The Great Wave Audiobook By Michiko Kakutani cover art

The Great Wave

The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Great Wave

By: Michiko Kakutani
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

An urgent examination of how disruptive politics, technology, and art are capsizing old assumptions in a great wave of change breaking over today’s world, creating both opportunity and peril—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Truth.

“In this dazzling and brilliant book, Michiko Kakutani explains the cascading chaos of our era and points to ways that we can regain some stability.”—Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk

The twenty-first century is experiencing a watershed moment defined by chaos and uncertainty, as one emergency cascades into another, underscoring the larger dynamics of change that are fueling instability across the world.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, people have increasingly lost trust in institutions and elites, while seizing upon new digital tools to sidestep traditional gatekeepers. As a result, powerful new voices—once regarded as radical, unorthodox, or marginal—are disrupting the status quo in politics, business, and culture. Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities are stoking populist rage across the world, toxic partisanship is undermining democratic ideals, and the internet and AI have become high-speed vectors for the spread of misinformation.

Writing with a critic’s understanding of cultural trends and a journalist’s eye for historical detail, Michiko Kakutani looks at the consequences of these new asymmetries of power. She maps the migration of ideas from the margins to the mainstream and explores the growing influence of outsiders—those who have sown chaos and fear (like Donald Trump), and those who have provided inspirational leadership (like Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky). At the same time, she situates today’s multiplying crises in context with those that defined earlier hinge moments in history, from the waning of the Middle Ages to the transition between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era at the end of the nineteenth century.

Kakutani argues that today’s crises are not only signs of an interconnected globe’s profound vulnerabilities, but also stress tests pointing to the essential changes needed to survive this tumultuous era and build a more sustainable future.

©2024 Michiko Kakutani (P)2024 Random House Audio
Emigration & Immigration Future Studies Sociology Technology & Society Thought-Provoking Economic inequality
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“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

What listeners say about The Great Wave

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 2.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The great wave

Prejudiced and biased this author repeats false statements. She does no independent checking of her facts but regurgitates lies from the extreme left.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The absolute one sided liberal progressive perspective

I’m an independent voter and was simply astonished by the singular liberal pic. books like this cause the country to be so divided . Such an anti Trump perspective I wonder how much the liberals paid for this to written , I, as well as millions of other deserve a balanced perspective ….one of the worst books I’ve read / listened to this year . The only part I enjoyed was the explanation of the great wave graphic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful