Global Inc.

"In the future there will be two kinds of corporations; those that go global, and those that go bankrupt."C. Michael Armstrong, CEO, AT&T Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 53 are corporations. A handful of corporate giants control most of the world's energy, technology, food, banks, industry, and media. Yet despite the ubiquity of enormous multinationals and their tremendous economic, social, political, and environmental presence in the world, the history and character of corporate entities remains largely unknown, daunting, and inaccessible to the general public. Global, Inc. is an atlas that charts this new, multinational geography. It features an extraordinary series of specially commissioned full-color maps that make clear the tremendous and surprising reach of individual corporations such as General Motors, Toyota, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, British Petroleum, and AOL Time Warner, as they have spread out across the globe. Colorful explanatory charts and graphs help illustrate, among other phenomena, the meteoric rise of today's MNCs: from the opening up of ancient trade routes and the early colonization companies of the 17th through 19th centuries, to the international trade flows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions of today's modern multinationals. The product of several years of collaborative research by leading historians and geographers, Global, Inc. is the first book to examine multinational corporations from a truly global perspective and in atlas format. Impartial, accessible, and endlessly engrossing, Global, Inc. offers a penetrating look at one of the most powerful phenomena on the planet in the twenty-first century.

Henry Bruner is an economic geographer at the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.