What happens when a Dutch libertarian lawyer decides that war-torn Somalia is the perfect place to build a tax-free paradise? You get one of the strangest chapters in the history of free-market thinking.
I grew up in the former Soviet Union. I remember what a map looked like before the 1990s. One big red blob stretching across half the world. Then, almost overnight, that blob split into fifteen new countries. Slobodian opens Chapter 5 with that exact memory. The map at his school changed while he was still in it. Yugoslavia broke apart. Czechoslovakia split in two. New flags everywhere.