The subtitle of this book is “How wealth hacks the world”, and it was because of this that I was attracted to this book. Having done some international travel to various places I was interested to find out how my experiences as a normal traveler might be different from the ultra-wealthy. However the topics covered in this book are a little different, and no less interesting.
The book’s author has a unique background. She tells us early on that she believes that people should be allowed to live wherever they would like – and not be limited to wherever they happen to be born. Her experiences in Geneva led her to this topic, and so we go on a (sort of) global jaunt to find out more about these in-between places. I learned a lot of things I was curious about, and thanks to the author’s excellent writing skills I was able to understand some of the sleight-of-hand tricks that companies employ to move and hide capital. Some of these tricks are by nature intended to be unclear, which speaks to the writer’s skill.
The highlight for me was the chapter of the flagging of ships in international commerce. The author uses the example of one of five ships built by a Russian shipyard in the 1970s, and follows it through the many lives that it had before being unceremoniously broken up on a beach in Pakistan 50 years later.
The writer provides a lot of information – this was a long book – and I sometimes felt like there was more than enough to make her point. A little more concise would make it easier to read through.
Next I am reading The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.
