SOURCE: A review of Jihad vs. McWorld, in Washington Monthly, Vol. 27, No. 11, November, 1995, p. 57.

In the following review, Cook agrees with Barber's “McWorld” idea—particularly in regard to mass communications—but contends that Barber's concept of “Jihad” is more complicated than what Barber presents it to be.

Last year, I went to Middleboro, a small town in southeastern Massachusetts, to write a piece about Rwanda. It had all the makings of your classic “shrinking planet” story. Here was Manzi Kanobana, a Tutsi teen from the heart of Africa, now an exchange student at a small New England high school. To these kids, Manzi seemed strange at first, but he played a mean game of soccer and quickly made friends. His home country's quirky customs caught on—like the midnight candy Christmas tradition—and, before long, he had plenty of friends with whom to watch TV—usually CNN's “International...