This weekend’s incredibly well-reported New York Time’s article on future of globalized world and America’s place in it (using Apple as the lens) has touched a nerve, with tons of comments and discussion in social media about it. As Rishad Tobaccowala very astutely said on his Facebook page, “What you take away from this piece will be mainly driven by what you bring to it. Your beliefs about the world, about how economics work, about government.”

You know which camp I am in. And I am going one step further on future-of-America-in-globalized-world: the next big generational change for our country isn’t everyone doing startups or the hollow-hope of bring back manufacturing jobs (and resultant jobs created here), but it is Americans migrating to where jobs are, the American dream in reverse. For the reasons my parents generation and I moved to U.S., for those exact reasons Americans will start moving elsewhere. Generation of Americans will become the middle class for countries like China, India and Brazil, among others.

You don’t have to believe in this radical generational reset worldview, but this much of the reality is clear: the world’s future is brown, which isn’t saying brown people, but mixed, interconnected and surely not centered in the West. The optimist in me says this is the best future America can build for its future generations, enmeshed in the world on a creative, business and entrepreneurial level. 

With that in mind, for the eclectic globalist soul, I have put together 10 books which will help you decipher some of these trends. 

Here’s the essential reading list for 2012:

»  Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, by Robert D Kaplan — Because you have to understand larger Indian Ocean nations, and Kaplan’s coherent analysis is stellar.

»  Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris — Bit dense, but gives you a perspective of historical cycles like no other book.

»  The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold — The clash of faith and world power, and the conflicts yet to come.

»  Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, by Christopher Caldwell — No, this isn’t a curveball, but a look back at immigration in Europe and how it caused the clash of Islam vs West. Grating and certainly revisionist, you still need to understand the conflict.

»  The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet, by Eugene Linden — On what’s lost, and how societies are being fumbling and bumbling into globalization.

»  Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, by Mustafa Akyol — Because you have to understand Turkey and its worldview, if you want to understand a huge part of the Asian-Arabic world, at least the hopeful variety.

»  Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos, by Sarah Lacy — The startup world in the “emerging world”, local and chaotic.

»  Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World, by Doug Sanders — The urbanization of the world, and why it isn’t bad.

»  Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, by John D. Kasarda & Greg Lindsay — The world’s instant cities in the making, and why that’s the future of the world.

»  Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, by Thant Myint-U — The next corridor of Superpower.

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Elan:  You are about to start another online company focusing on traveling can you tell us about that?

RA: It is in the travel sector, but not really built upon my own travels over the last 20 months. The cliche is: a start-up guy sells his company, goes off to travel the world, and through his experiences during his travel, hits a brainwave on how to solve all the travel woes in the world. Thankfully, mine isn’t that.

At $1 trillion a year, travel is the world’s largest industry by revenue and the world’s largest employer. While digital advances have disrupted distribution and information systems, no intelligence brand has emerged that matches the industry’s size with its digital potential. My new company will attempt to be that. It sounds vague, but that’s all I can say right now as I am still a few months away from launching.

Source: Elan Magazine