Bookmarks staffpicks.

Today, for better or for worse, we live in an increasingly interconnected world. Goods may be cheaper worldwide, but outsourcing leaves some workers caught in the switches. What to make of the new international economy? And what damage to culture lies in its wake?

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THE TRAVELS OF A T-SHIRT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade

By Pietra Rivoli (2005)

The author, an economics professor at Georgetown University, uses a $5 T-shirt to illustrate global market forces at work. In charting the T-shirt's construction, she traveled from Texas cotton fields to Chinese factories and Tanzanian used-clothing vendors to shed light on the major political, ethical, social, and economic implications of unprotected global trade.

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CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN

By John Perkins (2005)

In the 1970s, John Perkins worked for an international consulting firm. As he traveled around the globe, he became an "economic hit man" who helped the "corporatocracy" (the United States, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Agency for International Development) exploit developing nations--which then incurred enormous debts. While critics question the accuracy of some of Perkins's claims, it is nonetheless a gripping account of the darker side of America's global reach.

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FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING

Behind the Scenes of a New China

By Rachel DeWoskin (2005)

When Rachel DeWoskin graduated from Columbia University in 1994, she went to Beijing as a PR consultant and was soon cast as a sexually liberated American girl on the popular Chinese soap opera Foreign Babes in Beijing (think Sex and the City). Her memoir captures her five years in Beijing, Sino-American culture clashes, the permeation of Western influence, and the loss of Chinese traditions.

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THE WORLD IS FLAT

A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

By Thomas Friedman

Globalization 3.0, ready or not. Friedman, the great explicator of globalization, uses "flatness" as a metaphor to describe our recent global landscape where individuals across the globe collaborate--and compete--on an entirely new scale. In untangling complex foreign policy and economic issues, he has this to say to his daughters: "Girls, finish your homework--people in China and India are starving for your jobs." (EXCELLENT July/Aug 2005)

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ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT

The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism

By William Greider (1997)

If Thomas Friedman advocates globalization while recognizing its complexities, William Greider, a former editor at Rolling Stone and a correspondent for The Nation, views globalization with more trepidation. In his exploration of capitalism run amok, Greider charts trends (i.e., toward multinational corporations) and then offers populist solutions (a "global humanism") to the world's global economic problems.

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GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

By Joseph E. Stiglitz (2002)

The Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economics professor (and former chief economist at the World Bank and economist in the Clinton administration) dissects globalization's potential in this classic survey of globalization's structural flaws. He offers detailed analyses of the often ideologically driven, poor economic policies of the International Monetary Fund and other international organizations and offers a reform agenda. Making Globalization Work (2007) is a follow-up of sorts.

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