Rating: 
Summary: New world indeed!
Review: Huntington (political science, Harvard U.) asserts that cultural identity is becoming the central force shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world and discusses the implications of the new global dynamics.
Rating: 
Summary: Huntington's theory is full of holes
Review: After studying Huntington's theory of international relations in college here at the University of Utah I can say definitively that Mr. Huntington has much work to do to clear up many of the problems of his theory. I find it an interesting idea, that's why two stars but he really needs some work to make it more cohesive. However, Edward Said's response to it is well thought out and constructed.
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Summary: Latin American "Civilization"
Review: OK, I haven't read the book yet, but reading editorial reviews, it alreadys seems suspicious that Prof. Huntington is calling "Latin American" a civilization as distinct from "Western" civilization as Japanese or Arabic civilization. What? Did I miss something? I know there are cultural differences between Latin Americans, whose cultures are largely derived from Iberian cultures, and us northern Americans, who get most of our culture from the English, but are we really different civilizations? Latin Americans generally speak European languages, practice European religions, wear standard Eurpean clothes, obey laws based on European justice systems, follow European norms of government, etc... And while there are points of native American cultural persistence in various communities and countries, these points of cultural persistence are unique exceptions and are not homogeneous (Mayans in Chiapas are not of the same "civilization" as Quechua-speakers in Peru). So on what grounds are Latin Americans considered non-western? Because they have a history of running into conflict with the Anglo-Americans? I guess calling "Latin America" a distinct civilization just conveniently gives weight to Huntington's thesis, since if he included Latin America as a "western" civilization, he would have had to develop a framework and theory of intra-civilization conflict as well...I will try to read this book with an open mind, but the argument that Latin America is a non-western civilization truly leaves me baffled.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: This is a very accurate summation of present and potential world affairs. Howver, it will force the politically correct (a closed minded group at best) to confront their views, and possibly reject them. Works like this one can be the saving of political discourse if read and seriously considered. Buy it. Read it. Think about it. You may not reach exactly the same conclusions as the author, but if you have an open and logical mind, you will come very close.
Rating: 
Summary: Somebody give Huntington a copy of "Orientalism."
Review: This book is racist, essentialist garbage. Strange how Huntington's thesis fails to account for Saudi Arabia, the most fundamentalist of Islamic states and client of U.S. power
Rating: 
Summary: Gives Perspective....
Review: As born and bread New Yorker, it is sometimes too easy to think like the famous New York magazine cover. This is true also for the USA. While I think the book generalized too much, it definitely gave me a different perspective to think within. It will push me towards reading is specific directions....
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Summary: Essential Reading of a defining post-Cold War paradigm
Review: In the "Clash," Huntington provides us with a civilizational paradigm to describe how the world will function politically in the post-Cold War era. The bi-polar world of yesterday has now mutated into a multipolar world of roughly seven civilizations - all lead by core states (which are the dominant nation-states that subject lesser nation-states of their kin). I DISAGREE with this paradigm and its applicablity to the world politcal system, however this work is basic education for the study of contemporary international relations. Huntington makes a number of valid points to support his paradigm but too much is taken for granted for this paradigm to be a reliant angle of analysis. The book is extermely well written. The theory is all placed into historical context which makes it an easy and interesting read. The reader will not be disappointed wheither or not he/she agrees or disagrees with the author's perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Important book, but has wrong generalizations!
Review: This book by Samuel Huntington should definitely be read by people who are especially interested in the theories of international relations and by people who have special interest in international affairs. The book is important in the sense that it provides a new and quite interesting point of view on the emerging new world order after the Cold War.
Despite the originality of the ideas, however, the book has quite important shortcomings and wrong generalizations.
To begin with, Huntington makes a very big mistake by explaining culture mainly in terms of religion. This, in addition to being wrong, can result in dangerous ideas and splits that might in the end result in conflicts of religions. In fact, Huntington's clash of civilizations is indeed a clash of religions.
Secondly, there are a lot of contradictions in the book. For instance, while in the beginning Huntington asserts that the Western World (which he means Western Catholicism) will remain all powerful in the 21st Century, he later argues that the Western World started to lose its power in contrast to the rise of Islam and Asia.
Thirdly, Huntington's emphasis on the role of religion in the post-Cold War period results in his denouncing organizations such as NATO. He makes the unfortunate mistake of tacitly saying that Turkey should not be in NATO. Nevertheless, Huntington here forgets the fact of Turkey being the second largest power within NATO after the United States, and that it is one of the most important allies of the USA.
