BOOK REVIEW : ‘Tribes’ Packs More Punch on the Radio : TRIBES How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy : by Joel Kotkin Random House:$24; 343 pages

“Tribes” is a lot more fun to talk about than it is to read. It’s easy to picture author Joel Kotkin on a lively radio show fielding calls from Jews irritated because they think he’s saying there are too many Jews in the media and from Koreans offended because he has left them out of the top five tribes.

But somehow “Tribes,” in its print version, manages to be provocative without being interesting.

Kotkin’s book brings the disturbing news that, as empires collapse and national boundaries blur, all you can count on is your uncle in the garment business.

A fellow at Pepperdine University’s School of Business and Management, Kotkin writes about five ethnic groups that have been enormously successful economically. The big five are the Jews, the Chinese, the Japanese, the British and the Indians.

Kotkin will probably be misunderstood to be arguing that these five tribes rule the Earth; he intends them to be models of behavior. They have in common a belief in themselves as special, a hunger for knowledge and faith in hard work and education. He likes the image of the 19th-Century Scot, the turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrant and the 20th-Century Indian--each working 18-hour days and sleeping on the factory floor.

Kotkin acknowledges that the British aren’t exactly economic exemplars at the moment.

By British “tribe,” he means those hard-working 19th-Century Anglo-Scottish-American industrialists and inventors. Although the city banks of London still control a lot of capital and most of the world’s large corporations are American, Kotkin realizes that today’s Anglo-Americans have come to “suffer from the growth of corrupt and lethargic elites.”

In contrast, Kotkin believes that the 55 million overseas Chinese are riding high at the moment, with well-established financial centers in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong and in developing centers in Vancouver and Los Angeles.

In Kotkin’s world, you are either invading or being invaded. We read of “pushy” and “clannish” groups fighting for economic dominance, of Indian tribes “establishing beachheads” around the world. The effect isn’t to make the reader resolve to study harder, work longer hours and sleep on the floor of the factory; instead you want to rush out and marry a Chinese Jew with a Parsee grandmother.

At times “Tribes” feels like a morning report on racial futures: Bet your money on the Indians as the next major economic force but be aware of those dark horses, the Armenians and Lebanese and look out for the possibility of Mormons coming up on the inside.

The author seems to know a fair number of things but not to understand a lot. We learn that “white” students in math and science at UCLA refer to their school as “the University of Caucasians Lost Among Asians.”

What does he want us to think about this?

The reader gets the feeling that the author hasn’t really grappled with his material. In some cases he hasn’t even collected it himself. Most of the quotations come from magazine articles by someone else or interviews conducted by a research assistant.

There are few interesting personal encounters, although a forced touch of verisimilitude is added by having the subject sip his coffee or drop two sugar cubes into his milky tea or “sit nervously, pondering his far-flung concerns,” as if he’s Edmond Rothschild.

Kotkin, meanwhile, is a static and remote presence, repeating to a painful degree the words linkages and hegemonies. (He uses the odd word hegemon, which must come from the Greek word for leader but sounds vaguely Jamaican.) The voices in the book, author and interview subjects alike, come off as lifeless, inadvertently underscoring the depressing message that tribes count, money counts, but individuals don’t.

It’s not clear if Kotkin means to urge people or companies or other tribes to behave like the five tribes he favors. Should you join ranks with your uncle in the garment business? Should company employees swear an oath of blood brotherhood? Should the people of Estonia rise up and behave like Chinese?

Kotkin expresses a lot of admiration for people who are bound by religious traditions and family loyalty. But what these five groups seem to have most in common is that their members work their tails off. As the verse from Proverbs Kotkin quotes at the beginning of his book puts it: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.”