Discussed in this essay:

The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, by Robyn Meredith. W.W. Norton. 268 pages. $25.95.

Escape from Empire: The Developing World's Journey Through Heaven and Hell, by Alice H. Amsden. MIT Press. 197 pages. $27.50.

In a widely circulated essay published in 1941, Henry Luce, the founder and editor of Time, Fortune, and Life, exhorted his fellow countrymen "to create the first great American Century." Americans weren't only to promote "a system of free economic enterprise." As "inheritors of all the great principles of Western civilization--above all Justice, the love of Truth, the ideal of ...