful diagnosis of America’s discontents.
