In his bestselling The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War would also mean the beginning of a struggle for position in the rapidly emerging order of 21st-century capitalism. In Trust, a penetrating assessment of the emerging global economic order "after History," he explains the social principles of economic life and tells us what we need to know to win the coming struggle for world dominance. Challenging orthodoxies of both the left and right, Fukuyama examines a wide range of national cultures in order to divine the underlying principles that foster social and economic prosperity. Insisting that we cannot divorce economic life from cultural life, he contends that in an era when social capital may be as important as physical capital, only those societies with a high degree of social trust will be able to create the flexible, large-scale business organizations that are needed to compete in the new global economy. A brilliant study of the interconnectedness of economic life with cultural life, Trust is also an essential antidote to the increasing drift of American culture into extreme forms of individualism, which, if unchecked, will have dire consequences for the nation's economic health.

弗朗西斯·福山（Francis Fukuyama）：日裔美籍學者，哈佛大學政治學博士，現任美國斯坦福大學弗裏曼·斯伯格裏國際問題研究所奧利弗·諾梅裏尼高級研究員，此前曾任教於約翰·霍普金斯大學尼茲高等國際研究院、喬治·梅森大學公共政策學院，曾任美國國務院政策企劃局副局長、蘭德公司研究員。著有《曆史的終結與最後的人》、《政治秩序的起源》、《政治秩序與政治衰敗》、《大斷裂》、《國傢構建》等。現居加利福尼亞。

譯者：郭華，牛津大學教育學碩士，倫敦大學教育研究院社會學博士。現旅居英國。在國內外媒體發錶過一係列關於英國文化和教育的專欄文章，另譯有福山作品《國傢構建》。