Do businesses benefit from going global? Are we creating winner-take-all societies? Will globalization seal the triumph of junk culture? What will happen to individual careers? Gathering evidence from the shantytowns of Sco Paolo to the boardroom of General Electric, from the troubled Russia-Estonia border to the booming San Fernando Valley sex industry, Micklethwait and Wooldridge mount a powerful, witty, levelheaded defense of globalization.

Along the way, the authors introduce us to the cosmocrats - the members of the elite business, information, and diplomatic class who are creating the new world order. They also identify three engines of globalization and describe how people are managing and governing in an increasingly global era. As they did in The Witch Doctors, the authors also brilliantly puncture myths and conventional wisdom, separating false hopes from emerging realities.