And last, but not least, Huntington coins a term called "torn" countries to expalin the situations of Turkey, Russia, Mexico and Australia. For him,torn countries are the ones that are in terms of identity crisis. For me, however, he coins such a term to try to overcome these anomalies in his theory. Because, Turkey for example is an anomaly for Huntington's theory because although it is a state whose population is 98% Muslim, it has much closer and friendly relations with the United States and Western European countries. As Huntington cannot explain this anomaly, he is trying to get out of this problem by identifying Turkey as lacking an identity.
In addition to these, there are quite a lot of other mistakes and generalizations in the book but I leave their interpretations to other readers.
Overall, I find the ideas of Huntington quite interesting as well as dangerous for the post-Cold War world. I find his ideas disturbing and dangerous because although he seems to be challenging the idea of universalism of Christianity and Western values, what he tries to do in the book is to praise these ideas and isolate the people who do not belong to the values of Christianity. The underlying idea of the book as the way I understood is that if you want to be part of the West and modern, and if you wish to be liked by the Western world, then you'll have to be a Christian.
One final thing about the book is that his analysis in the final chapter is far from reality. His conspiracy on the possibility of a 3rd World War is carelessly written without actually putting too much thought on it.
Nevertheless, as I said in the beginning, the book should be read by anyone who has interest in international affairs. The good thing about it is that it really makes you sit down and think about the plausibilites of Huntington's ideas.
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Summary: Wrong for all the right reasons
Review: If I had written a review of this book when I first read it, I probably would have given it the full 5 stars. However, the events of September 11, 2001 seem to have invalidated much of what Huntington has to say. We are not seeing the alignment of Islamic countries against the decadent west. We are seeing that Arab-Islamic countries and non-Arab-Islamic countries cannot be easily classified. Saudi Arabia and Jordan remain in uneasy truce with the west. Indonesia and the powerful Islamic block of India do not fit the picture. I recommend this book, but don't take the idea that fault lines between civilizations are in any way real.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, but not flawless and a little too long.
Review: After the terrorist attacks of September 11 a lot of people were talking about this book and how accurate its prophecies were. At the same time a lot of scholars and politics denounced the work of the author and denied any relation between the attacks and the author's predictions. And being the I-don't-believe-it-until-I-see-it person I am I had to buy the book and read it. The book begins by explaining the concept of a world divided among civilizations. The author argues that it has to be the case because people can only identify themselves by differentiating from others. I am who I am because I'm not you nor him. I like myself because I'm different than you are. He builds on that by explaining that the world can not be united under one civilization and thus members of every civilization will cling to their respective civilization and will fight off any attempts otherwise. I found myself agreeing with this argument. Afterwards the author defines the civilizations of the world and lays out the characteristics of each with a brief historical background to explain the status of each. His analysis is supported with so many quotes from historians and politicians of each civilization, which makes his analysis very credible. I found his analysis to be fair and bears a lot of truth in it. Then the author explains the effects of the superiority of the western civilization and how that affected its behavior and the way it's perceived by other civilizations. So far so good, I was thinking. However, from that point forward he starts relating every political move and action to his civilizational analysis without even addressing any other possible factors. He was successful, in my humble opinion, in identifying weaknesses and pressure points in every civilization, but to expect the dynamics of the global politics to react solely based on those findings could be misleading. He also commits the mistake of generalizing and simplifying the inner dynamics of every civilization. At the first half of the book he acknowledges that each civilization has inner dynamics that will affect its behavior with other civilizations, but in the second half he seems like he totally forgot about that. I think that these flaws in his analysis resulted in misleading assumptions and predictions. I could go on and on about what flaws I was able to identify, but I guess if you're interested to know you might read the book yourself. As far as I know I could be totally wrong. One more thing bothered me about the book was it's length! It is very entertaining, but after finishing two thirds of it I had a very hard time pushing myself to finish it! It became very boring and self-repeating to the degree that I wanted to rip some of the pages off! Maybe if the author releases an abridged version then that would be a more interesting book to read. In conclusion, I found this book to be of great value for me. I learned a lot and I'm sure it added a lot to the current knowledge of the world. I only recommend that you read it with an open eye, for no author is infallible, especially Mr. Samuel P. Huntington!
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