Ira Kaufman & Velimir Srića – The World is Broken, We Need to Fix It: Path to Strategic Harmony

This book will likely produce a diverse response. The World is Broken, We Need to Fix It: Path to Strategic Harmony, written by co-authors Velimir Srića and Ira Kaufman, lays out an alternative roadmap of sorts for how humanity might reorganize societal structures along more holistic lines. Some will embrace the writers’ detailed vision for how the world can remake itself and repair its ever growing fault lines. Others, however, will likely scoff at the authors’ admittedly idealistic vision for such realignment. Nevertheless, Kaufman and Srića have produced a detailed and well written work of impressive length and examine our modern world at length. They lean on just enough research, plucked from reliable and thoughtful sources, to back their own musings on the subject and their near scholarly tone nevertheless has a conversational air that doesn’t preclude any reader from understanding.

The comprehensive approach adopted for the book benefits from its superb sense of structure. The co-authors move from topic to topic in a way that makes erudite ideas easily digestible for a broad audience. They open with an introduction laying out the general outline for what follows and preface each chapter with a quote from a wide variety of sources that serves as an entry point for the discussion that follows. The book is lengthy, so the strong sense of logic in its structure proves to be essential for making the assortment of ideas it explores clear for readers.

The writing style is equally essential. The writers are obviously educated and thoughtful, yet they also push forward with well chosen and yet comprehensible diction that doesn’t require an advanced college degree to follow. This isn’t a scholarly tome, though they do use a variety of terms throughout the volume that are, perhaps, unfamiliar to many readers. However, the verbiage is often self-evident in its meaning and lacks unnecessary extravagance. The famous Strunk and White dictum of “Omit needless words” when writing definitely serves them well. There is no self indulgence in The World is Broken, We Need to Fix It: Path to Strategic Harmony.

This review will refrain from passing any personal judgments about their ideas for bringing about global change. I can agree with the central premise that we live in an increasingly fractured world and believe the writers should be lauded for presenting a wide-spanning vision for how we can face our challenges and repair the damage. It is certain that, as stated in the review’s opening, many will find their proposals unrealistic in our hyper-partisan and tumultuous society, but at least Kaufman and Srića are engaging these systemic problems with intellectual rigor and more than a little passion. Some will balk at the book’s length, but others will concur with the judgment of this book that extensive damage requires extensive examination. In the end, The World is Broken, We Need to Fix It: Path to Strategic Harmony is a substantive contribution to an ongoing discussion that only seems to get louder and more complex with each passing year.

Michael Rand