“Vivid revelatory and politically unpredictable…What bothers Abrahamian in the end isn’t
the anarchic but the unfair if capital is free people deserve the same respect.” — Gideon
Lewis-Kraus The New Yorker " A season of unrest looms ahead and The Hidden Globe lays out
the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.”—Hamilton Cain Minneapolis Star Tribune
Borders draw one map of the world money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes
a parallel universe that has become a haven for the rich and powerful. A globe shows the
world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their
citizens’ rights. Beneath above and tucked inside their borders however another universe
has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that
operate largely autonomously and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals
and corporations. Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to
thirteenth-century Switzerland where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies in
the form of mercenary fighters. Over time economists theorists statesmen and consultants
evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness in the form of
free trade zones flags of convenience offshore detention centers charter cities controlled
by foreign corporations and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography which
decides who wins and who loses in the new global order—and helping us to see how it might be
otherwise— The Hidden Globe fascinates enrages and inspires.
