Trust - by Francis Fukuyama (Paperback)

About the Book

The bestselling author of The End of History explains the social principles of economic life in the mid-1990s. Francis Fukuyama shows why he believes only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be a ble to creat the organizations needed to compete in the new global economy.

Book Synopsis

From the bestselling author of The End of History and the Last of Men comes a penetrating assessment of the emerging global economic order, arguing that a nation's social unity depends on its economic strength--and America is at risk for losing both.

In his bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War would also mean the beginning of a struggle for position in the rapidly emerging order of twenty-first century capitalism. In Trust, he explains the social principles of economic life and tells us what we need to know to win the coming struggle for world dominance.

Challenging orthodoxies of both the left and right, Fukuyama examines a wide range of national cultures in order to divine the underlying principles that foster social and economic prosperity. Insisting that we cannot divorce economic life from cultural life, he contends that in an era when social capital may be as important as physical capital, only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be able to create the flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed to compete in the new global economy.

A brilliant study of the interconnectedness of economic life with cultural life, Trust is also an essential antidote to the increasing drift of American culture into extreme forms of individualism, which, if unchecked, will have dire consequences for the nation's economic health.

Review Quotes

Amitai Etzioni Washington Post Book World The ultimate book for those who seek to understand economics but realize that they are nestled in societies and cultures. A whole new way of doing economics.

Johanna Neuman USA Today The book, like its title, is an investment worth making.

Robert Kaplan Los Angeles Times Book Review A work of interdisciplinary synthesis that shows a superior mind in action.

About the Author

Francis Fukuyama, a senior social scientist at the Rand Corporation, lives in McLean, Virginia