A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World
by William J. Bernstein

Paperback, 496pp
Grove/Atlantic Inc., May 2009
ISBN-13: 9780802144164

B&N online price: $13.56
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FROM THE PUBLISHER
A sweeping narrative history of world trade — from Sumer in 3000 B.C. to the firestorm over globalization today — that brilliantly explores trade's colorful and contentious past and provides fresh insights into social, political, cultural and economic history, as well as a timely assessment of trade's future.

SYNOPSIS
Adam Smith wrote that man has an intrinsic "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." But how did trade evolve to the point where we don't think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world?

In this sweeping narrative history of world trade, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports readers from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the 16th; from the American trade battles of the early 20th century to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico and T-shirts from China. Lively, authoritative and astonishing in scope, A Splendid Exchange is a riveting narrative that views trade and globalization not in political terms, but rather as an evolutionary process as old as war and religion — a historical constant — that will continue to foster the growth of intellectual capital, shrink the world and propel the trajectory of the human species.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Bernstein, Ph.D., M.D., founded the popular Web site EfficientFrontier.com. A practicing neurologist and the author of The Intelligent Asset Allocator and The Four Pillars of Investing, Dr. Bernstein has an intensely loyal following of readers as well as an extensive network of media contacts. He is often quoted in The Wall Street Journal and is a frequent guest columnist for Morningstar.