Reader with contributions from a project organized by the Calouste Gulbekian Foundation, in which a dozen contributors were asked to comment on the most urgent issues of our time. The contributions, which directly respond to the post-1989 global condition and the position of the West, are heavily informed by the post-9/11 world and the relationship between terrorism and theological/secular ideology, capitalism, and pressures on democracy. See in particular Peter Sloterdijk, The New Grapes of Wrath: Post-Communism–Neo-Liberalism–Islamism and Wang Hui Some Questions about the Historical Explanation of Contemporary China.