If you are interested (and you likely should be), in an antidote or intellectual time-out to the chaos and change detailed on this blog and in BNW, I recommend that you read my friend Thomas Barnett's new book, "Great Powers." It is a relentlessly optimistic book. Optimistic about America, the World, and your future.
Whereas my view of the world is of an ungoverned and increasingly chaotic supersystem (composed of markets, networks, and more) that has diminished the role of nation-states and opened the door to small groups to displace them, Tom's view is that the global system as we see it today is merely a transitional frontier en route to a world that is as economically (and to a lesser extent socially/politically) integrated as America's states. The 21st Century, according to Tom's thesis, IS America's Century: the time when the American model maps to the world.
The current economic crisis, when viewed through this lens, is merely a speed bump on the way to this final integration (rather than being a sign of an increasingly non-linear global system that will hollow out states and recast how we live and work). I suspect that given the approach of the book, it would be Tom's belief that this crisis will be seen (in hindsight) as a golden opportunity for improvement. As the time when we finally got our regulatory arms around the global economic and financial system and brought it back into service of collective economic progress.
In short, it is a great read. While I didn't agree with much in the book, it made me think -- which is the only true test of a book on strategy.