Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century

The end of the 1970s saw the emergence of a dizzying array of ideologies and movements, and Caryl contends that their ripples are still spreading across the surface of the modern world. The Islamic Revolution in Iran, the reorientation of Chinese socialism under Deng Xiaoping, Pope John Paul II’s outreach to Eastern Europe, the free-market doctrine of Margaret Thatcher, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan all began in earnest in 1979, and Caryl, an editor at Foreign Policy and Newsweek, examines how these events—each a reversal of course and a push for a new order—would come to shape history. Short and readable (if occasionally repetitive) chapters concentrate in turn on the situation in each highlighted country, and in particular on the ideas and machinations of the individuals responsible. What they shared, despite their widely varying goals, is that each “drew... motivation from values, a firmly held set of moral principles; policy was just a way of putting them into action.” Caryl displays an impressive facility with Western, Soviet, Chinese, and Islamic political traditions and circumstances, and he manages to present a relatively coherent and unified view of world affairs. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (May 7)