Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist's riveting account exposes a parallel universe that has become a haven for the rich and powerful.

A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens' rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, and consultants evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness, in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in the new global order--and helping us to see how it might be otherwise--The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.

A New York Times Bestseller!

2019 was the last great year for the world economy.

For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it.

America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going.

Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.

All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.

In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.

The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about our interconnected world - from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all - is about to change.

A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.

Globalization as we know it is over. Industrial policies dismissed as obsolete for decades have been embraced by governments worldwide, geopolitical tensions are rising higher and higher, and resurgent far-right movements are threatening the foundations of contemporary democracies. In this book, Jamie Merchant traces the roots of this decline beyond the oft-blamed failures of the post-Cold War era. Instead, Merchant argues that the great political and economic changes of the last decade are due not to globalization but to the long-term decay of the market-based economic order. By historicizing this period of globalization and decline, Endgame illuminates a path forward for both the global economy and international politics.

Shaun Rein runs the China Market Research Group and has spent his career helping multinationals understand where the opportunities are in China. An American who's lived in Shanghai for 25 years, he has long been one of the biggest China bulls. He now argues that while China is not a must-go destination for all companies and investors, there are still many non-politically sensitive sectors where long-term opportunities can be sought.

The Split analysis the geo-political split between the US and China, China's sharp turn towards socialism and how this will cut into fat margins in many sectors. It explains why corporations in sectors such as semiconductors and AI should stay clear of China and relocate to other countries like Vietnam, India and Mexico. Yet principally, Rein makes the case that that fears about China's shift are far overblown and that for most sectors it should remain the main growth driver for even the largest companies.

Expert insights into China's national policy reforms, its rising middle class seeking to save and invest, and their focus on health and wellness, will inform the international strategic decisions for companies around the world in sectors such as finance, consumer goods and auto.

China will soon eclipse the United States as the world's largest economy and companies will lose out if they do not know how to invest in China properly. No company has been able to get into China for 3 years. Shaun Rein hasn't left. He's therefore uniquely positioned to advise now that China is opening up again.

The Split presents a unique and informed case for why the time is definitely now to capitalize on policy changes and trends in China that will support long-term opportunities for your business.

A bold new account of the state of globalization today--and what its collapse might mean for the world economy

After the Cold War, globalization accelerated at breakneck speed. Manufacturing, transport, and consumption defied national borders, companies made more money, and consumers had access to an ever-increasing range of goods. But in recent years, a profound shift has begun to take place.

Business executives and politicians alike are realising that globalization is no longer working. Supply chains are imperilled, Russia has been expelled from the global economy after its invasion of Ukraine, and China is using these fissures to leverage a strategic advantage. Given these pressures, what will the future of our world economy look like?

In this groundbreaking account, Elisabeth Braw explores the collapse of globalization and the profound challenges it will bring to the West. Drawing on interviews with prominent executives and policymakers from around the world, Braw poses the difficult questions all businesses and economies will face--and traces the intricate story of globalization from the exuberant '90s to the embattled present.

China and the US are in a strategic competition to dominate the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The race is on for new-era technology, data, intellectual property, and the international rules of governance. As American businesses seek new markets and desire to de-risk China's ability to weaponized the interdependency of the two nations, they find themselves in competition with Chinese national corporations elsewhere in the world. American executives must make long-term, expensive decisions about exiting China and assess the ramifications of the complicity and self-censorship they have endured within its borders. But China faces many internal challenges to become the leader of the twenty-first century. DragonTrax outlines these obstacles and China's proposed solutions.

This invaluable book is as bold in its ambitions as it is readable.--Ian Bremmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Crisis

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Kirkus Reviews

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Thomas Friedman, in The World Is Flat, declared globalization the new economic order. But the reign of globalization as we've known it is over, argues Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst Rana Foroohar, and the rise of local, regional, and homegrown business is now at hand.

With bare supermarket shelves and the shortage of PPE, the pandemic brought the fragility of global trade and supply chains into stark relief. The tragic war in Ukraine and the political and economic chaos that followed have further underlined the vulnerabilities of globalization. The world, it turns out, isn't flat--in fact, it's quite bumpy.

This fragmentation has been coming for decades, observes Foroohar. Our neoliberal economic philosophy of prioritizing efficiency over resilience and profits over local prosperity has produced massive inequality, persistent economic insecurity, and distrust in our institutions. This philosophy, which underpinned the last half century of globalization, has run its course. Place-based economics and a wave of technological innovations now make it possible to keep operations, investment, and wealth closer to home, wherever that may be.

