While globalization can be a force for equality, it can also be seen as the embodiment of inequality—the rich world's rabid consumption of resources comes at the expense of poor countries, forced to cut costs and corners to compete.

With previous editions' sales of over sixty thousand, this new edition is fully updated with a new chapter on the financial meltdown and its aftermath, which underlines the book's critique of deregulation. It also includes more analysis of the changing world order with the emergence of China and India as economic superpowers.

Wayne Ellwood has been North American co-editor at New Internationalist magazine since 1977.