Having drawn a startlingly prescient portrait of the Bosnian catastrophe in his bestseller, Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan now travels more widely and ambitiously. In this gritty tour de force of travel writing and political reportage, he covers an arc from West Africa to Southeast Asia, across a world in which nation-states are giving way to warring nationalities and where metastasizing populations compete for dwindling resources. 6 maps.