SOURCE: Review of The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler. Christian Science Monitor (12 February 1982): B5.

In the following review, the critic offers a positive assessment of The Third Wave, calling the work “an important book.”

In [The Third Wave,] his first major book since the prize-winning Future Shock, Alvin Toffler says, the future already has begun. Or, put another way, the present has long since begun to grind to a halt. And when was the beginning of the end? Probably Aug. 8, 1960, the day an Exxon executive decided to stop paying some of the taxes his firm had been charged by oil-exporting countries. This was the move that prompted the founding of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), and everybody who uses money knows what has happened to civilization since then.

But the inflation, inequities, and inefficiencies of today are also the steppingstones to tomorrow. And a promising tomorrow...