TO GOVERN THE GLOBE by Alfred M. McCoy

Took me over a week to get through about the first third of this 320-page book. That section was mostly about what McCoy calls the Iberian Age (allegedly, when Spain and Portugal ruled the world). McCoy's prose is so academic and lifeless, it was hard to follow; reminded me of Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Fortunately, things picked up when he dived into the "British Imperial Era", "Washington's World Order", and "Twenty-First Century and Beyond". Because I live in the present, I was more into the latter half of the book. And I found his prediction interesting that China will be the world leader around 2030 but its time of the world stage will last only about 20 years because of Climate Change.

The other book I read by McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, was much better. More focused and I don't remember the prose being so bone-dry.

One cool thing about To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change is that it reminded me of a book review I read years ago, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen R. Platt. I reserved that book at the library. Also, now when I read book review on Sunday and Wednesday nights, if I reserve a book, I'll tweet about for prosperity's sake — nobody pays attentions to my tweets anyway.