The Great Surge offers a necessary correction of the still prevailing view of a backward and ailing Third World. Since the 1980s, China and many other countries have seen tremendous growth and catch-up towards Western levels of prosperity. While these countries still are much poorer than the West, there are expanding middle classes and pockets of extreme wealth that thanks to the numbers offer huge markets.

The excellent message of the first part of the book is then unfortunately combined by a myopic libertarian one. The author who teaches at Georgetown restricts his views and quotes to the guys at Harvard, Stanford and Princeton with Jeffrey Sachs as the exotic voice of the left and a few words from Oxford too. The Great Surge is apparently a discussion among Americans. A huge potential missed by a self-inflicted limitation. ( )