'A Splendid Exchange' by William Bernstein
I finally got around to reading what I found to be a remarkably interesting and instructive book - http://amzn.com/0871139790.
I had added the comments below on my LinkedIn book list but wanted to post them here too.
William Bernstein brightly paints the history of world trade and its impact on broad political and cultural developments over time. He more or less begins his story in Mesopotamia about 5 thousand years ago when local grain was being traded for copper and other desired materials and concludes with some of the stresses and protests increasing globalization has wrought in many countries over the past few decades - while demonstrating this is not a new phenomenon but has been a recurring subtext of free trade over time.
The author has a very engaging writing style and has a knack for illuminating broad themes while enriching them with many small and fascinating details as trade evolved over the centuries and the prime traders and most desired commodities varied over time.
While clearly pro free trade in his perspective throughout the book, Bernstein's final chapter does try to fairly address the real challenges globalization creates for specific countries or labor segments and what might be done to assist those disadvantaged by these changes.
My only small complaints about the book are that the author could have used tighter editing from his publisher to address a degree of repetitiveness and some factual inconsistencies and that his treatment of the 19th and 20th centuries felt a bit rushed. Also, the book is not strictly chronological but has a somewhat thematic orientation. While this was a good organizational choice, it would have been helpful to have an appendix with a timeline of key events in the history of trade as a sequential reference. However, the book does have many maps and other graphics that are quite useful.
As a substitute or complement to reading the book, Bernstein was a guest on the always informative EconTalk podcast last year. Here is a link to that episode:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/04/bernstein_on_th.html
