The end of the Cold War was thought to signal the triumph of Western Capitalism over Communism. This title argues just the opposite: Capitalism is collapsing and instead 'communism with a profit motive' will prevail.

From 9/11 to the launch of the iPod, from the creation of "Gmail: to the 2004 tsunami, from the Enron Bankruptcy to the killing of Osama bin Laden, "10 Years That Shook the World" is the story of an extraordinary decade. For each year, Loretta Napoleoni presents events not as a chronology bus as dispatches from the world's collective memory. Topics like politics, economics, celebrities, and the environment intersect and converge to reveal the accelerating pace of globalization and the changes that have affected us all.

Economist Napoleoni argues that the world is undergoing rapid and unexpected transformations fueled by what she calls rogue economics. From Eastern Europe's booming sex trade industry to China's "online sweatshops," this work exposes the paradoxical economic connections of the new global marketplace.

Economist and best-selling author Loretta Napoleoni traces the link between the finances of the war on terror and the global economic crisis, finding connections from Dubai to London to Las Vegas that politicians and the media have at best ignored. In launching military and propaganda wars in the Middle East, America overlooked the war of economic independence waged by Al-Qaeda. The Patriot Act boosted the black market economy, and the war on terror prompted a rise in oil prices that led to food riots and distracted governments from the trillion-dollar machinations of Wall Street. Consumers and taxpayers, spurred by propaganda fears, were lured into crushing global debt. Napoleoni shows that if we do not face up to the many serious connections between our response to 9/11 and the financial crisis, we will never work our way out of the looming global recession that now threatens our way of life.

While we feared that Al-Qaeda might destroy our world, Wall Street ripped it apart.

Loretta Napoleoni is the author of the best-selling book "Terror Inc.: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism," which has been translated into twelve languages, and "Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality," which has been translated into fourteen languages. One of the world's leading experts on money laundering and terror financing, she has worked as London correspondent and columnist for "La Stampa," "La Repubblica," "El PaA-s," and "Le Monde." A former Fulbright Scholar, she holds an MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MPhil in terrorism from the London School of Economics. She lives in London and Montana.

In Terror Incorporated, Loretta Napoleoni maps out the arteries of an international economic system that feeds armed groups the world over. Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the Far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to hawala exchanges in the Middle East.
Napoleoni describes the "New Economy of Terror," "a fast-growing international economic system with a turnover of about $1.5 trillion that] is challenging Western hegemony." It is made up of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading, and oil and diamond smuggling, as well as charitable donations and legal profits. Napoleoni reveals the interdependency between economies run by armed groups and western economies, and provides a pioneering examination of the system and methods by which international terrorism is financed.

What do Eastern Europe's booming sex trade, America's subprime mortgage lending scandal, China's fake goods industry, and celebrity philanthropy in Africa have in common? With biopirates trolling the blood industry, fish-farming bandits ravaging the high seas, pornography developing virtually in Second Life, and games like World of Warcraft spawning online sweatshops, how are rogue industries transmuting into global empires? And will the entire system be transformed by the advent of sharia economics? With the precision of an economist and the narrative deftness of a storyteller, syndicated journalist Loretta Napoleoni examines how the world is being reshaped by dark economic forces, creating victims out of millions of ordinary people whose lives have become trapped inside a fantasy world of consumerism. Napoleoni reveals the architecture of our world, and in doing so provides fresh insight into many of the most insoluble problems of our era.

The end of the cold war was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over Communism. In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West's ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn't focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx's writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.

Every day, a powerful and sophisticated underground business delivers thousands of refugees along the Mediterranean coasts of Europe. A new breed of criminals, risen from the post-9/11 political chaos and the fi asco of the Arab Spring, coupled with the destabilization of Syria and Iraq and the rise of ISIS, controls it. The ever-increasing political volatility has offered them new business opportunities, from trafficking millions of refugees to selling Western hostages to jihadist groups. The kidnapping industry in the Middle East is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Loretta Napoleoni's exclusive and meticulous research into the business of kidnap and ransom, and its link to terrorist activity, is based on first-hand accounts - from interviews with hostage negotiators to the experiences of former hostages themselves. Merchants of Men is a fascinating and eye-opening exploration of this most shocking of financial interdependencies.