Tom Searcy's and Henry DeVries' "How to Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett"

Shameless book plug here.   I've known Tom Searcy for a while (see his interview of me here) and he's written a really cool book with Henry J. DeVries entitled, How to Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett: Lessons from the World's Greatest Dealmaker.  I did an early review a while back and offered a blurb which appears in the front material and on the back cover.  In full it reads:

Searcy and DeVries have made their own science of dissecting how persuasion leads to decisions leads to big deals.  This book is Dale Carnegie reconfigured for the business world.

--Thomas Barnett, contributing editor of Esquire and author
of Great Powers: America and the World After Bush

The book's promo page is found here.

The book basically parses out Buffett's many maxims on how to conduct one's business life, with the proximate focus being which deals to pursue and close. But like any good book, this one actually speaks about a whole lot more than the subject material at hand. In sum, it has an almost spiritual feel, as it's as much a guide to a life well led as a deal well structured.

I do highly recommend it.

Understanding where China's head is at

FT book review of "Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China" by Jianying Zha. I just really liked the opening bit by reviewer David Pilling, an FT journalist/columnist whose beat is currently China:

Many westerners who are rightly incensed at the treatment of dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo or Ai Weiwei probably have a false impression of what modern China feels like. They imagine a uniformly repressive society in which people are afraid to speak out and where the heavy hand of the state reaches into every crevice of life.

This view is not without some truth. But for many middle-class city dwellers, China could not feel more different. For them, today’s China is a fantastic adventure, a lunge into a world of previously unimagined possibilities. Even among the generation that lived through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, this is widely regarded as the most optimistic time to be alive in China in hundreds of years.

I think that simple notion is very hard for most in the West to understand, especially since our grasp of the Cultural Revolution's depth and historical reach is hard to understand. Take Xi Jinping, who will be the next president and rule through 2022: his bio includes being jailed several times as a teenager by the Red Guard because of his father's ideological sins. Xi is considered a very company man - very careful. And his early years probably account for that.  

So here we are: seeing political leadership impact stretch a good half century past the actual events. In the US, comparable experiences would be the Civil War and WWII (think of GHW Bush as the last WWII president leaving office in 1993 - almost 50 years post-WWII). It's that big of an event, and it creates a profound sense of optimism and wariness in its shadow: people remember well how bad it was and value highly how good it's been since the "rise" began.

And you know what? The vast bulk of them don't want to mess with that at all - for now. But a new tipping point looms - I believe - in about 20 more years, because the Xi's of China are replaced by the kids whose first memories are all Deng-and-beyond. For them, Mao's insanities are just stories their parents and grandparents tell. They have known only the "rise" and thus will be far more demanding. They're mostly carefully thinking and acting along these lines today, and as their numbers move into power, and as  they face even greater demand - and less historical awareness from below, the change will come. 

It can always come a bit earlier or a bit later because of this or that unforeseen event, but the demographics will make it so.

And that's why I don't worry too much about China and democracy - as we misuse the term. The true and comprehensive republic will come; it's been there before. It'll come because the Chinese will demand it.

This is why I can work with the Center for America-China Partnership and still be critical of China.

Deep Reads: "Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction (Volume Three: 1990-2000, revised)" (2010)

The latest revised edition of my Mother's life work in literature: an exhaustive encyclopedia of female protagonists in English-language mysteries  Volume I covered 1860-1979, Volume II covered 1980-1989, and Volume III finished the century out. Protagonists are entered by the year of their first of their multiple appearances.  

The growth in the genre is made apparent in this manner:  from 1861, when "Mrs Paschal" is the first bona fide English-language mystery female protagonist, to 1979, 347 series characters were introduced, or just over 3 a year.  Then, in the 1980s, 298 were introduced, or roughly 30 a year.  In the last decade of the century, the number jumped to 547, or 55 a year.

The book starts with an analysis of how the portrayal of women in mysteries changed over time, reflecting changes in society.  The entries for Volume three include:  marriage and children, parents and siblings, pets and cars as substitutes (for the previous, as many protagonists are motherless women with distant, cop fathers), villains, ethnic and  gender sub-genres (lotsa lesbians over time), handicaps and skills, education, settings, innovations, and how all this reflected the real world of the 1990s.  The entries tend to run 1-2 pages.  The volume runs 1,056 pages.

