The Great Wave

The twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment that might well be defined by the military acronym VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), as one emergency has cascaded into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices--once regarded as radical, unorthodox or marginal--are disrupting the status quo in politics, business and the arts. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation.

Writing with a critic's understanding of cultural trends and a journalist's eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders--those who have sown chaos and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky). At the same time, she situates today's multiplying crises in context with those that defined earlier hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the transition between the Gilded Age and Progressive era at the end of the nineteenth century.

Kakutani connects the seismic cultural changes of the last half century with today's ideological rifts, providing readers with a panoramic perspective of a world in social and political flux. She argues that today's crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe's profound vulnerabilities, but also stress tests pointing to the changes in policies and priorities we must implement if we are to navigate this tumultuous era of transition and build a more resilient and sustainable world tomorrow.