Shaped by his 25 years travelling the world and enlivened by his encounters with presidents, tycoons and villagers from Rio to Beijing, Ruchir Sharma's new book rethinks the dismal science of economics as a practical art, based not just on crunching numbers but on live observation. He shows us how to read the political headlines, the world billionaire rankings, the price of onions and popular news magazine covers as signs of coming booms, busts and protests. Parsing the complicated flood of data on debt, trade and capital flows, Sharma explains exactly which numbers are most telling for a nation's fortunes and when they signal a turn for the better or worse.

In our post-crisis age that has turned the world on its head and ended a decade of supercharged growth, replacing political calm with revolt and hype for globalization with fear of deglobalization, Sharma's pioneering book serves as a highly readable field guide to understanding change not only in this new era, but in any era. It is written for any practical person - newspaper reader, business executive, politician or investor - interested in a new economics focused on what is coming next, not on the past. There is a saying that to know the road ahead, ask those coming back. On this road, Sharma is the one who has been there ahead of us.