"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph" writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital , the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail? In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what also allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionizes our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy.

Hernando de Soto is President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), headquartered in Peru and regarded by The Economist as the second most important think-tank in the world. He was recently named one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century by Time. As Personal Representative and Principal Advisor to the President of Peru, he initiated that country's economic and political reforms. His previous book, The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism, was a bestseller throughout Latin America as well as in Washington, D.C.