Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

Nations are prone to devastating crises: political chaos, economic calamities, civil war, natural disasters, pandemics. Countries enduring crises right now include Syria, Yemen, Venezuela and Congo. Crises are complex and multifaceted and strike in wealthier countries, too. In Britain, there’s Brexit. In Spain, there’s the drive for Catalonian independence.

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

“21 Lessons for the 21st Century” is a defective book and probably the weakest of Harari’s oeuvre. Yet, it is a testament to his brilliance that this book has much to engage the curious mind.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

By Yuval Noah Harari

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, From the Freemasons to Facebook

By Niall Ferguson

Penguin Press. 563 pp. $30

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite

By Jake Bernstein

Henry Holt. 335 pp. $30

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

“Private Empire” is a big book about big oil, big money and big government. It chronicles how ExxonMobil — the energy behemoth that recently displaced Wal-Mart atop the Fortune 500 list, with more than $450 billion in revenue — operates in failed states, keeping the oil flowing when no one else can, and how it handles hapless bureaucrats charged with regulating it, scientists challenging it, rival companies trying to outsmart it and activists bent on changing it.

Moisés Naím / Foreign Policy

One of the most interesting books on globalization is Felipe Fernández Armesto’s Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration. Through a fascinating account of the adventures, obsessions and achievements of explorers and cartographers since the dawn of history Professor Fernandez Armesto deftly shows how the impulse to discover what lies beyond the horizon and the instincts to engage foreigners have driven globalization since time immemorial. If you have to read one book on globalization read Pathfinders. In the process you will be exposed to a very original history of the world.

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

FORGOTTEN CONTINENT: The Battle for Latin America's Soul

By Michael Reid

Yale Univ. 384 pp. $30

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

THE MOST NOBLE ADVENTURE

By Greg Behrman

Free Press. 448 pp. $27

Moisés Naím / Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

In 1997, the board of directors of the Stanley Works, a Connecticut tool company, lured its new chief executive, John M. Trani, away from General Electric with a compensation package that was two or three times those given to any of his predecessors since its founding in 1873. Like many of his peers at other U.S. companies at the time, Trani closed plants, cut costs, downsized and outsourced the company's operations. Six years later, 5,500 Stanley employees had lost their jobs.

Moisés Naím / The Washington Post

One of the many surprises of the past decade was how often a company, an industry, a country or even an entire region admired by experts, applauded by journalists and coveted by investors eventually ended up crashing. Enron, legions of dot-coms, Mexico and East Asia's miraculous "tiger" economies all went from financial superstardom to ruin. The crash always happened in the blink of an eye, and its shock waves inevitably hurt innocent bystanders.