The Hidden Globe Audiobook By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian cover art

The Hidden Globe

How Wealth Hacks the World

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Hidden Globe

By: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Narrated by: Patrick Harrison
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.25

Buy for $20.25

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

NAMED ONE OF THE TOP 5 BOOKS OF 2024 ON CBS SUNDAY MORNING

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2024

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

“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.

©2024 Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Economic History Economics Globalization International Politics & Government Public Policy Switzerland

Critic reviews

“You may think you have a pretty good idea of the world map, but Atossa Araxia Abrahaman explains how special economic zones, tax havens, and freeports are carving up the planet for the highest bidders and leaving millions of people worse off. The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World makes a very complicated legal and financial subject clear, exciting, and deeply troubling.”—Ron Charles of the Washington Post on CBS Sunday Morning

“Vivid, revelatory, and politically unpredictable … ranges far beyond obscured transactions and nested shell companies to much weirder patterns of jurisdictional flexibility …What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect.”—The New Yorker

“An engrossing journey. . . Abrahamian is a perfect guide . . . One of the most innovative contributions of The Hidden Globe is to highlight how these realms outside the governance of nation-states offer unchecked privilege and wealth for a select few while also increasing some of the most extreme forms of vulnerability and precarity that exist today.”—The Nation

What listeners say about The Hidden Globe

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    10
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    12
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    11
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Enlightening new material

Ms. Abrahamian plows through amazing and new material about renegade states around the world. Fascinating. She is a very refined writer, making it a pleasure. I gave the performance 3 stars for turning over a woman's tale to a male narrator.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Intriguing

This book is an interesting journey to places that aren’t like those most of us visit. These are also not worlds I’d ever thought much about and so was eager to learn more. They are hard for me to grasp conceptually only partly because I don’t do business with such financially elite and usually unethical players, and their professional, cultural language isn’t mine. The writing here is historical, political, philosophical, and poetic. The narration was excellent.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

why a male narrator?

I didn't notice until after purchasing that this book written by a woman was narrated by a man; huge distracting disappointment. The content is great, both interesting+illuminating and distressing+disheartening.
Worth reading.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful