Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, January 2009: "Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most. --Jon Foro

Review

"With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (America s Secret War) offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The author asserts that the United States power is so extraordinarily overwhelming that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names battle stars. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedman s 100-year cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising. The armed border clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science fiction. Whether all of the visions in Friedman s crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment." --Publishers Weekly

This is a book about unintended consequences and how the constraints of time and place impact the behavior of individuals and nations and offer a view of future events. [Friedman s] theories are fascinating....This is an excellent book.

--Booklist

Futurologist Friedman entertainingly explains how America will bestride the world during this century. Prophecy, whether by astrologers, science-fiction writers or geopoliticians, has a dismal track record, but readers will enjoy this steady stream of clever historical analogies, economic analyses and startling demographic data.

Kirkus

There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8-Ball.

New York Times Magazine

Barron s consistently has found Stratfor s insights informative and largely on the money as has the company s large client base, which ranges from corporations to media outlets and government agencies.

Barron s

One of the country s leading strategic affairs experts.

Lou Dobbs --.

[A] unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling....Whether all of the visions in Friedman s crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. --Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

美国“影子中情局局长”

全球首屈一指战略预测公司STARTFOR总裁

国际畅销书作家

《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》、CNN等权威媒体争相报道的战略预测专家

乔治•弗里德曼，犹太人，生于匈牙利，三岁随父母移居美国，早年就读于纽约城市学院，主修政治学，获康奈尔大学政府专业博士学位，在宾州迪金森学院任教二十余载，期间是美国军方和五角大楼的座上宾，承担美国陆军战争学院、国防大学和兰德公司国防和国家安全课题，较早引入计算机模拟战争推演。

1996年一手创办美国智库“战略预测公司”并任总裁，专门为政府和企业提供未来国际政治、经济、军事趋势分析预测，被誉为“影子中情局局长”

弗里德曼论著颇多，曾写过《美国的秘密战争》、《未来大战》、《情报利器》、《下一次每日战争》、《法兰克福学派哲学》等多部国际畅销书。