The current financial crisis in Asia and South America demonstrates a major impact of globalization. Prize-winning reporter Longworth's timely study is now available in paperback.

We have entered the Anthropocene - the era of massive human impacts on the planet - and the actions of over seven billion residents threaten to destabilize Earth's natural systems, with consequences for human societies. The authors combine the latest science with storytelling and photography to create a new narrative for humanity's future and reject the notion that economic growth and human prosperity can only be achieved at the expense of the environment

Once known for gangsters and meatpacking, Chicago was virtually synonymous with the rough and tumble side of the industrial era. Today, however, Chicago has outgrown even national prominence to become a truly global city--one of the most famous and most important in the world. Global Chicago is the first book to describe Chicago's transformation from industrial powerhouse to global metropolis. It will change the way both Chicagoans and the rest of the world view the city. Chicago has a long history of adaptation. Having gone from a swampy trading post to a major industrial center, Chicago also rebuilt itself in the wake of a devastating fire to become one of the world's great architectural showcases. While many former industrial centers became mere shadows of themselves, Chicago succeeded by transformed itself again. The Chicago of today is a hub for corporate headquarters like those of Motorola, Boeing, and United Airlines. It is a transportation and information crossroads, with the busiest airport in North America as well as the most internet traffic. With over 120 foreign language newspapers, it is also home to vast and vibrant immigrant communities, a focus of global services, and a center for global law and medicine. Essay authors include professors from top institutions, veteran journalists, experts on labor and government, and the presidents of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. By drawing on the expertise of the city's leading players, Global Chicago offers unique insights into the city's global assets and its economic, social, intellectual, and cultural links to the world as seen from an insider's perspective. Their essays probe deeply into the financial and governmental infrastructure crucial for success by reflecting on specific lessons to be learned from the example of worldwide Chicago businesses. Amidst the ruthless international competition that characterizes globalization, Chicago makes decisions today that will affect both its success and character for the coming century. Global Chicago serves simultaneously as a catalog of achievements that would make anyone proud to call the city home and a timely counsel for ensuring its future as a world leader.

Global Backlash is the first book to move beyond the monolithic portrayal of the globalization protests that have escalated since Seattle and are not likely to abate soon. With trenchant analysis and dozens of primary documents from a variety of popular and uncommon sources, Robin Broad explores proposals and initiatives coming from the backlash to answer the question, 'But what do they want?' A range of sophisticated propositions and a vibrant debate among segments of the backlash emerge. Highly readable and analytically powerful, this book is vital to understanding the most potent protest movement of our times.

Two social scientists chart the consequences of the global economy on women across the world, revealing the underground economy that has turned many poor women into virtual slaves.

Cultural pessimism arises with the conviction that the culture of a nation, a civilisation or of humanity itself is in a process of irreversible decline. In an incisive and wide-ranging analysis, Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World charts the growth of pessimism in the West during the last decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on studies from within a very broad range of fields, which include ecology, human rights, military history, international relations, criminology, history of science, cultural criticism and political economy, the author shows how cultural pessimism in the postmodern world can be related to the cumulative effect of four key narratives of decline:*Environmental decline*Moral decline*Intellectual decline*Political declineAfter a review of pessimism in other historical periods, each of these narratives is explored in depth. The book attempts to answer a number of questions: how are the narratives constituted and what are the conditions to which they refer? To what extent are those conditions historically unprecedented? To which cultures do the narratives relate? What values do they reflect? To what extent are the identified processes of decline seen as irreversible? Concluding that cultural pessimism is as much a matter of psychological and biological disposition as of intellectual judgement, Oliver Bennett's challenging book offers valuable new insights into how we view the prospects of the twenty-first century.Features:*Provides an authoritative account of how the postmodern world has been represented as one of decline. *Brings together different perspectives kept apart by professional and academic specialisation*Views culture in its broadest sense as 'a whole way of life'*Provides an historical overview of cultural pessimism, tracing its various manifestations from the modern period back to its existence in early religions*Examines the biological, psychological and sociolog

Global competition now shapes economies and societies in ways unimaginable only a few years ago, and competition (or 'antitrust') law is a key component of the legal framework for global competition. These laws are intended to protect competition from distortion and restraint, and on the national level they reflect the relationships between markets, their participants, and those affected by them. The current legal framework for the global economy is provided, however, by national laws and institutions. This means that those few governments that have sufficient 'power' to apply their laws to conduct outside their own territory provide the norms of global competition. This has long meant that the US (and, more recently, the EU) structure global competition, but China and other countries are increasingly using their economic and political leverage to apply their own competition laws to global markets. The result is increasing uncertainty, costs, and conflicts that burden global economic development. This book examines competition law on the global level and reveals its often complex and little-understood dynamics. It focuses on the interactions between national and international legal regimes that are central to these dynamics and a key to understanding them. Part I examines the evolution of the current global system, the factors that have shaped it, how it operates today, and recent efforts to alter that system-e.g., by including competition law in the WTO. Part II focuses on national competition law systems, revealing how national laws and experiences shape global competition law dynamics and how global factors, in turn, shape national laws and experiences. It examines the central roles of US and European law and experience, and it also pays close attention to countries such as China that are playing increasingly important roles in the global competition law arena. Part III analyzes current strategies for improving the legal framework for global competition and identifies the factors that may contribute to a system that more effectively supports global economic and political development. This analysis also suggests a pathway for moving toward that goal.