The world is entering an unprecedented age. Rapid technological advances, globalisation, unparalleled demographic changes and the rise of China as a superpower mean that we are entering a unique era of history. Rob Shapiro employs his immense experience in international politics to sketch a blueprint for the coming fifteen years, tracing the path combined global forces may lead us. This is neither hopelessly idealistic nor a tale of woe and Armageddon: Shapiro is persistently lucid, penetrating and even-handed in delineating the world as it stands and predicting the way it will walk.