There is a joke that goes something like this: a Chinese couple visit some American relatives in the United States. After a few days of taking in the sights the father asks one of the relatives, "How can you stand to live in such a poor country?"

Poor in this context means economically, but certainly one can define the word any number of ways. Asia -- China, India and even Japan -- is ascending. And we in the West? Well, our day in the sun is probably over.

As author Patrick Smith explains in the three thoroughly absorbing essays that make up "Somebody's Else's Century," Asia no longer is trying to assimilate to the West's overbearing and historically invasive cultural and economic trends. Now we must learn to adapt -- if we can. And, honestly, we haven't had much experience.

Smith uses his own stories, earned from living and writing in Asia for many years, while expertly augmenting his theory with the history of how Asia abandoned its own rich, ancient identity in reaction to the arrival of "Western things." The writing is more poetic in tone than political, a gentle hand-holding, guiding readers from past to present.

To lose one's identity is devastating. Smith writes that culture and identity in China and Japan, especially, became "pickled, like some kind of squid specimen or a human organ immersed in a jar of formaldehyde. They are no longer living."

India has fared somewhat better in the wake of the Raj, but it is also at a crossroads. The nation has not razed its ancient cities to build mega factories like China has, nor has it, like Japan, glommed onto the vapid consumerism we so readily export. The democratic country of 600,000 villages has, instead, found itself rushing ahead to plan for a Western-style prosperity built around a booming IT industry that is unsustainable, given the incredible poverty that still exists. (It is important to note that the middle class of India, around 300 million people, is defined by someone making 87 U.S. cents a day.)

Smith writes that India is caught up in a vision of modernity. "Stop worrying about poverty and prepare for prosperity? As Gandhi liked to put it, people with such thoughts do not know their India." He goes on to suggest that India will use its "eccentricity" to methodically blend Indian improvisation, called jugaad, with the Western model, but it will do so at its own pace.

All of this shifting of world power from West to East is a clarion call for the United States to also remake itself. This will not come easy, because it implies that we are no longer the biggest, toughest nation on the planet. Yet, how is that working for us lately?

Smith concludes, quite convincingly, "We can clash with other 'civilizations,' or we can converse. The invitation to the latter is extended; it is ours to accept or decline."

Stephen J. Lyons' new book is "The 1,000-Year Flood: Destruction, Loss, Rescue, and Redemption Along the Mississippi River."