Configuring the world

This book is a tool-box that allows you to take apart the world as you know it, examine its component parts and then to reassemble it in a more meaningful form. In other words, it allows you to configure the world. It introduces you to differences between countries, regions and continents and it encourages you to explore the underlying data that purported to represent, and ultimately to explain, those differences. The elements that have been chosen all lie at the intersection between politics and economics, or between states and markets. They all have profound societal consequences.