During his recent campus lecture, former President Bill Clinton played teacher as much as politician as he spoke about strategies for global cooperation. During the talk he called on the United States to create more national partners and build up institutions such as the United Nations as a way to combat terrorism.
And Clinton urged the audience to read up on several books that discuss the current debate over global conflict versus cooperation. "For all the students, this is my class time," he said.
Clinton recommended three books that he felt would help students better understand the different sides of issues: The Origins of Virtue, Warrior Politics, and NonZero. A fourth book, Natural Capitalism, Clinton suggested for its discussion of environmentally responsible commerce.
Since the Nov. 17 talk, several people have requested the books, said UC Davis Bookstore buyer Paul Takushi. A few copies of Nonzero are in stock, The others have been ordered and should arrive within one to two weeks, he said.
Here is a brief glance at the books:
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, By Matt Ridley, Penguin USA (paperback), 1998, 304 pages, $13.95.
Ridley, a British science writer, offers the evolutionary biologist's theory on human cooperation and altruism.
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, By Robert Kaplan, Vintage Books (paperback), 2001, 224 pages, $12.
Kaplan cites both ancient philosophers and military strategists in arguing for a U.S. foreign policy based more on pragmatism than utopian ideals. War, to Kaplan and philosophers such as Thucydides and Sun-Tzu, is not an aberration, and civilization can never completely rid itself of it.
NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny, By Robert Wright, Vintage Books (paperback), 2001, 435 pages, $15.
Wright argues that human cultural evolution follows the same path as biological evolution. Eventually humans should end up as more cooperative beings on a planetary scale.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, By Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins, Back Bay Books (paperback), 2000, 396 pages, $17.95.
The Lovinses, leaders of an environmental think tank, and Hawken, a business strategist, show how cutting-edge companies are practicing "a new type of industrialism" that is efficient and profitable while saving the environment and creating jobs.