With the pendulum of history swinging back, Homecoming explores both the challenges and the possibilities of this new era, and how it can usher in a more equitable and prosperous future.

The surprising story of how Cold War foes found common cause in transforming China's economy into a source of cheap labor, creating the economic interdependence that characterizes our world today.

For centuries, the vastness of the Chinese market tempted foreign companies in search of customers. But in the 1970s, when the United States and China ended two decades of Cold War isolation, China's trade relations veered in a very different direction. Elizabeth Ingleson shows how the interests of US business and the Chinese state aligned to reframe the China market: the old dream of plentiful customers gave way to a new vision of low-cost workers by the hundreds of millions. In the process, the world's largest communist state became an indispensable component of global capitalism.

Drawing on Chinese- and English-language sources, including previously unexplored corporate papers, Ingleson traces this transformation to the actions of Chinese policymakers, US diplomats, maverick entrepreneurs, Chinese American traders, and executives from major US corporations including Boeing, Westinghouse, J. C. Penney, and Chase Manhattan Bank. Long before Walmart and Apple came to China, businesspeople such as Veronica Yhap, Han Fanyu, Suzanne Reynolds, and David Rockefeller instigated a trade revolution with lasting consequences. And while China's economic reorganization was essential to these connections, Ingleson also highlights an underappreciated but crucial element of the convergence: the US corporate push for deindustrialization and its embrace by politicians.

Reexamining two of the most significant transformations of the 1970s--US-China rapprochement and deindustrialization in the United States--Made in China takes bilateral trade back to its faltering, uncertain beginnings, identifying the tectonic shifts in diplomacy, labor, business, and politics in both countries that laid the foundations of today's globalized economy.

For centuries, oceans were the chessboard on which empires battled for supremacy. But in the nuclear age, air power and missile systems dominated our worries about security, and for the United States, the economy was largely driven by domestic production, with trucking and railways that crisscrossed the continent serving as the primary modes of commercial transit.

All that has changed, as nine-tenths of global commerce and the bulk of energy trade is today linked to sea-based flows. A brightly painted forty-foot steel shipping container loaded in Asia with twenty tons of goods may arrive literally anywhere else in the world; how that really happens and who actually profits from it show that the struggle for power on the seas is a critical issue today.

Now, in vivid, closely observed prose, Bruce D. Jones conducts us on a fascinating voyage through the great modern ports and naval bases--from the vast container ports of Hong Kong and Shanghai to the vital naval base of the American Seventh Fleet in Hawaii to the sophisticated security arrangements in the Port of New York. Along the way, the book illustrates how global commerce works, that we are amidst a global naval arms race, and why the oceans are so crucial to America's standing going forward.

As Jones reveals, the three great geopolitical struggles of our time--for military power, for economic dominance, and over our changing climate--are playing out atop, within, and below the world's oceans. The essential question, he shows, is this: who will rule the waves and set the terms of the world to come?

In a constantly changing global environment, businesses must maneuver through cultural, economic, and political intricacies to accomplish long-lasting expansion and adhere to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and regulations. How can businesses effectively handle these complex variables to succeed globally?

Global Markets, Diverse Economies: Integrating Economics, Culture, and ESG Strategies delves into the intricate realm of international business, offering a comprehensive guide to help readers navigate the complexities of global markets. This book underscores the importance of cultural sensitivity, effective change management, and strategic market entry. It explores how businesses can handle cultural differences, manage international teams, and leverage change management techniques to foster innovation and resilience. The text also provides practical frameworks for assessing new markets, understanding geopolitical influences, and developing sustainable business practices that align with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards.

This book is more than just a theoretical investigation. It is a valuable tool connecting theory and practice, serving as a vital resource for business leaders, graduate students, and professionals. It gives readers the understanding needed to implement successful internationalization strategies and encourages them to develop a global perspective necessary for success in today's interconnected society.

[A] fascinating study of how people―and their capital―seek to move around a world that is at once hugely interconnected and driven by inequities...definitive, detailed, and unusually nuanced.
―Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Foreign Affairs

The first comprehensive on-the-ground investigation of the global market for citizenship, examining the wealthy elites who buy passports, the states and brokers who sell them, and the normalization of a once shadowy practice.

Our lives are in countless ways defined by our citizenship. The country we belong to affects our rights, our travel possibilities, and ultimately our chances in life. Obtaining a new citizenship is rarely easy. But for those with the means--billionaires like Peter Thiel and Jho Low, but also countless unknown multimillionaires--it's just a question of price.

