SOURCE: “The Big One,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 13, 1999, pp. 4-5.

In the following review, Postrel offers favorable assessment of The Great Disruption, which she concludes is “an important and ambitious work.”

Francis Fukuyama likes big subjects and bold claims. In 1989, he burst into public consciousness with his provocatively titled National Interest article, “The End of History?,” later expanded into a book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992). His thesis: Liberal, democratic capitalism represents the final stage in the Hegelian evolution of governing regimes, and the fall of the Soviet Union settled the debate. When the musical group Jesus Jones hit the pop charts with a 1991 song lauding the post-Cold War joys of “watching the world wake up from history,” Fukuyama achieved a cultural penetration few intellectuals—let alone Hegel interpreters—dream of.

So what do you do after History? In his book, Fukuyama...