My Mom's bio is a great example of her clean and direct writing style:

Colleen A. Barnett was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the daughter of a trial attorney [and Packer Hall of Fame inductee!] and his wife.  She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin in Madison [I was the only child to follow her in political science, but now you know where I got it from]. She dropped out of law school after three semesters to marry fellow student John Barnett. When they moved to his home town of Boscobel, Wisconsin, where he joined his father in the practice of law, she remained at home to raise their family of seven children [two early sons died in their first two years]. By the time their youngest child [my younger brother by 3 years] was in grade school, older children were entering college and that was expensive.

Colleen began work as a volunteer coordinator for the Grant Country Department of Social Services [I used to appear in radio spots for Big Brothers], rising to supervisor of the resource unit. Later, she took early retirement with John's encouragement to re-enter the University of Wisconsin Law School where she received her law degree cum laude [and threw her cane over the goal post at Camp Randall during halftime of the homecoming football game, as is the custom].

Later she was employed as an attorney and mediator, and as a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Richland Center.  She retired at age 75 to focus on the revisions of the first three volumes of Mystery Women. Her future plans include spending more time with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and reading for pleasure.

After John's death, Colleen moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where her two daughters live.  She is a member of the Twin Cities Sisters in Crime.

The volume series is an amazing accomplishment for a women who's led a busy life.  It is exceptionally well organized and has multiple indices (author, year, character, book).  It is considered one of the definitive reference works in the mystery field, and Mom was nominated several times for major literary awards (Edgars, Agathas), winning one along the way (an Agatha from Malice Domestic in 2002).  I went to the Edgars with her in 2004 (during a break in my Pentagon's New Map book tour) when this book was nominated for best criticism/biographical.

My mom still attends the major conferences every year with my wife Vonne, often chairing panels. They'll be at Malice Domestic in DC in early May.  Last year Vonne got to sit in for a long workshop chat with Charlaine Harris of "True Blood" fame.

The series is available on Amazon.  Mom includes Metsu and Abebu in this edition's dedication.

Israel plays start-up to China's big firm

Tweeted this one earlier this week, but want to post as well.

WSJ technology columnist Peter Stein noting how Israeli private equity firm is specializing in marketing intellectual property from small local high-tech companies to big Chinese manufacturing firms.

You read Baumol et. al's "Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism," and you come away with the argument that the best mix is to have big go-to-market firms surrounded by a sea of small, innovative high-tech firms that feed the beasts. The authors claimed that America was basically there, in terms of that evolution, having added the high-tech small firms with the IT revolution energizing our innovation base in a number of industries.  Their addition evolved our economy past the big-firm era that marked the post-WWII decades through the difficult 1970s.  The authors also argued that big-firm China was trying to make a similar evolution happen and was succeeding somewhat.

Now with the Great Recession, we get two counter-arguments coming to the fore:  1) globalization is slowly robbing America of its industrial base through off-shoring of manufacturing and losing the proximity between innovation and manufacturing is making us less competitive; and 2) China's increasing reliance on/championing of national flagship companies signals a retreat from further marketization.

My sense is always that linear projections usually fail, so waxing and waning is the norm.  You go too fast down one path, so you pull your foot off the pedal for a period.  I think some American companies in some sectors are recognizing the need to more closely tie innovation with manufacturing.  But in others, like automotive, you don't have a whole lot of choice given the market expansion going on in Asia and Latin America.  

In general, I'm a big believer in IBM CEO Sam Palmisano's notion of a globally-integrated enterprise that sources local, R&Ds local, hires local, manufactures local and sells local--just all over the world.  It's the truly globalized or truly distributed version of the old multinational.  I think companies that do that will fare best over the long haul, understanding that, as countries "rise," they're naturally going to want to carve out space in their expanding domestic market for national flagship companies.  To me, this is China's path right now, along with a firm desire to lock-in access to raw materials around the world through their state-run extractive industries and farm land leasing/purchases.  I think that mindset is a bit 20th century (supply risk oriented versus price risk oriented), but there you have it when a single-party state remains in power.  

