The Hidden Globe

Praise for The Hidden Globe:

“You may think you have a pretty good idea of the world map, but Atossa Araxia Abrahaman explains how special economic zones, tax havens, and freeports are carving up the planet for the highest bidders and leaving millions of people worse off. The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World makes a very complicated legal and financial subject clear, exciting, and deeply troubling.”—Ron Charles of the Washington Post on CBS Sunday Morning

“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

“A survey of all the world’s purposely hidden crannies and crevices, the places where chronologies collapse and laws are loosened and entire nations are put up for sale… The world Abrahamian depicts is truly visible only to those who know where to look—it is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere and, to swipe a phrase, almost too big to see.”—The New Republic

“Very worthwhile … Abrahamian populates her book with sharply drawn characters… aiming at a broader intellectual and moral point. … A timely warning.”—The Washington Post

“Provide[s] a window into how just a few economists and consultants could change the way countries around the world operate.” —The New York Times Book Review

“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

“Fascinating—reads like a novel yet packs a policy punch for anyone interested in global migration, licit and illicit corporate networks, legal fictions and realities, and the ongoing mutation of the nation-state. Read it, share it, and above all, reflect on the paradox that while we grapple with how to exert physical control over the digital world, we ignore the creation of vast new legal and physical spaces in plain sight.” —Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America, and Professor and Dean Emerita, Princeton University

“The Hidden Globe eloquently verifies a long-inarticulate suspicion: that our world has been invisibly remade. Traveling to different parts of the world, Abrahamian describes insidiously interconnected global regimes of inequality and injustice. In the process, she boldly renews our sense of reality and brilliantly illuminates our political impasse.” —Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of Anger

“Although we imagine the world as divided neatly into nation-states, it is in fact strewn with loopholes, islands, freeports, and zones where the usual laws don’t apply. Such places don’t draw attention, but they matter enormously. Atossa Abrahamian is the ideal guide—fluid, sharp-eyed, and thoughtful—to this hidden landscape.” —Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire