
Waste Land
A World in Permanent Crisis
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Robert D. Kaplan
About this listen
An urgent exploration of a world in constant crisis, where every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict, with lessons from history that can stop the spiral—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography
“Provocative and wide-ranging . . . can be read slowly to savour its complexities and historical resonances or in one sitting, as I first read it, compelled by the force of its arguments.”—The Sunday Times (UK)
“Compelling and helpful . . . Kaplan’s analysis has enormous implications for U.S. strategy abroad. . . . His conclusion is the only right one.”—John Bolton, The Wall Street Journal
One of Financial Times’ Most Important Books to Read This Year • One of Foreign Policy’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year
We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going. Kaplan makes a novel argument that the current geopolitical landscape must be considered alongside contemporary social phenomena such as urbanization and digital news media, grounding his ideas in foundational modern works of philosophy, politics, and literature, including the poem from which the title is borrowed, and celebrating a canon of traditionally conservative thinkers, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and many others.
As in many of his books, Kaplan looks to history and literature to inform the present, drawing particular comparisons between today's challenges and the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I democratic German government that fell to Nazism in the 1930s. Just as in Weimar, which faced myriad crises inextricably bound up with global systems, the singular dilemmas of the twenty-first century—pandemic disease, recession, mass migration, the destabilizing effects of large-scale democracy and great power conflicts, and the intimate bonds created by technology—mean that every disaster in one country has the potential to become a global crisis, too. According to Kaplan, the solutions lie in prioritizing order in governing systems, arguing that stability and historic liberalism rather than mass democracy per se will save global populations from an anarchic future.
Waste Land is a bracing glimpse into a future defined by the connections afforded by technology but with remarkable parallels to the past. Just as it did in Weimar, Kaplan fears the situation may be spiraling out of our control—unless our leaders act first.
©2025 Robert D. Kaplan (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Mr. Kaplan’s analysis has enormous implications for U.S. strategy abroad . . . Compelling and helpful . . . Despite Mr. Kaplan’s pessimism, his conclusion is the only right one.”—former National Security Advisor John Bolton, The Wall Street Journal
“A welcome new beginning for an already remarkable career.”—Applied Political Theory
“Timely . . . Heavyweight intellectual Robert D. Kaplan is an ideal guide to the madness.”—The Evening Standard
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Story
In this insightful travelogue, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and The Revenge of Geography, turns his perceptive eye to a region that for centuries has been a meeting point of cultures, trade, and ideas. He undertakes a journey around the Adriatic Sea, through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, to reveal that far more is happening in the region than most news stories let on.
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Good Observations and Hidden Gems
- By Delphine C. Lucas on 05-11-22
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Earning the Rockies
- How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.
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Magnificent book that found a great narrator!
- By BotakTree on 03-09-17
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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In Europe's Shadow
- Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.
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Wrestling with History
- By David on 03-07-16
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Good American
- The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government's Greatest Humanitarian
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 17 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of - Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world.
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Great biography, biased journalism
- By W. McConnell on 09-09-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Balkan Ghosts
- A Journey Through History
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.
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Anti religious/anti catholic hit piece
- By Daniel Calvert on 05-04-21
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Monsoon
- The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed 20th century, but in the 21st century, that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—best-selling author Robert D. Kaplan explains how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power.
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A map is worth a thousand words ...
- By Loren on 06-03-12
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Return of Marco Polo's World
- War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more.
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Essays on the Region of the Silk Road
- By Jeff Beardsley on 05-19-18
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Great Depression: A Diary
- By: Benjamin Roth, James Ledbetter - editor, Daniel B Roth - editor
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 1920s, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer fresh out of the army. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good—until the stock market crash of 1929. After nearly two years of economic crisis, it was clear that the heady prosperity of the Roaring Twenties would not return quickly.
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fantastic grasp of empirical analysis of investing in the stock market.
- By Christopher Tatum on 03-30-25
By: Benjamin Roth, and others
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In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl
- Zelia Nuttall and the Search for Mexico's Ancient Civilizations
- By: Merilee Grindle
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancient civilizations.
By: Merilee Grindle
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Why Taiwan Matters
- A Short History of a Small Island That Will Dictate Our Future
- By: Kerry Brown
- Narrated by: Kerry Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society.