Now how China seeks to extend its evolution toward that big firm/small firm mix is to force foreign companies who seek entry into its expanding domestic market to turn over their technologies in joint ventures, something that's naturally going to create a lot of friction.

Less friction filled is what this Israeli private-equity firm is doing. Infinity Group is simply treating China like one giant big firm to which new technologies can be sold, with it playing matchmaker. The process reminds some of when Silicon Valley did the same for Taiwan way back when. Like Taiwan, China wants--nay, NEEDS--to move up the food chain rapidly in order to bring similar development to its better-than-a-half-billion interior rural pool that it has to-date achieved with the urbanized coastal provinces. Then there's China's demographic clock ticking, reflected in the long-term loss of 100m workers by 2050 and the piling up of 400m-plus elders by then.

To me, this is a next, natural phase for globalization, with smart small countries becoming more Israel-like and big, labor-filled developing countries emulating China's strategy, which, quite frankly, isn't unique whatsoever and really is just an updating of what Japan did (the Michael Pettis argument).  If China were to achieve the same per capita GDP growth that Japan did, it could grow rapidly for another quarter century, says Martin Wolf, but . . .

The most interestingly pessimistic view comes from Michael Pettis of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. The characteristic of Chinese growth is that it is “unbalanced”, as Mr Wen notes: it is highly dependent on investment as a source of demand and driver of supply (see charts). It is, in a sense, the most “capitalist” economy ever.

Thus, between 1997 and 2009, gross investment rose from 32 per cent to 46 per cent of GDP, while household consumption fell from 45 per cent of GDP to a mere 36 per cent. This must be the lowest share of consumption in any significant economy ever. In a country with hundreds of millions of poor people, it is even shocking. Meanwhile, the rising investment rate has been the main driver of growth. In the early 2000s, “total factor productivity” – increases in output per unit of input – were also important. But the contribution of higher efficiency has been waning.

This, Prof Pettis argues, is a “souped-up version” of the Asian development model we saw in Japan and South Korea in earlier decades. The characteristics of this production-oriented approach are:

• transfers from households to manufacturing, via low interest rates on savings
• repressed wages and a depressed exchange rate
• very high investment
• rapid growth of exports; and 
• high external surpluses. 

China is “Japan plus”: its investment rate is higher, trade surpluses larger, rate of consumption lower and exchange rate intervention bigger.

This has been an extraordinarily successful development model, but, notes Prof Pettis, it eventually runs into the constraints of “massive over-investment and misallocated capital”. He continues: “In every case I can think of it has been very difficult to change the growth model because too much of the economy depends on hidden subsidies.” Moreover, China’s scale will shift the price of imports, particularly raw materials, against it, so accelerating the decline in profits.

In China, a rising rate of investment is needed to maintain a given rate of economic growth. At some point, investment will stop rising and growth will slow. China will then face the Japanese challenge: how to sustain demand as the required rate of investment collapses. If, for example, the gross investment needed to sustain a 10 per cent rate of growth is 50 per cent of GDP, then the rate of investment required to sustain 6 per cent growth might be just 30 per cent of GDP. With its massive dependence on investment as a source of demand, any decline in expected growth threatens a huge recession.

One answer would be another government-driven investment surge, however low the returns. The more attractive answer is faster growth of consumption. There is evidence of that during the past two years. But, as Prof Pettis notes, for consumption to grow consistently faster than GDP, household disposable income must also do so. Yet if this is to happen, income must be shifted from the corporate sector. That implies a squeeze on profits, through higher interest rates, higher real wages or a higher exchange rate. But that increases the risk of an investment collapse, with dire consequences for demand. As Prof Pettis argues, in China “growth is high ... because consumption is low”. Rebalancing the economy towards household consumption could undermine the ability to sustain growth itself. If so, China is on an investment treadmill.

Old story:  there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  How China has grown makes it harder--with each passing year--to get off the investment treadmill. But that investment level, and the requirements of a trade surplus to feed it, creates it own negative feedback look, which China is just beginning to encounter.  Can it run a huge trade imbalance with the developing world like it did with the West, using renminbi this time around?  Pretty tall order considering its resource draw.  Pettis's point isn't that China can't rebalance, just that it won't be a smooth journey.

