Entering The Pacific Century

“Characterized by initiative and aggressiveness combined with a chivalric ethos, a respect for the intellect, and an impatience with rank and hierarchy, New Zealand’s martial virtues have imbued Kiwis’ sense of fairness and decency with muscularity — a quiet courage and a puckish, manly large-spiritedness,” The Atlantic’s literary editor and national editor Benjamin Schwarz writes in a review of Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar David Hackett Fischer’s latest book Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States. “This comparison of the United States with New Zealand is a pioneering, illuminating, and at times startling book. For better and worse, Americans will never emulate New Zealanders. But as we enter the Pacific Century, New Zealand and its more energetic antipodean cousin will be playing an ever more vital economic, cultural, and political role.”