Current Books grownup. I don’t think I will ever be a builds his book around a series of im- grownup.” As usual, Nkosi is right. He dies an mensely readable essays examining the international celebrity in 2001, age 12, predicament in which Great Britain, the weighing 20 pounds. United States, and continental Europe now Playfulness, affection, courage, and sor- find themselves. The result is far more nu- row entwine in the wasted body of the boy, anced than Robert Kagan’s caricature of a and in this astute and heartfelt memoir. feisty American Mars and a played-out Eu- Wooten knows it’s not possible for American ropean Venus talking past each other. It is readers to care about five million, 10 mil- far more interesting and persuasive as well. lion, 20 million orphans, but he makes us According to Garton Ash, nations on care about one, and that’s a start. both sides of the Atlantic—not least his —Melissa Fay Greene own Britain—are internally divided, poorly led, and mired in myth, jealousy, and old resentments. As a consequence, they are FREE WORLD: unable to grasp where their true interests America, Europe, and the Surprising lie. In fact, he emphasizes, the divisions Future of the West. currently besetting the Atlantic communi- By Timothy Garton Ash. Random ty are trivial in comparison with the values House. 286 pp. $24.95 that its members hold in common. Quot- Among specialists in international rela- ing Freud, he dismisses the West’s intra- tions, the terrorist attack that toppled the mural quarrels as the “narcissism of minor World Trade Center also shattered the op- differences.” Instead of squabbling about timism to which the end of the Cold War Iraq, farm subsidies, or the death penalty, had given rise. History, it turned out, had Europeans and Americans ought to return n o t ended. Globalization, the Big Idea of to their true calling—nurturing the cre- the 1990s, wasn’t likely to provide an all- ation of a Free World that by all rights purpose remedy for the world’s ills. As for the ought to encompass the entire globe. much-touted “unipolar moment,” its defin- Assigning to Britain the pivotal role of ing feature turned out to be not peace and patching up the transatlantic divide, Gar- stability but the prospect of open-ended ton Ash calls for a massive collaborative conflict. Contemptuous of allies and dis- effort to make good on the promise of lib- dainful of international norms, the Bush eralism. Through free trade, greatly ex- administration seemingly went out of its panded support for international develop- way to alienate the rest of the world. In the ment and human rights, and efforts to eyes of more than a few informed observers, forestall the impending crisis of global the United States became a rogue nation. warming, Garton Ash believes that the To critics who excoriated the administra- West can eliminate global poverty, foster tion for its arrogance and warmongering, the final triumph of democracy, and ensure the future of the world order began to look that the planet remains inhabitable for fu- bleak indeed. ture generations. In this upbeat and admirable if ulti- But don’t count on the likes of George mately unsatisfying book, Timothy Garton W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Ash argues that such gloom is misplaced. Schröder to take up this cause anytime The signs of the times call not for despair, soon. According to Garton Ash, “foreign he believes, but for the West to redouble its policy is too important to be left to the efforts to build a “Free World,” making politicians,” who often as not “don’t know available to all the blessings of peace, lib- what they’re doing.” Instead, he advocates a erty, and prosperity. The opportunity to cre- sort of transnational populism, summoning ate such a global order is at hand, but fleet- “the thousand million” inhabitants of the ing: Fail to seize the opportunity now and developed nations to unite behind a “well- it may be lost forever. informed, enlightened, strategic approach to A prolific journalist and historian who the rest of the world”—and to do so now, teaches at Oxford University, Garton Ash before environmental damage becomes ir-

1 1 4 Wilson Quarterly reversible, and before shifts in demography against the Chicago Cubs and their wily and economic clout leave the West unable skipper, Dusty Baker. It’s a fresh and thor- to influence the rising powers of the East oughly enjoyable narrative—like TiVo-ing and South. through a great matchup, with Bissinger It’s an appealing vision. Garton Ash’s lingering over the good parts and skipping confidence in the essential goodwill of the junk. Western peoples—his belief that, together, There’s plenty of action, but Bissinger we can rise above our petty concerns and is too sensitive an observer and too com- act for the common good—makes it an af- plex a writer to settle for a simple play-by- fecting one as well. Yet embedded in it is a play. We watch La Russa’s pregame ritual fundamental and typically Western flaw. of making cards showing how each of his Garton Ash assumes that all humanity pitchers has done against the Cubs hitters, shares his own secular liberal aspirations. his irritation when inexperienced young In effect, Garton Ash’s Free World offers players hog the spotlight, and the flop the promise of a decent, perhaps even com- sweat when he chooses a risky tactic based fortable life devoid of transcendence. He not on numbers but on intuition. When consigns God to the margins. In reality, the lineup is ravaged by injuries, we’re however, God still haunts the world. In- with La Russa as he ponders and frets— deed, many of those upon whom Garton dining alone at Morton’s, lying awake all Ash is most eager to confer the blessings of night in the hotel. And we enter the man- liberty are adamant that God remain at the ager’s tunnel of concentration: Everything center of their universe. Any strategy for en- disappears except the motions of the larging the Free World that fails to take this game, as if it were played in pure silence. uncomfortable fact into consideration is La Russa’s internal conflicts are nicely doomed to fail. balanced against the stakes in the outcome —Andrew J. Bacevich of every pitch, but two events from the pre- vious year overshadow everything. With a novelist’s sense of when to expand the mo- THREE NIGHTS IN AUGUST: ment and when to roll with the action, Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside Bissinger skillfully discloses the lingering the Mind of a Manager. heartbreaks: In 2002, the Cardinals’ By Buzz Bissinger. Houghton Mifflin. much-loved broadcaster, Jack Buck, died, 280 pp. $25 and, three days later, their popular 33- It’s a perilous journey through the mind year-old pitcher, Darryl Kile, suffered a of a major league baseball manager, filled fatal heart attack in his sleep. with potholes of depression and washouts Bissinger has finely cultivated the of fear, but we want to take it. We want to know what lies be- hind the glowering game face of that most enigmatic baseball man, and what subplots con- sume him—including the indi- vidual melodramas of a busload of barely post-adolescent mil- lionaires. Buzz Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of F r i d a y Night Lights (1990), was granted unlimited access to the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization by its legendary manager, Tony La Russa. The book follows a Bantering with the Cubs’ Dusty Baker is one of the few things three-game series during 2003 that comes easily for Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

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