Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz Basic Books, 321 pp., $26.95 China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 342 pp., $26.00 China's Urban Transition by John Friedmann University of Minnesota Press, 168 … Continue reading The Chinese Shadow II

Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz Basic Books, 321 pp., $26.95 China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 342 pp., $26.00 1. The "rise" of China has suddenly become the all-absorbing topic … Continue reading The Chinese Shadow

Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis and the Road to World War II by Ian Kershaw Penguin, 488 pp., $29.95 1. Two themes run through the life and career of Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry. The first is the decline and fall of the British aristocracy; the second is British … Continue reading In the Führer’s Face

One World: The Ethics of Globalization by Peter Singer Yale University Press, 235 pp., $21.95 Free Trade Today by Jagdish Bhagwati Princeton University Press, 128 pp., $35.00; $14.95 (paper) The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF by Paul Blustein Public Affairs, 435 pp., $18.00 (paper) World on … Continue reading One World?

The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth by Liah Greenfeld Harvard University Press, 541 pp., $45.00 Lectures on Economic Growth by Robert E. Lucas Jr. Harvard University Press, 204 pp., $49.95 1. The question of what causes economies to grow is theoretically interesting and practically important. If we could discover the secrets of economic … Continue reading The Mystery of Growth

The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 by Niall Ferguson Basic Books, 552 pp., $30.00 1. In 1987 the historian Paul Kennedy published a controversial book called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Its message was that the United States … Continue reading What Makes the World Go Round?

Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros Public Affairs, 365 pp., $26.00 George Soros is the best-known financial speculator of our time, godfather of hedge funds, those fast-moving and largely unregulated raiders in the corporate jungle that make their killings from fluctuations in the prices of stocks, commodities, currencies. When he writes books readers … Continue reading The World on a String

Review of Karl Marx: A Life by Francis Wheen Norton, 431 pp., $27.95 1. When Karl Marx was twenty-four, a contemporary wrote of him: "Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel fused into one person…and you have Dr. Marx." Marx was not one of those brilliant young men who fail to live up to their … Continue reading What’s Left of Marx?

Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia by James Fox Simon and Schuster, 496 pp., $30.00 1. In the early 1980s, the English writer James Fox was shown a large trunk at his grandfather's house in Northamptonshire covered in Cunard and White Star steamship stickers. On inspection it turned out to contain thousands of letters between … Continue reading All in the Family

The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson Viking, 658 pp., $34.95 The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson Penguin, 518 pp., $18.95 (paper) 1. In his delightful memoirs, the art historian Kenneth Clark recalls that Lord Cunliffe, governor of the Bank of England, came to lunch with his … Continue reading Family Values