This fascinating look at the power struggles between public and private entities is “a lively, accessible treatment of a multifaceted, complex subject” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Walmart has revenues higher than the GDP of all but twenty-five of the world’s countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost a hundred nations. The world’s largest asset manager, a secretive New York company called BlackRock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet. A private philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spends as much worldwide on health care as the World Health Organization.

The rise of private power may be the most important and least understood trend of our time. David Rothkopf provides a fresh, timely look at how we have reached a point where thousands of companies have greater power than all but a handful of states. Beginning with the story of an inquisitive Swedish goat wandering off from his master and inadvertently triggering the birth of the oldest company still in existence, Power, Inc. follows the rise and fall of kings and empires, the making of great fortunes, and the chaos of bloody revolutions. A fast-paced tale in which champions of liberty are revealed to be paid pamphleteers of moneyed interests and greedy scoundrels cause changes that lift billions from deprivation, Power, Inc. traces the bruising jockeying for influence right up to the current era’s financial crises, growing inequality, broken international system, and battles over the proper role of government and markets—and delves into the potential for a global ideological struggle in which American-style capitalism may not emerge triumphant.

“Incisive and timely.” —Financial Times