Ten Serious Reads For Summer

As the deadline approaches for a turnover of power in Iraq, few writers seem more on target than Fareed Zakaria. Democracy and liberty are not identical, notes the author, who is editor of Newsweek International, and the bundle of freedoms that we regard as key to civilized political life -- from the rule of law to the rights of free speech and religion -- have nothing intrinsically to do with voting. Accordingly, his latest book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Norton, $14.95), has some advice for nation-builders: Construct the institutions of classical liberalism first, then hold elections. This volume, which reviewer Bruce Nussbaum called "intensely provocative," was first published in April, 2003, only days after the invasion of Iraq began. In a new afterword to the just-published paperback edition, Zakaria reflects on the challenges in that chaotic land. Here's a dose of his realism: No matter how well a transfer of power goes, the U.S. must "come to terms with the reality that America now has a 51st state called Iraq."

That's serious reading for summer, of course. And Zakaria's is only one of the books in BusinessWeek's annual paperback roundup that homes in on world political woes. Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (Vintage, $11) also presents a bracing outlook: "It's time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world," writes the senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Americans, with their vast military power and willingness to use it, are from Mars, it seems. Meanwhile, Europeans, who lack such military resources and prefer to employ "soft" tactics such as diplomacy or foreign aid, are from Venus. In a new afterword to what reviewer John Rossant called a "slender but brilliant" book, Kagan says that the ability to confer or deny legitimacy to any military action is Europe's "comparative advantage in the new geopolitical jostling with the U.S."