But I can't help thinking that the work of Infinity Group is a big plus on this score:  helping move China up for the production/labor wage chain by outsourcing the start-up function to a certain extent while it slowly builds that capacity at home.  Naturally, if you're already a big firm and have amassed a lot of IP, you don't want to hand it over to China as price of admission, but if you're a start-up high-tech firm who needs a go-to-market partner, I can see you being indifferent on the nationality, meaning I think we'll see this become a significant trend in the global economy.  Like Baumol et. al's preferred model, I think we'll see something similar in terms of small and large states.  In a globalized world, tech firms in small states have no choice but to go global because the domestic market is so small (why Israel is such a high-tech incubator).  

On that basis, I become even more convinced that the "clash of civilizations" will end up being a big nothing in retrospect, meaning merely a fraidy-cat capture of when globalization starting truly opening up previously-closed civilizations, triggering a totally natural uptick in cultural friction.  But you look at an Israel making this happen with China and you say to yourself, in a clash-of-civilization world, this shouldn't work--yes?  And yet it does, because Israel needs to do this and China needs to do this and that economic logic surmounts all.

Deep Reads: "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" (1999)

Still by far my favorite Thomas Friedman book, it's easily the one that's had the biggest overall impact on my career, because when it came out I had been trying, for about half a decade at that point, to cast myself as a "globalization expert."  It was tough going in the sense that a lot of established experts pooh-poohed the notion even as the concept became ascendant.  Friedman's book really put it over the top and, by doing so, turned my quest from seemingly pathetic to seemingly prophetic.  For me, then, this was an immensely empowering book that helped enable the most important career evolution of my life to date.

When people send me emails about "The Pentagon's New Map" altering their life-paths, I truly appreciate the notion, because this is the book that did the same thing for me.  

Deep Reads: "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" (1979) & "Theodore Rex" (2001)

Edmund Morris' classic, with a prologue that is beyond brilliant--really the best preface I've ever read.  This book and its sequel in 2001 were huge influences on my "Great Powers."  

Until I read these books, I always wondered how you could put TR on Rushmore with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.  I no longer consider that a stretch for TR--whatsoever.

Anyone who's read my history-of-America in "Great Powers" knows TR is the pivotal figure in so many ways, not the least of which being the profound influence he had on his cousin--FDR.

If you're only going to read one, read the first, simply because the ride up is always more interesting than the time at the top. As soon as I read this book, I thought to myself, why isn't there a big Hollywood movie of such a seminal figure in our history. Scorsese is making a movie of the book, with DiCaprio in the title role. Scorsese makes a lot of sense, because of the NYC connection.

A third book, "Colonel Roosevelt" is allegedly coming out in a matter of weeks!

Deep Reads: "John Adams" (2001)

Pretty easy choice.  After reading "Truman," I knew I had to read this finally, especially as I liked the HBO miniseries so much.

McCullough does such a great job of according Adams his rightful place in American history. More than any man, he's behind the Declaration of Independence, even if Jefferson gets the credit for penning the text.

I'm only about a quarter through, and I keep the book by my bed for nights when I have trouble falling asleep, which means I treat it like an old friend.

My favorite bits all have to do with Adams' worrying about whether his life will have meaning and how he deals with his insecurities--very humanizing.

I wasn't ecstatic about Paul Giamatti being picked to play him, because Giamatti, while a great actor, doesn't exactly scream out New Englander.  But I loved David Morse as George Washington, a guy who deserves a serious HBO treatment all the more.

The Adams family has long been a quiet obsession of mine, along with Vonne, because we lived in Quincy for a couple of years and Vonne worked in Braintree, where Adams was born and lived. So we're very familiar with all the historical sites.

Deep Reads: "West From Appomattox" (2007)

Great book that a reader recommended during my run-up to writing "Great Powers," and it was a perfect suggestion.

The basic thesis:  Reconstruction wasn't North reconstructing South, but East integrating West--all according to Lincoln's vision, who front-loaded the process as much as possible with the Homestead Act, RR Pacific Act and so on.  He wanted a reconstructed America to be middle-defined--as in, middle America, the middle class, and "men of the West" (which he was). A real eye-opener and beautifully written by Heather Cox Richardson.

I scan through it now and notice the heavy notations I made throughout--always a good sign.

