If the world is flat, as the prophets of globalization proclaim, then what happens on the underside? Alex Perry answers with this eye-opening journey through the planet's most dangerous hotspots
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, international corporations, governments and Western pundits have embraced the idea of a global village: a shrinking, booming world in which everyone benefits. But what if the coming boom is an explosion?
Alex Perry, award-winning TIME correspondent, travels from the South China Sea to the highlands of Afghanistan to the Sahara—and observes globalization on the ground, instead of from the executive suite.
Perry takes readers to Shenzen, China's boom city where sweatshops pay under-age workers less than $4 a day; and to Bombay, where the gap between rich and poor means million-dollar apartments overlook million-people slums. He shares a beer with Southeast Asian pirates who prey on the world's busiest shipping artery. And he puts us in the middle of a firefight between American Special Forces and the Taliban.
He shows that for every winner in our brave new world, there are tens of thousands of losers. And be they Chinese army veterans, Indian Maoist rebels or the Somali branch of al Qaeda, they are very, very angry.
Falling Off the Edge is a tour de force of frontline reporting, which reveals with alarming clarity that globalization, far from a planetary panacea, starts wars.
Alex Perry is TIME's Africa Bureau Chief, based in Cape Town, covering 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2002 to 2006, he was South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi, covering Afghanistan to Bangladesh. He joined TIME as a staff writer and travel editor in Hong Kong in February 2001.
Perry has covered the Afghan and Iraq wars and conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kashmir, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan (Darfur, Kordofan and South Sudan), Uganda and Zimbabwe. He has reported on terrorism and terror attacks in Asia and Africa, the 2004 South Asian tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and a volcano in Montserrat. He has interviewed leaders as diverse as the Dalai Lama, Sonia Gandhi, Desmond Tutu and Bill Clinton, as well as presidents, prime ministers, rebel leaders, crime lords, pirates and Bollywood superstars. In 2002, the Indian government tried to deport him when he questioned the state of the Prime Minister's health and in 2007, while attempting to cover Zimbabwe's implosion, Perry was held in jail there for five days before being convicted of being a "determined and resourceful journalist" and fined 2 cents. In late 2008, his first book - Falling Off The Edge: Globalization, World Peace and Other Lies (Bloomsbury USA; Macmillan UK) - was published. The book drew on his wide experience to argue that far from being a global panacea for peace and prosperity, globalization was at the root of much modern conflict. His second book, Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time (Public Affairs US; Hurst UK; Picador Africa) follows the remarkable global campaign to wipe malaria off the planet, arguing its innovations have much to teach the world of aid and business.
TIME cover stories have included Afghanistan, Iraq, the Asian tsunami, the Kashmir quake, several (including a special issue) on India, Nepal, West Africa's oil, hunger in Ethiopia, South Africa's 2009 elections, South Africa's 2010 World Cup, malaria, Zimbabwe (two), the illegal Africa-to-Asia trade in rhino horn, Asia's child slave trade, and Bangladesh's emergence from terror and poverty. For his cover story on the al Qaeda prison uprising outside Mazar-i-Sharif in November 2001, Perry won three awards: the inaugural Joseph L. Galloway War Correspondents Award, presented by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the Society of Publishers in Asia award for Excellence in Reporting and a Special Citation for Reporting in the Henry Luce Awards. "Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi" was also published in the "Best of American Magazine Journalism 2002," an anthology by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2004, Perry was runner up in the South Asia Journalism Association's Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Story, for a September 2003 article on the civil war in Nepal. In 2005 and 2006, a TIME special issue on the tsunami, for which Perry reported from India and Sri Lanka, won numerous awards. A 2008 story on the bonobos in central Congo was nominated for a 2009 Genesis Award. A 2010 story on the soccer World Cup in South Africa won Sports Story of the Year from the Foreign Press Association in London. He is a frequent guest on radio and television current affairs shows and has helped present two documentaries, both on Qala-i-Jangi, and starred in a third, Press Pass to the World, about the lives of foreign correspondents. Perry is currently working on an adventure travel TV series called Fishing for Trouble.
Before joining TIME, Perry was an editor for the worldwide news agency Agence France-Presse at its Asian headquarters in Hong Kong, and an AFP correspondent in London and Northern Ireland. He has also worked for various British press agencies and local newspapers. Born in the US but a British citizen, Perry has a Master of Arts degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Trinity College, Oxford and a post graduate diploma in journalism from the University of Wales, Cardiff. He is married to Tessa Laughton, with whom he has three daughters, Katya, Grace and Olivia. He is 41.
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