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The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West Audiobook
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The epic story of the past, present, and future of world order, revealing how the decline of the West may be a good thing for the world.
Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—especially China—threaten to unravel today’s Western-led world order. Many fear this would lead to global chaos. But the West has never had a monopoly on order.
Surveying five thousand years of global history, political scientist Amitav Acharya reveals that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West. Moving from ancient Sumer, India, Greece, and Mesoamerica, through medieval caliphates and Eurasian empires into the present, Acharya shows that humanitarian values, economic interdependence, and rules of inter-state conduct emerged across the globe over millennia. History suggests order will endure even as the West retreats. In fact, the end of Western dominance offers us the opportunity to build a better world, where non-Western nations find more voice, power, and prosperity. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the Rest to forge a more equitable order.
This is the definitive account of how world order evolved and why it will survive the decline of the West.
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"Fear not! The end of Western domination is not the end of human civilization. Instead, it will mark a return of many glorious civilizations which have thrived at different points of history. A rich, multicivilizational world is heading our way. Amitav Acharya brilliantly describes the old and new worlds and how they will all come together. To get a glimpse of the real future that humanity is heading towards, read this book carefully. It will dazzle and excite you and give you great hope for the future."
— Kishore Mahbubani, author of Living the Asian Century
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The Once and Future World Order offers a powerful reminder that not all world orders in history have been Western, and that we now seem headed for a new multipolar order in which non-Western states are key to the future. This timely book argues that a dominant West is not a necessary condition for a rules-based international framework.
— Odd Arne Westad, coauthor of The Great Transformation -
In The Once and Future World Order, Amitav Acharya subjects the presuppositions of the quintessentially colonial discipline of international relations to rigorous scrutiny from a decolonial perspective. This book should serve as a model for many other academic disciplines that were founded on similarly colonialist assumptions.
— Amitav Ghosh, author of Smoke and Ashes -
Twenty-first century geopolitics will be a marketplace, not a monopoly. In this rich tapestry of a book bridging ancient civilizations and modern debates, Amitav Acharya reminds us that the unfolding multipolar, multi-civilizational world order is the historical norm—and should be celebrated as an opportunity for knowledge to spread in all compass directions. An essential guide to the post-Western world.
— Parag Khanna, author of Connectography -
Amitav Acharya's The Once and Future World Order offers a refreshingly original take on a potential post-West world order. With a lucid, perceptive, and provocative critique of the current global system, Acharya's survey of the past and visualization of the future dynamic between the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’ is stimulating for all who care about international relations in our globalized world!
— Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire -
The world order is changing irreversibly and there is no better guide to what will happen next than Amitav Acharya. This is a deeply informed vision of how nations will draw on their pasts to relate to one another in the future.
— Rana Mitter, author of Forgotten Ally -
A timely corrective to the blinkered arrogance about the role of the Rest which continues to infect so much Western policy analysis and history-writing. The Once and Future World Order is prodigiously researched, lucidly written, and a compelling read.
— Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and president of the International Crisis Group -
In The Once and Future World Order, Amitav Acharya weaves a new global history of world order. This is the book everyone must read not only to make sense of our past but also the twenty-first century.
— Ayse Zarakol, author of Before the West
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About Fajer Al-Kaisi
Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his hundreds of recorded audiobooks. In 2025 he was named a Golden Voice, AudioFile magazine’s lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators. His narrations have garnered numerous other awards and nominations, including more than twenty-five AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.