SPLENDID EXCHANGE

"A Splendid Exchange" tells the epic story of global commerce, from its prehisto
ric origins to the myriad crises confronting it today. It travels from the sugar
rush that brought the British to Jamaica in the seventeenth century to our curr
ent debates over globalization, from the silk route between China and Rome in th
e second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in th
e sixteenth. Throughout, William Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency o
n trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellec
tual and industrial progress and made us both prosperous and vulnerable.