Deep Reads: "The Price of the Phoenix" (1977) & "The Fate of the Phoenix" (1979)

I have read a lot of Star Trek novels and fan fiction over the years, but this book remains my favorite.  It's almost exclusively a Kirk-Spock book for long stretches (exploring their unique friendship), although it contains my all-time favorite ST villain in Omne, a rogue leader of an anti-Federation insurgency of bad-ass planets.

The backcover teaser:

Captain Kirk is dead--long live Captain Kirk!

Spock, Doctor McCoy and the other crewmen of the Starship Enterprise experience a stunning double shock.  The first, painful blow is Captain Kirk's tragic death.  Then, Captain Kirk's miraculous rebirth reveals the most awesome force the Enterprise has ever encountered.  Spock is forced into a desperate gamble for Kirk's human soul against Omne--the ultrahuman emperor of life beyond life, and death beyond hell . . .!

Bonus:  The " Romulan commander" (Joanne Linville) is brought back from "The Enterprise Incident" episode (season 3) and plays a big role.

The sequel to the novel (The Fate of the Phoenix") is almost as good.  

Both were written by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath.

Deep Reads: "Instant Replay" (1968)

I have probably read this book more times than any other in my life.

Why?

I grew up feeling like I was this lost prince of Green Bay Packer lore, because I missed out on the glory years (I have only the most fleeting of memories of Super Bowl II--meaning I remember hiding behind my Dad's chair as they watched the game) but grew up with my Mom's many stories of how her dad helped create the Packer organization with Curly Lambeau and others (now in their Hall of Fame, he is remembered as one of "The Hungry Five" who kept the franchise alive during lean years, to include his innovation of making them a public corporation).  So I always felt a bit out of time, like I arrived too late for everything that seemed to matter so much to my Mom and Dad.

This book, then, became my passport to the glory years (I came of age, remember in the disastrous post-Lombardi era), and I read it compulsively to connect.

It is a great book, but it convinced me to avoid pursuing a college/pro football career (semi-plausible given my size, great speed and vertical 40" my senior year in HS) because of its descriptions of the physical price paid--even then!  I just got this tragic sense of the best years of one's life passing too quickly, and that scared me off in the worst way, because my mind is one of anticipation.

Still the best single book on the Lombardi era.  I read it last when Favre led the team to the SB win in 1997.  

Deep Reads: "Gone with the Wind"

An easy book to cite, but it’s typically forgotten in favor of the all-time classic movie.  It is definitely worth losing yourself in.

I did during my daughter Emily’s long cancer fight in the 1990s, and I became a huge fan of Scarlett’s ability to compartmentalize her worries from one day to the next. There were many days in that struggle when I said to myself, “Oh, I can’t worry about that anymore today or I’ll go crazy.  I’ll just think about that tomorrow.”

I recall just now because we're taking a mini-family vacation in the Atlanta area.

Deep Reads: "Religious Literacy" (2007)

Great book that I used in "Great Powers," the basic thesis is that as Americans become more religious over time, they nonetheless know less about their faiths.  So we believe more intensely even as we observe less and understand less.  The "illiteracy" theme is so strong that I frequently refer to the book as "Religious Illiteracy."

That theme can get a bit tedious (How crucial is it really to know the Bible is all its arcane and conflicting imagery?), but what really marks this book as great is the short history of religion in the United States that is Chapters 3 and 4.  Without those, the book would have been a waste of time in many ways, but with them, you get a history lesson that's worth the entire book's somewhat bitchy and condescending attitude.

So I say read the opening chapters that describe "The Problem" and most definitely read the two chapters (pp. 59-124) for the history (fascinating), but skip the proposal part that follows.  The "dictionary of religious literacy" is a cool skim.

Deep Reads: Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" (1943)

I actually watched  the movie first on video, sometime in the early 1990s, and found it intriguing enough for its iconoclastic view of human creativity, but it really didn't connect.

Then my first-born was diagnosed with an advanced-stage cancer at two years of age, and after a few months of heavy drinking, I recomposed myself as father and re-engaged the subsequent battle more fully (as my wife had to step back due to her pregnancy).  During that epic year, I got ahold of the book and read it like my life depended on it.

I won't tell you I'm a Howard Roark or anything. I will just say that this book, along with a couple of others, really saved my life back then.

