Political scientists Dutkiewicz and Sakwa present conversations with 23 leading social scientists about stressors facing the international financial system. The sections are often short on specifics and rely on highly abstract arguments. The specialists come from a variety of regions and backgrounds, but the majority espouse some form of heterodox or socialist economics. Some focus on their own particular hobby horses; Immanuel Wallerstein is content to discuss the decline of American hegemony but what he's really interested in is the hyphen in ‘world-systems analysis': "[I]t's taken me twenty or thirty years to get people to understand how important the hyphen really is." Mike Davis, meanwhile, argues that: "We stand on the precipice of a synchronized global recession that may yet dwarf the 1930s," while Peter Katznelson contends that "[w]e are all more or less blind, trying to figure out whether the trunk of the elephant is its tail." More than any of the ideas presented, one factor makes this book stand out: none of the "world's foremost thinkers" are women. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dutkiewicz (director, Ctr. for Governance & Public Policy, Carleton Univ.) and Sakwa (Russian & European politics, Univ. of Kent) have edited a remarkable collection of interviews with preeminent "thinkers" to answer the titular challenge. The thinkers, each interviewed either by one of the editors or another "thinker," reflect on global political and economic problems, focusing on the time since the 2008 financial crisis. However, few of the 22 participants offer any "fix" or even a consensus about what the world's problems are. Some of them, e.g., Nobel prize-winning economists Muhammad Yunus and Joseph Stiglitz, provide relevant updates of their own past work. Others, primarily academics such as Peter Katzenstein and Mike Davis, offer original "big picture" ideas on capitalism and society. Finally, some, including Will Kymlicka and coauthors Shimshon Bichler, the Israeli political economist, and Jonathan Nitzan (with Bichler, Capital as Power), treat, respectively, the state of multiculturalism and current economic thought. The interviews present a nice mix of emphases on public policy, society, and individual countries. The attention to Russia, China, and less-developed countries is especially welcome. VERDICT Some readers will find a left-of-center bias in the choice of contributors, yet the contributors' expertise, depth, and accessibility are unimpeachable. Both general and academic readers will find much of value.-Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Penn State Univ., Erie (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.