Books like Rising Sun

Crichton puts forth a very interesting perspective on the economic relationship between Japan and the USA in this novel. While informative, I feel that Crichton was at times overly pessimistic. He draws a picture of the Japanese annexing the American economy and Japan itself surpassing the US in every degree of first-world status (including GDP). And while he does raise some compelling points, I’m not sure how well the passage of time has supported his assertions. Crichton seemed fully confident in 1992 that the Japanese economy will soon and inevitably surpass that of the US. Well, here we are in 2018 and Japan’s GDP is still only a quarter of the United State’s. Also our debt to GDP ratio is around 1.2 while Japan’s is at a monstrous 2.6.Crichton may have been slightly out of bounds with the doom and gloom in this novel. I’ll give it three stars because I enjoyed Crichton’s cogent and thought-provoking argument.