As the Seattle protests over the formation of the WTO showed all too clearly, there is a strong need for in-depth understanding of how the globalization of the world economy is affecting the economic, political, and social development of the individual nation-states. This book provides a detailed and authoritative examination of the on-going issues related to globalization, such as the increasingly unfair distribution of the world's resources, and how this phenomenon is involving wildly disparate countries. While the main focus of the book is the United States, with its flexible markers, wide social differences, and its breath-taking level of economic expansion, extensive attention is also given to the other major players, including the European Union and those central and eastern European nations who very much want to become member countries, as well as China, India, Japan, Russia, and Southeast Asia.