Upon reading it, I also knew that someday I would write fiction.

I guess the book's primary impact was that it made me feel proud to be me, no matter who didn't understand what being me was all about.

Toward that end, I was reborn as a writer and thinker from Emily's long struggle, beginning with "The Emily Updates" that I currently am reworking with Warren for eventual publication.

Deep Reads: The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

Won’t offer a ton of commentary here.  The idea is pretty simple:  When America has seen rising per capita incomes, it’s a more generous and open and happy and thus inventive place.  But when incomes have stagnated or declined, America’s gets awfully nasty, awfully fast—especially toward immigrants.

A timely reminder for today.

Friedman writes well, but he’s an economist, so it can feel like a bit of a wading.  When he goes off to other countries, I got bored, but when he kept to American history, it was an eye-opening romp that made sense to me instinctively.

I advise people to read it simply to get that core thought deeply embedded in their thinking, because it reminds us all that we have a great democracy here because we have a great economy—less so the other way around.  Our democratic “civilization” is just a few years of stagnating income thick, meaning it does not take that much to strip it away.

Buy the book at Amazon.

Deep Reads: "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001)

Of all the books I've bought over the years, I think I've gone back to this one for data and charts more than any other, which makes sense, because it's a huge meta-data compendium, or basically, Bjorn Lomborg (who made his rep with this book) leveraging hundreds of other people's studies to give the reader a realistic appraisal of the world's state, the amazingly positive trends that got us here, and what's likely to happen going forward.

It is like a bible to me, and I've read everything Bjorn Lomborg has written since.

I like to note that I did my rank-ordering of environmental dangers with an expert group a few years before Lomborg did his own with the "Copenhagen Consensus" crowd of Nobel winners, but that's just my way of unsubtly insinuating that great minds think alike.

And yeah, I wish I had a mind as sharp as Lomborg's when it comes to data.  He really is amazing and always provocative.

Best still:  the guy's optimism.

Not had the pleasure of meeting the guy yet, but hope to someday.

Coolest factoid: his book was published the day before 9/11, and has remained an antidote to end-times pessimism every since.

Deep Reads: Conrad Black's Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Anyone who followed the blog over the last year knows how much I loved this book.  It started me reading again at night before bed, largely in response to the tremendous insomnia and angst I was going through as a result of all those non-stop sinus infections across 2009 that just kept getting worse and worse, until my surgery late last October set me on an infection-free path (seven months and counting--knock on wood).

Well, I was in bad shape and really needed something to occupy my mind during those long nights, and "Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  Champion of Freedom" did it.  It's arguably now my all-time favorite biography. 

It is huge, and goes on for almost 1200 pages.  It is detailed, but never dull.  I never found myself scanning pages.  

The book is also unabashedly in love with FDR's historical accomplishments, something I've always felt was lacking in other books I've read on him (too much revisionism), and really treats him like the supreme grand strategist he was--not always getting his way but achieving the next best iteration possible.  

I also love Black's many and entertaining counterfactual explorations, especially involving Douglas MacArthur (the best surrounding FDR's decision to go with Ike over MacArthur to run the invasion of Europe).

Black, BTW, is now serving a 6-7 year term in a Florida prison for mail fraud stemming from his stint as CEO of a publishing entity. Like FDR, he was born into money. Fabulous historian, though--at least he's the kind I like.

I actually miss reading the book, although I recently loaned it out to my father-in-law.

Like my sister with the "Firefly" DVDs, I will want it back!

Deep Reads: Martin Wolf's classic "Why Globalization Works"

The temptation here is to cite his more recent, post-crash work ("Fixing Global Finance"), but if you want a soup-to-nuts explanation of why I believe in globalization's overwhelmingly positive impact on the world in recent decades, this 2004 book is still the ultimate primer in my mind--worth the long slow read.  It's like taking an international economics course.  So best to start here and then trying the more complex recent volume.

Whenever I get asked, "What's the single best book I can read on the global economy and globalization?" I always cite this book and will until probably Wolf dethrones it himself.  

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Wolf at a regional Davos meeting (off the coast of Australia).  He saw me give the brief and we had dinner following, with my old friend Minxin Pei.  He is as charming and fascinating and intelligent in person as he appears in print.