PositiveThe Wall Street JournalMr. Kimmage rightly believes that he has hold of one of the most important concepts of the previous century, the idea of the West, and capably traces its evolution and context. He purports to limit himself to its role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, but in truth he ranges more widely. He writes with keen observation ... It is to Mr. Kimmage’s immense credit that he manages to maintain a firm hold on two ropes pulling in opposite directions ... Racism and conquest have been ubiquitous in politics. The political wherewithal to call them out and try to overcome them has not. A frank acknowledgment of Western shortcomings, past and present, as Mr. Kimmage demonstrates so persuasively, makes sense only in the context of an appreciation of the singular Western contribution to human flourishing.
Pankaj Mishra
PanThe Wall Street Journal...a book of far greater ambition than its timeliness suggests ... Age of Anger intends to undermine the social and cultural premises of democratic capitalism as thoroughly as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) sought to undermine the premises of market economics. Neither book, however, offers much detail about what will or should come next, and in light of this common lacuna, they are equally unpersuasive ... resentment in the violent form Mr. Mishra limns is only one of many possible responses to such a sense of injustice. Another, the most common, is to pursue a quiet life notwithstanding the fact of injustice. A third, however, is to seek improvement, of self or society or both. This last underlies the Enlightenment impulse that led to modernity. That’s a story Mr. Mishra knows well but excuses himself from telling in Age of Anger.”