More than a dozen countries, many of them small islands in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and South Pacific, sell citizenship to 50,000 people annually. Through six years of fieldwork on four continents, Kristin Surak discovered how the initially dubious sale of passports has transformed into a full-blown citizenship industry that thrives on global inequalities. Some investor citizens hope to parlay their new passport into visa-free travel--or use it as a stepping stone to residence in countries like the United States. Other buyers take out a new citizenship as an insurance policy or to escape state control at home. Almost none, though, intend to move to their selected country and live among their new compatriots, whose relationship with these global elites is complex.

A groundbreaking study of a contentious practice that has become popular among the nouveaux riches, The Golden Passport takes readers from the details of the application process to the geopolitical hydraulics of the citizenship industry. It's a business that thrives on uncertainty and imbalances of power between big, globalized economies and tiny states desperate for investment. In between are the fascinating stories of buyers, brokers, and sellers, all ready to profit from the citizenship trade.

Water is in everything, connecting us all in one way or another, including our family's wealth and health. But here's the problem: water's value went missing from the economy when the EPA came on the scene in the 1970s. The government gave water a much higher value, but it never disclosed that value to the American people. As a result, we have experienced water inflation ever since. Over time that hidden inflation placed a new burden on the financial dreams of the nation. The only way to close that gap and mitigate the rising seas and shrinking freshwater supplies is to put water back in our money. Ultimately we only have two choices on how the price of water will rise in our future: on our terms or someone else's. Will we invest in our children and grandchildren through water, or pay tolls to corporations for it? Waconomics offers domestic and global solutions for citizens, corporations, and governments alike. We can save the American dream with water

PROMISE
Every dollar that Waconomics returns in profit directly goes to Water M. Mission, a nonprofit that stands up for water--that believes in World Water Day, every day One hundred percent is allocated into a philanthropic water mutual fund to be used for effective projects and innovative water solutions around the globe. WM Mission was created to educate the fortunate, provide quality water for every nation and tribe, and use water as a catalyst for worldwide economic liberation.

From one of the most important economic thinkers of our time, a brilliant and far-seeing analysis of the current populist backlash against globalization.

Raghuram Rajan, distinguished University of Chicago professor, former IMF chief economist, head of India's central bank, and author of the 2010 FT-Goldman-Sachs Book of the Year Fault Lines, has an unparalleled vantage point onto the social and economic consequences of globalization and their ultimate effect on our politics. In The Third Pillar he offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how these three forces--the state, markets, and our communities--interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable plane.

The third pillar of the title is the community we live in. Economists all too often understand their field as the relationship between markets and the state, and they leave squishy social issues for other people. That's not just myopic, Rajan argues; it's dangerous. All economics is actually socioeconomics - all markets are embedded in a web of human relations, values and norms. As he shows, throughout history, technological phase shifts have ripped the market out of those old webs and led to violent backlashes, and to what we now call populism. Eventually, a new equilibrium is reached, but it can be ugly and messy, especially if done wrong.

Right now, we're doing it wrong. As markets scale up, the state scales up with it, concentrating economic and political power in flourishing central hubs and leaving the periphery to decompose, figuratively and even literally. Instead, Rajan offers a way to rethink the relationship between the market and civil society and argues for a return to strengthening and empowering local communities as an antidote to growing despair and unrest. Rajan is not a doctrinaire conservative, so his ultimate argument that decision-making has to be devolved to the grass roots or our democracy will continue to wither, is sure to be provocative. But even setting aside its solutions, The Third Pillar is a masterpiece of explication, a book that will be a classic of its kind for its offering of a wise, authoritative and humane explanation of the forces that have wrought such a sea change in our lives.

Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) is a collection of humorous essays and piquant anecdotes underpinned by well-informed insight and highlighted by witty drawings by G. Sapojnikoff. Like a bowl of salted peanuts, these vignettes make you want more. The book was welcomed on its publication as the most entertaining and instructive introduction to the rapidly modernizing people of the new China and their resilient customs. While it has been taught in recent years at the Harvard Business School, the book -- or at least its title -- has been cited much more than read, usually to illustrate American illusions about the China market. Yet the book has lost none of its still perceptive insights into China, which is now more than triple four hundred million.

