September 21, 2020
In this scattershot treatise, CNN host Zakaria (The Post-American World) gleans lessons from the Covid-19 outbreak on how society, politics, and international relations could and should evolve. In the book’s strongest sections, Zakaria argues that America needs a less fragmented and gridlocked government bureaucracy to cope with health threats, and he calls for more honesty and empathy from scientists, and foresees accelerated migration of work and life onto the internet. Other points seem tangential to the virus (the rise of robots and artificial intelligence to displace humans), or rehash Zakaria’s already well-articulated stances (he spends many pages defending globalization and multilateralism against Trumpian nationalism). He anthropomorphizes Covid-19 as “nature’s revenge” for overpopulation and human environmental encroachments, and suggests that “promoting healthier diets” will help to prevent the next pandemic. Zakaria also disparages America’s Covid-19 response by cherry-picking the statistic that by July 2020 “per-capita daily death rates in the United States were ten times higher than in Europe,” without noting that the continent’s outbreak peaked earlier, with similarly high death rates in multiple countries. This less-than-cogent analysis of the coronavirus pandemic leaves much to be desired.