This is an important book about big issues. It is subtitled "How to avoid the Clash of Civilizations" which implies, correctly, that the author is weighing in with Fukuyama and Huntington on the End of History, the Clash of Civilizations and the evolving world order. It was well-reviewed in Great Britain on its initial publication in 2002, but became controverial when some of his theological comments were challenged by fundamentalists within his own Jewish Orthodox belief community.

Rabbi Sacks has been a relatively prolific writer on religion and theology, and has established a place for himself as a media commentator in Britain. He is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. He writes well, and he must be a gifted preacher and teacher.

His book has probably been marginalized within the book trade as a theologically focussed, typically saccharine liberal clergyman's commentary on world affairs, which does him and his book a great disservice. There are some passages in the book which discuss the Jewish orthodox position on religious diversity and tolerance, which will be of interest to students of religion and students of the Bible. However his main focus is on the role of religion and morality in a world with a globalized market economy. His argument spans philosophy, politics and economics. He is no mere dilettante. He is well-read and learned.

He disagrees with the idea, implicit in Fukuyama's idea that the capitalist west defeated communism, that the arrival of the global economy will mark the end of conflict and struggle. That idea was discredited by 9/11 and the rediscovery by the academic elites that most human beings are religious in a fundamental way. He also disagees with the idea that religion is, or has become the problem.

He writes about the importance of religion as the part of human life where we find meaning and and where we find the values that ground our moral and ethical ideas. He disagrees with the Rationalist notion that religion will wither away as society evolves and with the idea that society is evolving on its own. Human beings need meaning and value. He argues that many of the great injustices of modern history have arisen when political and economic ideas were adopted as nearly religious systems of fundamental values. Nationalism became Nazi racism. Equality and socialism became totalitarian communism. Free market economics has created a society of consumerism, great wealth, and great poverty. Free market economics as translated into ethics has given the Western world an ethic of relativism and personal choices.

He argues in favour of tolerance and diversity. He argues that Plato, and Western philosophers and theologians who follow Plato, was wrong to believe that there is a single abstract ideal reality and the idea that happiness and perfection may be brought about by the perfect social and economic order. The reality of life is flourishing and evolving diversity. He argues theologically and Biblically that one transcendant God created a world of diversity and made one great covenant with humanity in which humans must have faith - but not all the same faith.