World Civilizations II

The World Bank Group is one of the world's largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. Its mission is to overcome poverty by supporting an inclusive and sustainable development, enhancing growth with care for the environment, and creating individual opportunity and hope.

This is the first history of OPEC and of its members written by a professional historian. It carries the reader from the formation of the first petrostate in the world, Venezuela in the late 1920s, to the global ascent of petrostates and OPEC during the 1970s, to their crisis in the late-1980s and early- 1990s.

This book offers a comprehensive political assessment of Brexit. Based on a historical review of the role of the United Kingdom in the European Union, the author, a former diplomat at the German embassy in London, presents well-founded insights into arguments in favor and against the Brexit deal and the status quo of the Brexit negotiations.

Shenzhen is ground zero for the economic transformation China has seen in recent decades. In 1979, driven by China's widespread poverty, Deng Xiaoping supported a bold proposal to experiment with economic policies in a rural borderland next to Hong Kong. The site was designated as the City of Shenzhen and soon after became China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Four decades later, Shenzhen is a megacity of twenty million, an internationally recognized digital technology hub, and the world's most successful economic zone.