Genoa and Globalization

The aftermath of Genoa left one protester dead and an Italian policeman facing murder charges, as well as 500 persons injured and 200 arrested. It's an irony that anti-globalization protesters mounted their most egregious protest at Genoa (earlier global forums in Seattle, Switzerland, Washington, D.C., and Sweden, saw similar crowds but less violence). It is Genoa, after all, which arguably gave birth to the force of globalization when it gave birth, in 1451, to the explorer Christopher Columbus.

Here are some books that look at the issues behind the controversial move toward globalization.

Globalize This!
by Kevin Danaher, Roger Burbach
The editors of Globalize This!, like the protesters at Genoa, see global capitalism -- and its bureaucratic embodiments like the G8 or the World Trade Organization -- as the greatest threat to democracy in our time. Politicians are collaborating with international corporations, they argue, in moving money and jobs around the world and exploiting foreign workers while they take jobs away from labor unions in their own countries. Plus, they are destroying the planet in the bargain. Globalize This! is a collection of angry essays that explain some of the thought and beliefs behind the mass demonstrations and violence that occurred in Genoa and at earlier world economic forums.

Open Society
by George Soros
George Soros, a brilliant fund manager and one of the world's most successful capitalists, is a deep thinker when it comes to globalization. Referring to himself more often as a philosopher than a businessman, Soros examines the condition of the global economy and finds it wanting. Our money and our businesses have gone global, he asserts, but our morality and social thinking have not. Until we create a truly global society, the inequalities and environmental ills that irk Genoa's protesters will only be acerbated. A prescient book.

Five Days That Shook the World
by Alexander Cockburn
The "Battle of Seattle" protests that met the 1999 WTO meeting were the opening shot in the emerging war between global capitalism and its diverse and vocal opposition, and an obvious prelude to the violence in Genoa. Veteran firebrand Alexander Cockburn and his co-writer take a close look at Seattle, examining the rough factions that came together to create the protest. Here are anarchists, labor activists, college students, environmentalists, socialists, animal rights workers, and defenders of the world's poor -- all shouting their own slogans and uniting against their apparent enemies, the bureaucrats who run the World Trade Organization. Cockburn also has much to say about the missteps of the Seattle police, who let a peaceful demonstration devolve into chaos and looting.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
by Thomas L. Friedman
The Lexus and the Olive Tree may be one of the most ingenious and important books on globalization, describing and exploring the co-existence of two global values. Friedman -- a New York Times foreign affairs correspondent and syndicated columnist -- presents an argument that is amazingly clear and compelling. Around the world, people either covet the Lexus (symbolizing consumer goods and the limitless horizon endowed by the technology that creates them) or struggle for control of the Olive Tree (the limited geographical resources they must share with their neighbors). A global traveler and gifted writer, Friedman peppers his prose with anecdotes and examples that bring home both the thrills and hardships of globalization.

Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home
by Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer is one of the best travel writers around. He seems to have been everywhere and seen everything, and so has a special access to the theme of globalization. He's an American of British-Indian descent who lives in suburban Japan and writes novels about Cuba. This book is an exciting collection of essays that investigates the plight of man's soul in an environment where home has disappeared and McDonald's and the Gap are omnipresent. If Iyer is pessimistic about the survival of local uniqueness, he is also perceptive of the new thrills emerging from within and around our airports and food courts. Global Soul is an enervating read, and the perfect book to take on a plane.

The Agony of Mammon
by Lewis Lapham
Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's magazine, visited the 27th annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 1998 as an invited guest. The Agony of Mammon is the result: a slim and brilliant collection of his impressions of his fellow attendees, the global economy's most powerful figures: Bill Gates, George Soros, Helmut Kohl, Desmond Tutu, Bill Clinton, and others. The book offers gossipy anecdotes, as well a compelling portrait of the operation of the global economic system, plus intriguing comparisons between the Forum and the one other famous gathering in the Swiss Alps near Davos -- which was the fictional setting of the sanatorium in Thomas Mann's profound modern novel The Magic Mountain.