The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
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.
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is an intrepid journalist whose extensive writing on the cracks in the nation-state system has appeared everywhere from The New York Times and the New York Review of Books to the London Review of Books and other publications.
Now, her latest book, The Hidden Globe (Riverhead Books), will forever change how you perceive the world in which we live, work, travel, and are governed. We may think we exist within clearly divided nation-states, but Abrahamian exposes the many places where this perception is more fiction than reality.
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.
From Switzerland to Singapore, Honduras to Dubai, Mauritius to Laos, the Arctic to outer space, Abrahamian guides readers through the special economic zones that prop up world trade, the oceans where ships sail flags of convenience often belonging to landlocked countries, the micro-states rewriting the laws of outer space, and the polar archipelagos that redefine the idea of national sovereignty.
Combining history, political analysis, and legal theory with on-the-ground reporting and profiles of a colorful assortment of consultants, businessmen, theorists, lawyers, and ideologues, she shows how greed, idealism, and opportunism drove the invention of radically new forms of political and economic space.
The book has already received much praise.
“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
“Sharply observed descent into the labyrinth of finance and semantics with which nations and the superrich secure their wealth … A multilayered tale of how privilege works to protect itself.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A revelatory look at a globe-spanning collection of ‘offshore jurisdictions,’ ‘legal black holes,’ and ‘free zones’ … Abrahamian begins by delving into the histories of contemporary tax havens … but her scope is far broader … an impressive achievement.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
The Hidden Globe provides essential context for headline news about globalization, deportation, international money laundering, and cryptocurrency. And with much of the political discourse around the upcoming American presidential election framed as a face-off between nationalism and globalism, Abrahamian astutely highlights the degree to which nationalism is not globalism’s binary opposite but rather whatever the rhetoric, is profoundly entwined with and dependent upon it.
About the Author:
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, the London Review of Books, and other publications. The author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen and a 2024 New America National Fellow, she has worked as an editor at The Nation, an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America, and a reporter for Reuters. She grew up in Geneva and lives in Brooklyn.
Publish Date: October 8, 2024
Genre: Business, Historical
Author: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Page Count: 336 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books
ISBN: 978-0593329856
