Political Tribes
Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations
The bestselling author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua offers a bold new prescription for reversing our foreign policy failures and overcoming our destructive political tribalism at home
Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most – the ones that people will kill and die for – are ethnic, religious, sectarian, or clan-based. But because America tends to see the world in terms of nation-states engaged in great ideological battles – Capitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism, the “Free World” vs. the “Axis of Evil” – we are often spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics. Time and…
Amy Chua is the John M. Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is a noted expert in the fields of international business, ethnic conflict, and globalization. Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, a New York Times bestseller, was selected by both the Economist and the UK's Guardian as one of the Best Books of the Year. Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall, was a critically acclaimed Foreign Affairs bestseller. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and two daughters.