The Harvard man who described the world in terms of large civilizations which would clash as they converged in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has died. Author Samuel Huntington was 81.

The text of Huntington’s 1993 article, which was expanded into the book, is available online. Here’s a portion:

World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be — the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches aspects of the emerging reality. Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the coming years.

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. . . .

Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.

(via Literary Saloon)

“Author Bret Lott strives to write with the integrity of Christ“, in which I learn the author is taller than me.

Author Donald Westlake, 75, who wrote mystery and crime fiction under his own name and that of Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West, has passed away. The report states that he began writing under pseudonyms because the reading public and publishing companies wouldn’t take his novels as fast as they came to him.

Sarah Weinman has a long list of tributes and reviews for a man she calls, “the incomparable writer of a great many fine crime novels.” Terry Teachout appears to think so too. He reviewed Westlake’s What’s So Funny? in 2007, comparing the author to Wodehouse.

It always surprises me to find out that there are people who don’t know Westlake’s crime novels, most of which are comic and all of which are intensely pleasurable. I’ve been reading him since 1967, which makes me not so much a fan as an addict, and though I’ve liked some of his books more than others, I can’t think of a single one that has failed to divert me, which is a pretty amazing track record.

How the writer, Kafka, found his way to an office

Books-a-Million asked several authors a few holiday and literary questions. Dean Kootz says he reads “The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor” frequently, just to give you one interesting detail.

The Wall Street Journal praises Michael Crichton’s perspective.

Crichton, who died this week of cancer, will not be remembered as a brilliant prose stylist. But he knew how to hold reader attention, and he had an inventive mind that led him to write novels — 26 in all, along with screenplays and works of nonfiction — that concerned the problematic intersection of science, technology, public policy and ordinary life. A medical doctor by training, Crichton knew better than to treat scientists and technologists as a priestly class, immune from temptations of fame, profit or power.