As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.

If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms....such a society will be better able to innovate...since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge.

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

It was the slave's continuing desire for recognition that was the motor which propelled history forward, not the idle complacency and unchanging self-identity of the master

The desire for economic prosperity is itself not culturally determined but almost universally shared

Economic activity is carried out by individuals in organisations that require a high degree of social co-operation

As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.