The Great Wave

“In this dazzling and brilliant book, Michiko Kakutani provides a sweeping look at the historical and social and technological forces that have crested to create the destructive wave of volatility that is disrupting our times. Drawing lessons from the Middle Ages to the Gilded Age, she explains the cascading chaos of our era and points to ways that we can regain some stability.”—Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Elon Musk

“Kakutani has written a prescient and important book about our perilous times, one that is keenly aware of the immediate dangers, the undertow, and where the calm seas are. Brava!”—Ken Burns

“If you’re trying to decide whether the world is going crazy or you are, Michiko Kakutani’s new book should prove uplifting. The Great Wave is a panoramic survey of the various forces pulling us apart, depositing us in isolated camps, replacing coherence with chaos. If you want to know where we’re headed, look elsewhere. If you want to know how we got here, The Great Wave is indispensable.”—Joseph Ellis, New York Times bestselling author of The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents

“Michiko Kakutani offers a profoundly inspiring and prophetic perspective on the contemporary world. The Great Wave captivates readers with its vivid and skillful prose, imbued with both passion and sagacity. It is an exceptionally rare book, marked by its deep, sincere, and precise comprehension of the formidable challenges that humanity faces in the third millennium. This may well be a pivotal turning point.”—Ai Weiwei, author of 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir

“Michiko Kakutani has somehow synthesized all the pain, promise, and hope of our wild and dangerous times into a slim but potent volume full of elegant thought and perfectly worded analysis.”—Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends

“Michiko Kakutani’s breathtaking saga is a master class through six centuries of world history. The reader is drawn in and touched by the reassuring yet mystifying image that echoes George Santayana’s wave, passing through one’s being as a shudder we are privileged to experience as it moves.”—Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University

“If you think about the current state of the world and wonder how we got here, you MUST read this book. Michiko Kakutani has written a wise, lucid, beautifully researched, and exquisitely written book that will explain it all to you in an effortless and buoyant piece of writing.”—André Bishop, producing artistic director, Lincoln Center Theater