The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World

by Bernard-Henri Lévy

Overview

One of the West’s leading intellectuals offers a provocative look at America’s withdrawal from world leadership and the rising powers who seek to fill the vacuum left behind.

The United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western worldand to oppose autocracy and repression. Even when America did not live up to its ideals, it still recognized their importance, at home and abroad.

But as Bernard-Henri Lévy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence. Lévy shows how these five—Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism—are taking steps to undermine the liberal values that have been a hallmark of Western civilization.

The Empire and the Five Kings is a cri de coeur that draws upon lessons from history and the eternal touchstones of human culture to reveal the stakes facing the West as America retreats from its leadership role, a process that did not begin with Donald Trump's presidency and is not likely to end with him. The crisis is one whose roots can be found as far back as antiquity and whose resolution will require the West to find a new way forward if its principles and values are to survive.

As seen on Real Time with Bill Maher (2/22/2019) and Fareed Zakaria GPS (2/17/2019).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250203021
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
Sales rank:	293,415
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of more than thirty books including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? His writing has appeared extensively in publications throughout Europe and the United States. His documentaries include Peshmerga, The Battle of Mosul, The Oath of Tobruk, and Bosna! Lévy is cofounder of the antiracist group SOS Racisme and has served on diplomatic missions for the French government.

Table of Contents

Prologue: On Dove's Feet, the Kurds

PART ONE: THE LATEST NEWS FROM THE EMPIRE
1. Hegel's Ghost
2. How the Word Came to America
3. Lest I Forget You, Jerusalem, Aeneas, Virgil
4. Jeremy Bentham and the Web
5. Thus Spake the Empire of the Eye and of Nothingness

PART TWO: FIVE KINGDOMS ON THE OFFENSIVE
6. The Earth Shook in Kurdistan
7. Herodotus's Trap
8. Dante, Abraham, and the War of the Five Kings
9. The Brown Wave
10. The Specters' Ball

Epilogue: Where Does the Sea Go at Ebb Tide?

Index

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2018
An influential philosopher/activist over the last several decades (I'm sure that I'm not alone in remembering the impact of Barbarism with a Human Face), Lévy argues that while America has always stood for basic humanist values to which the world has aspired (in its ideals if not always its actions), lately it has dropped its leadership role and ceded value setting to five unfortunate "kings" (or maybe kingdoms): Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and the Sunni Arab world.

Library Journal

12/24/2018

French intellectual Lévy (The Genius of Judaism) melds history, theology, politics, philosophy, and personal experience in this striking but flawed book-length essay on the past and future of world politics. Lévy believes in universal history, the idea that the world’s history is one coherent story whose arc is a change in power from East to West. In this view, the U.S. is a continuation of Europe; it became a reluctant empire almost by default after WWII; and the nature of its imperialism is changing thanks to the apolitical monopoly of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. Drawing on Western philosophy (Bentham, Hegel, Heidegger) and the Bible, he lays out an explanation for the U.S.’s withdrawal from its role as global watchdog and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the five kings—Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, and “those nostalgic for the caliphate”—that he sees lying in wait, eager to take its place. Surprisingly, after much buildup of the threat, the last chapter concludes that it would be difficult for any of the kingdoms to truly become an empire, and the book’s premise falls flat. Though Lévy’s analysis of the internet landscape and its impact on truth is deeply insightful, those who don’t share his belief in the West’s exceptionality and his despair at its loss of power will not connect with the analysis he constructs atop them. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Often arresting, always heartfelt prose. This is a brave book . . . we need Mr. Lévy’s voice.” —Martin Peretz, The Wall Street Journal

“An erudite and impassioned call for the West to retake the lead in championing liberty.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Striking. . . Lévy’s analysis of the internet landscape and its impact on truth is deeply insightful.” —Publishers Weekly

“The Empire and the Five Kings is that rare book that few write anymore, and few even know how to. It is the product of a truly literate mind of the sort that has virtually gone extinct in this postliterate digital age.” —Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century

“Bernard-Henri Lévy puts his deep firsthand knowledge of the world together with his extraordinary gift for horizontal thinking—leaping easily from epoch to epoch and from one philosophical idea to the next—to offer a startling and persuasive picture of this moment of decisive historical transition.” —Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon and At the Strangers' Gate

“At the heart of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s passionate essay is his anger at the betrayal of the Kurds. He spirals out from there to offer a strongly felt portrait of our contemporary reality in which the ‘empire of nothing,’ the West that has lost its way, risks being superseded by new powers, the ‘five kings, pathetic yet daunting, cartoonish yet terrible.’ A challenging analysis, at once scholarly and readable.” —Salman Rushdie

“In this exquisite gem of a book, Bernard-Henri Levy offers a poetic plea for moral courage and clear thinking in these dark times. He is an international treasure.” —Robert Kagan, author of Of Paradise and Power and The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“A characteristically trenchant and poignant polemic that is part cri-de-coeur, part battle cry . . . The Empire and the Five Kings represents an important, learned assessment of the mounting challenges facing the United States in confronting an increasingly multipolar world order.” —The Federalist

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