illicit: reviews

Washington Post (October 23, 2005)

Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
Business Section: Readings

Moisés Naím, the editor who has brought fresh thinking, wide-ranging interests and writerly passion to Foreign Policy magazine, has done it again, this time in a book about the global trade in drugs, dirty money, arms, human kidneys, counterfeit software, bootlegged music, elephant tusks and sex slaves. In Illicit (Doubleday) Naím shows how globalization has made it easier, safer and more profitable to engage in this kind of trafficking. He has added a considerable amount of his own reporting to the subject, replete with examples of how it all works. But Naím's more important insight is that this illegal trafficking has now become so large that it, in turn, has fundamentally changed the character of the world, with profound effects on economics, politics and international relations.