This book offers the most lucid descriptions of several crucial issues that you are likely to ever encounter. It is well structured, rational, specific, and well documented. Gowan renders a superb treatment of: the role of expediency in the collapse of Bretton Woods, the benefit to the Dollar-Wall Street Regime from global financial and macro-economic gyrations, the mechanisms whereby currency manipulation has a disproportionate effect on other countries, the mobilization of hedge fund attack-capital in producing the Asian Financial Crisis & the leveraging of that crisis to radically restructure East Asian domestic policy, the regional forces surrounding the first Gulf War, the disastorous implementation of the capitalist transition on Eastern Europe, and finally the way Social Democratic and formerly Communist parties danced around as they implemented this transition. This is one of the best books around concerning the motives, objectives and consequences of DC geo-political-economic policy during the '90's, it cannont fail to inform you and demythologize this sphere: it is free of demonization, over-simplification or brash rhetoric, the facts and figures are crisp and readily understandable without being overly general or conspicuously emphasized. Highest Possible Recommendation!!