There are many literary genres, and authors who are experts or who write books about them as well. This is the case of The World Crossroads, by Pedro Baños. It is a book of political theory and international relations and globalization. Did you know him?

If you want to know more about this book to see if it is what you would like to read or not, take a look at the information collection to make the decision. Shall we start?

Synopsis of The World Crossroads

Pedro Baños was one of the best-selling authors during the Covid confinement, and there is no doubt that his more than 300K followers and more than 160000 sales of copies of the previous books make him an exceptional author. Furthermore, he has been translated into eleven languages.

The last book he released, in 2022, was this one, The World Crossroads: A Manual for Tomorrow. Here we leave you the synopsis:

«If in his previous books Pedro Baños offered a lucid analysis of power relations, this new work not only describes in detail the exceptional circumstances that are occurring at the present and those that we will suffer in the immediate future in our hyperconnected world, but which goes much further and proposes solutions that serve all people, in any country, becoming an essential practical manual.
The formulas of the last century are no longer valid. We have fully entered the digital age, a true industrial, economic and social revolution whose effects we are just beginning to glimpse. A world governed by artificial intelligence, with quantum computers, surprising advances in biotechnology and neuroscience, and in which even the most everyday objects will be connected to the internet.
There will be new jobs, but insufficient. The increasingly aging population will occupy crowded cities in which loneliness will be the norm. All this seasoned with an increasingly polarized society, while we suffer the consequences of global warming that seems unstoppable. Without forgetting the massive migratory movements. The fight between the great powers to control this new reality and the scarce natural resources will intensify. Therefore, imaginative and efficient strategies must be drawn up that satisfy the needs and aspirations of the populations, and especially of youth.
Here is the enormous challenge of this book. Time is short, problems are urgent and uncertainty is maximum. Tomorrow is here, and you have the manual to overcome the global crossroads in your hands.

Reviews and critiques

The World Crossroads is not a book that everyone will like. The literary genre in which it is framed means that it has a very specific audience that enjoys reading it. Even so, on the Internet you can find multiple criticisms, reviews and opinions about the work. We have compiled some of them, which we present here:

«You can agree more or less on some aspects, share the opinion or have a different point of view, but it is undeniably a very interesting analysis of the current socio-geopolitical situation and, objectively, you learn a lot. Essential reading!

«In this book, Colonel Pedro Baños analyzes the challenges that we face at the current moment and that will define the immediate future of our society. The 2030 agenda, the deterioration of parliamentary democracy, the unstoppable development of Artificial Intelligence, mass migrations... The general approach could be summarized by saying that things are not always what they seem, that not all innovations represent an improvement and that many wolves have sheep's clothing.
I found the book essentially interesting and leaves many questions open to individual reflection so that, with knowledge or, at least with reflection, each of us knows where we should, or where we want to position ourselves. I also found it repetitive in some ideas and, in the end, it felt a bit long.

"It has some interesting chapters, but when you get to the development of his personal idea of ​​a new way of doing politics to save the world (baptized by the author as "noocracy"), full of negative opinions about "the left", against political parties, , the current mechanisms for electing representatives, etc., is beginning to smell like something that I don't like at all. Everyone can draw their own conclusion, if they want to try it. I do not recommend".

«The chapter on China is excellent. The rest of the book was more difficult for me, a mix of topics and the author's opinions, which, although they may be interesting, from my point of view do not generate as much interest as the geopolitical topic. Although I have a feeling that if he delved deeply into topics that he surely knows, no one would publish his books and they would call him conspiratorial and anti-Westernist etc etc... "

«I like this author. A brave and outspoken guy. However, I didn't like this book. There are too many ideas that are not always well-connected and even contradictory. A great expert is geostrategy but his ideas about education, economy or society are poorly founded. They are his personal ideas. which seems perfect to me, but they are not very convincing.

These types of books are among those that can generate the most controversy as they are topics that generate different points of view, opinions, etc. The theoretical part of the book does not seem to have any problems, but the opinions that the author himself drops do. Furthermore, we must not forget that politics is present and there are two clear sides in the world. Therefore some criticize others.

You must have been surprised that, in some of the reviews of The World Crossroads, the author is referred to as "colonel." If you didn't know Pedro Baños before, that's normal. And Pedro Baños Bajo is a Spanish writer and soldier, specifically an infantry colonel in the Army (now in reserve). He trained as a Master in Defense and Security at the Complutense University of Madrid, but also in other countries such as Turkey, China, Israel...

It is specialized in geostrategy, defense and security, intelligence and jihadist terrorism. Therefore, he is an expert writer on topics related to this. But we must also say that there is a lot of controversy behind it, accusing him of anti-Semitism, far-right, Russophilia, misinformation...

Apart from being a writer and soldier, he is a regular collaborator on television, such as on Cuarto Milenio or presenting his own program, La mesa del colonel, on Cuatro.

Other works by Pedro Baños

Y Pedro Baños has been publishing books since 2017. Here we leave you the complete list of those that have been published to date:

• This is how the world is dominated. Revealing the keys to world power.
• World dominance: Elements of power and geopolitical keys.
• The mental domain: The geopolitics of the mind.
• Power: A strategist reads Machiavelli.
• The global crossroads: A manual for tomorrow.

What do you think of The World Crossroads? Would this be a book you would read or recommend?