The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto

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THE FIVE MYSTERIES OF CAPITAL
The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society?... 
Why was it that a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time? 
FERNAND BRAUDEL, The Wheels of Commerce
The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph is its hour of crisis. 
The fall of the Berlin Wall ended more than a century of political competiton between capitalism and communism. Capitalism stands alone as the only feasible way rationally to organize a modern economy. At this moment in history, no responsible nation has a choice. As a result, with varying dergrees of enthusiasm, Third World and former communist nations have balanced their budgets, cut subsidies, welcomed foreign investment and dropped their tariff barriers.
Their efforts have been repaid with bitter disappointment.

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto