The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization (No-Nonsense Guides) [Paperback]

Wayne Ellwood (Author), John McMurtry (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: No Nonsense Guides (Verso) | Publication Date: May 2001

Commercial culture and the Western consumer model have seeped into every corner of the globe while gaps in wealth, food security and social provision continue to grow. This "No Nonsense Guide to Globalisation" acknowledges the seductive and powerful promise of a 'borderless' world but probes deeper to find a money-mad juggernaut, spinning wildly out of control, threatening both cultural and biological diversity. This is a stinging critique of the orthodoxy of economic growth in a world of finite natural resources and a blueprint for a new economic architecture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A] concise and valuable overview of the world system, what has gone wrong with it—and the way ahead. -- John McMurtry

About the Author

Wayne Ellwood joined New Internationalist as an editor in 1977 and set up its office in Toronto. His previous publications include, as editor, The A-Z of World Development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Verso (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859843360
• ISBN-13: 978-1859843369
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, entertaining guide to complex issues, June 23, 2001

By 

Ryan Sarni (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization (No-Nonsense Guides) (Paperback)

This is a great intro to corporate globalism, and also a good refresher for the more educated folk. Ellwood wonderfully and consicesly gives a quick history of globalization (ie economic colonialism)describes the Bretton Woods Trio, explains and the problems with the rise of speculative investments, among others. I would recommend this book to anyone.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a pivotal volume in a great series, October 17, 2003

By 

bruce bartlett (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization (No-Nonsense Guides) (Paperback)

If you like leftist Canadian thinkers like John Raulston Saul or Linda McQuaig, you'll love this handy little book. It is less obtrusively philosophical than Saul, less earthily anecdotal than McQuaig, but squarely in their broad line of thought.

Albeit in a somewhat muted and oblique way, the volume makes it clear that in its root impulses, globalization is an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon: Nixon's abandonment of the gold standard in 1973, Thatcher's coming to power in the UK in 1978.

It is odd for a Canadian based series that the major Canadian player of this era - our dear, late PET, despised by Nixon, Regan, Thatcher -- isn't even in the index.

Useful facts: the WTO is founded in 1994; its major instrument becomes the 1997 MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment). David Korten features heavily in the debate (his mid-90s WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD is not in the bibliography, even if a 1997 follow-up, THE POST-CORPORATE WORLD, is present). What is perhaps the book's most clutching assertion (one Korten had made more or less made in that earlier volume) is on page 73: "For every dollar that is needed to facilitate the trade in real goods, nine dollars is gambled in foreign exchange markets."

1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars over all pretty ok, November 9, 2006

By 

K. Damore - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization (No-Nonsense Guides) (Paperback)

Nothing to brag about, but no complaints either. Shipping was good, price good, service ok.