The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars | 36 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 01-06-2025


About this item

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TOP 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable…What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect.”—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker

"A season of unrest looms ahead, and The Hidden Globe lays out the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.”—Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

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.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Captain K
    5.0 out of 5 stars Geography Turned On Its Head
    Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2024
    This book is among the most fascinating that I have read in years. It makes an interesting counterpart to Anne Applebaum's "Autocracy, Inc." Ms. Abrahamian's approach to the unfathomable corruption that too often attends great wealth is, more than anything, a work of geography, as the inventive tactics for secreting vast sums of money and avoiding taxation have greatly stretched the traditional limits of sovereignty, as well as our notions of what governments themselves can do to raise money. Very little of this largesse spreads to any but the hyper-rich, despite their promises that they intend to spread prosperity to all. No better portrait of "Davos Man" has been painted. I freely assume nothing will, or even can, be done about any of it.
  • J. Dresslar
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and eye-opening
    Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2024
    Wow, what a book! For someone like me who considers himself pretty conversant in international affairs, this book was not just a fascinating revelation, but it turned upside down my view of what plutocrats and hypocritical governments (including the US and the Aussies, ferhevvinsakes) can design to facilitate the nearly-secret skirting of tax, environmental and human rights laws. And the fact that the author actually met with the designers of these enclaves is of amazing historical value; imagine if someone could have sat down with John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan at the turn of the 20th century and gotten candid assessments of their impact upon American finance and industry. Ultimately, I can't encapsulate it better than the Editorial Reviews' snippets on this page: “Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable"; “Fascinating—reads like a novel yet packs a policy punch for anyone interested in global migration, licit and illicit corporate networks, legal fictions and realities, and the ongoing mutation of the nation-state"; “A survey of all the world’s purposely hidden crannies and crevices, the places where chronologies collapse and laws are loosened and entire nations are put up for sale… The world Abrahamian depicts is truly visible only to those who know where to look—it is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere and, to swipe a phrase, almost too big to see.”
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling
    Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2024
    Superbly reported, vivid and thrilling.
  • John Creet
    5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden in Plain Sight
    Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2024
    Great book on the way elites interact with each other and borders are just paper tigers.

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