If the world is flat, as Thomas Friedman says, then aren''t some people going to be falling off the edge? Award-winning Time Magazine correspondent Alex Perry (China, India, and Africa) takes us on an unforgettable journey to some of the planet''s most remote and dangerous places to explore the sharp end of globalization. Combining sharp analysis with breathtaking frontline reporting, Perry''s quest takes readers from Maoist rebels in Nepal to Indian suicide bombers and Indonesian pirates. We meet Chinese organ harvesters, Bombay billionaires, killer cops and pygmy Africans living on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. And in a riveting introduction, Perry presents us with some of the finest war reporting ever to come out of the war on terror. The result of this extraordinary journey is as unexpected as it is dramatic. In his quest to uncover the edges of globalization, Perry ends up discovering its dark heart.

Taking the Great Rift Valley - the geological fault that will eventually tear Africa in two - as his central metaphor, Alex Perry explores the split between a resurgent Africa and a world at odds with its rise. Africa has long been misunderstood - and abused - by outsiders. Perry travelled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis, among many others.Opening with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime in Somalia in 2011, he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. This is a remade continent, defiantly rising from centuries of oppression to become an economic and political titan: where cash is becoming a thing of the past, where astronomers are unlocking the origin of life and where, twenty-five years after Live Aid, Ethiopia''s first yuppies are traders on an electronic food exchange. Yet, as Africa finally wins the substance of its freedom, it must confront the three last false prophets of Islamists, dictators and aid workers, who would keep it in its bonds.

If the world is flat, as Thomas Friedman says, then aren''t some people going to be falling off the edge? Award-winning Time Magazine correspondent Alex Perry (China, India, and Africa) takes us on an unforgettable journey to some of the planet''s most remote and dangerous places to explore the sharp end of globalization. Combining sharp analysis with breathtaking frontline reporting, Perry''s quest takes readers from Maoist rebels in Nepal to Indian suicide bombers and Indonesian pirates. We meet Chinese organ harvesters, Bombay billionaires, killer cops and pygmy Africans living on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. And in a riveting introduction, Perry presents us with some of the finest war reporting ever to come out of the war on terror. The result of this extraordinary journey is as unexpected as it is dramatic. In his quest to uncover the edges of globalization, Perry ends up discovering its dark heart.

Taking the Great Rift Valley - the geological fault that will eventually tear Africa in two - as his central metaphor, Alex Perry explores the split between a resurgent Africa and a world at odds with its rise. Africa has long been misunderstood - and abused - by outsiders. Perry travelled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis, among many others.Opening with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime in Somalia in 2011, he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. This is a remade continent, defiantly rising from centuries of oppression to become an economic and political titan: where cash is becoming a thing of the past, where astronomers are unlocking the origin of life and where, twenty-five years after Live Aid, Ethiopia''s first yuppies are traders on an electronic food exchange. Yet, as Africa finally wins the substance of its freedom, it must confront the three last false prophets of Islamists, dictators and aid workers, who would keep it in its bonds.