Atossa Araxia Abrahamian - The Hidden Globe - The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

Written by The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
Read by Patrick Harrison
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 96 Kbps

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
By: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Narrated by: Patrick Harrison
Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 10-08-24
Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Audio

Publisher’s summary

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.

©2024 Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable … ranges far beyond obscured transactions and nested shell companies to much weirder patterns of jurisdictional flexibility …What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect.”—The New Yorker

“An engrossing journey. . . Abrahamian is a perfect guide . . . One of the most innovative contributions of The Hidden Globe is to highlight how these realms outside the governance of nation-states offer unchecked privilege and wealth for a select few while also increasing some of the most extreme forms of vulnerability and precarity that exist today.”—The Nation

“A brilliant expose of international tax havens reveals how the ruling class shapes our world… In her stellar work of literary journalism, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian peels back murky history and legalese to expose the machinations of these enclaves, how they thrive beyond the reach of laws, sovereign unto themselves… A season of unrest looms ahead, and The Hidden Globe lays out the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune