Paul Blustein is Journalist in Residence in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. His primary fields of expertise are international trade and international economic policy.

As a linchpin of global capitalism, the World Trade Organization is both revered and reviled. In this book, financial journalist Paul Blustein tells the surprisingly entertaining and compelling story of how the WTO is sliding into dysfunctionalitywhich poses a new and grave menace to globalization itself. In more than seven years of global talks the WTO has struggled and failed to resolve contentious differences between rich and developing nations. Now, with a worldwide recession underway, the WTO’s failure is contributing to a rise in protectionisma sign that the world may not be so flat after all. Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations recounts, in vivid detail, how the highstakes negotiations went awry. At risk, Blustein argues, is the fate of the system that for six decades has opened the global economy and kept it from splintering.