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How little we actually understand about Taiwan
- By John F. Robenalt on 04-26-25
By: Kerry Brown
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A Rage to Conquer
- Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of Western History
- By: Michael Walsh
- Narrated by: Michael Walsh
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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A sequel to Michael Walsh’s Last Stands, his new book A Rage to Conquer is a journey through the twelve of the most important battles in Western history. As Walsh sees it, war is an important facet of every culture—and, for better or worse, our world is unthinkable without it. War has been an essential part of the human condition throughout history, the principal agent of societal change, waged by men on behalf of, and in pursuit of, their gods, women, riches, power, and the sheer joy of combat.
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Not just a Review of 12 Battles
- By David A on 02-03-25
By: Michael Walsh
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Brokers of Deceit
- How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East
- By: Rashid Khalidi
- Narrated by: Curtis Michael Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States' involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine.
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Interesting take on history
- By Nancy on 02-17-25
By: Rashid Khalidi
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Asia's Cauldron
- The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the last decade, the center of world power has been quietly shifting from Europe to Asia. With oil reserves of several billion barrels, an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and several centuries' worth of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea in particular is a simmering pot of potential conflict. The underreported military buildup in the area where the Western Pacific meets the Indian Ocean means that it will likely be a hinge point for global war and peace for the foreseeable future.
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Pending problems
- By Jean on 08-19-14
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Soldiers of God
- With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin-the "soldiers of god"-whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God, we follow Kaplan's extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.
By: Robert D. Kaplan
What listeners say about Waste Land
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Reed
- 05-03-25
Excellent t
Thought provoking and necessary for today’s chaotic world. A must listen for those who care about what comes next.
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- Denis Timko
- 02-22-25
The accurate description of what has been and what is.
The author has in my estimation correctly depicted the current state of modern western society and provided a clear path and destination of where that society, in relation to the world at large, is likely headed. We therefore are provided with a framework within which to think about what we see now and what we are likely to experience in the future.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dylan Bruns
- 04-08-25
The author's biases are immune to his own analysis
Much of the content is thought provoking, topical, and well supported by available context. Having read or listened to much of his work, it is interesting to see where he has been right, slightly off, and outright wrong. Yet here we see, more blatantly than ever, just how contradictory his own views can be. In the same breath as he talks about avoiding group think and the social pressures of mob mentality, he endorses zionism and globalism both tacitly and explicitly. He rightfully speaks against the cults of personality and culture that caused the most publicized atrocities of the last century, and the acts of terrorism of the last generations, yet all of his criticism does not apply to his own special groups. So while it is thought provoking and topical, be warned that it is inescapably biased and disingenuous. If you lack the integrity to apply your beliefs and criticisms to yourself and your favored group, then you lack integrity in your beliefs.
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- ElovesK
- 02-07-25
Climate / Population Alarmism in a Mask
I wanted to like this book. The premise seemed engaging, promising an insightful look into an important topic. Unfortunately, within the first two hours, it became apparent that the narrative was riddled with unsubstantiated claims and propaganda masked as fact.
Rather than providing a balanced discussion, the book leans heavily on climate and population alarmism, often presenting worst-case scenarios as inevitable futures without adequately addressing counterarguments or alternative perspectives. The selective use of data and emotionally charged language make it feel more like advocacy than a profound exploration of the subject.
Additionally, the author's repeated references to Donald Trump's ego come across as tired and one-sided, especially given the absence of any critique of the global challenges and crises that have occurred during Joe Biden's tenure. This imbalance further detracts from the book's credibility and suggests a lack of comprehensive analysis.
That being said, the writing is engaging, and the author is passionate about the topic. However, this book may prove frustrating for readers looking for a well-rounded and fact-based discussion. If you're already inclined to accept its premises without question, you might enjoy it, but it's a difficult read for those seeking critical analysis.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Hasan
- 03-20-25
Established Thought Order
Writer's view on Israeli Palestinian conflict reveals his bias( failed to mention Israeli genocidal killing of Palestinian)and casts shadow on his ability to deliver a larger geopolitical thesis. He had similar error of judgement while siding on Iraq invasion. He is a great travel writer and a fine social commentator but his views on geopolitical issues are outdated.
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