Crow, living in Shanghai in the early twentieth century], wrote in a bemused manner about city dwellers. While] Crow's book was of little value to the China watcher of the 1950s and 1960s . . . once Chinese reform and opening took off after 1978, the clever city dwellers that Crow described in the 1930s are a far better guide to the China of today than Edgar] Snow's revolutionaries or Pearl] Buck's peasants.

I have a former student, a successful businessman, who opened a factory in Shanghai a few months ago. On his reading stand he keeps a copy of Four Hundred Million Customers. 'No other book, ' he said, 'including many more contemporary works on the Chinese economy, provides as much insight into the business environment I face. And it helps me keep my sense of humor as I face the frustrations of doing business in China.' No need to repeat the wonderful stories and phrases found in the book. Enjoy.
-- from the Introduction by Ezra F. Vogel

An original vision for using technology to transform supply chains into value chains in order to revitalize American communities

When the COVID-19 pandemic led to a global economic shutdown in March 2020, our supply chains began to fail, and out-of-stocks and delivery delays became the new norm. Contrary to public perception, the pandemic strain did not break the current system of supply chains; it merely exposed weaknesses and fault lines that were decades in the making, and which were already acutely felt in deindustrialized cities and depopulated rural towns throughout the United States.

Reinventing the Supply Chain explores the historical role of supply chains in the global economy, outlines where the system went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it, and demonstrates how a retooled supply chain can lead to the revitalization of American communities. Jack Buffington proposes a transformation of the global supply chain system into a community-based value chain, led by the communities themselves and driven by digital platforms for raising capital and blockchain technology.

Buffington proposes new solutions to problems that have been decades in the making. With clear analysis and profound insight, Buffington provides a clear roadmap to a more durable and efficient system.

The world faces a conflux of powerful forces of change. Digital technologies and advances in artificial intelligence are transforming markets, economies, and societies. Global geopolitics is shifting, and the rise of China is challenging the postwar international order led by the United States. Geopolitical tensions are elevated, and so are political polarization and societal anxieties within countries as change creates winners and losers. Nationalist industrial policies and protectionism are surging. Added to this mosaic of change is climate change, which will have profound effects on global patterns of production, investment, and trade.

New Global Dynamics analyzes the implications of these transformations and addresses the new challenges institutions and policymakers face at national and global levels. It examines how these changes are affecting the global economy, the future of globalization, international power structures, and competition in markets, delving into the shifting dynamics in industry, trade, and finance.

International cooperation has become more daunting, but it is essential in matters ranging from the regulation of new technologies to trade policies to global finance to climate transition. In a more contested world, a rules-based international order has become even more critical

The triumphant globalization of the 1990s and early 2000s has given way to a world economy riven by conflict and populism, as the United States, China and other world powers embrace economic nationalism. In The World's Worst Bet, global economics specialist David J. Lynch offers a trenchant, fast-paced narrative of the rise and fall of the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known and sheds important new light on why the march toward greater global integration faltered. How have we fallen so far - from the global hopes of the 1990s to the fractured world and sour, angry politics of the current moment? Lynch explains what went right, what went wrong, and what needs to change to preserve the benefits of global integration and build prosperity for Americans.

Lynch's deep understanding of the tumultuous forces shaping Americans' lives is vividly portrayed through a fascinating cast of characters: presidents and policymakers, factory workers whose jobs vanished amid the euphoria over free trade and whose anger reshaped a nation's politics, and the ideological warriors on the right and left who fought globalization. Their stories illuminate the changing nature of the global economy and what it means for all Americans, from politicians to business executives, workers, and the average citizen. With the world economy at a tipping point, The World's Worst Betis an essential corrective to arguments for economic nationalism. Our future prosperity depends on getting this right.

A bold new account of the state of globalization today--and what its collapse might mean for the world economy

After the Cold War, globalization accelerated at breakneck speed. Manufacturing, transport, and consumption defied national borders, companies made more money, and consumers had access to an ever-increasing range of goods. But in recent years, a profound shift has begun to take place.

Business executives and politicians alike are realising that globalization is no longer working. Supply chains are imperilled, Russia has been expelled from the global economy after its invasion of Ukraine, and China is using these fissures to leverage a strategic advantage. Given these pressures, what will the future of our world economy look like?

In this groundbreaking account, Elisabeth Braw explores the collapse of globalization and the profound challenges it will bring to the West. Drawing on interviews with prominent executives and policymakers from around the world, Braw poses the difficult questions all businesses and economies will face--and traces the intricate story of globalization from the exuberant '90s to the embattled present.