Includes bibliographical references (pages [365]-416) and index.

• I: The roots of modern power: the ruse of states and corporations
• The goat with the red horns
• 1288: the battles that gave birth to modernity
• 1648: the beginning of the great leveling
• 1776: two revolutions
• What makes a state a state?
• The contest: the state constrained, the corporation unbound
• How the rule of law backfired
• Beyond borders
• The coin of whose realm?
• The decline of force
• The reckoning: forging a new order
• Supercitizens and semi-states
• Competing capitalisms.

Traces the rise of private power while explaining that thousands of companies have greater power than all but a handful of states, predicting struggles between major capitalist interests that are introducing new visions about how the world should work.
He analyzes key historical moments—such as the rise of the Dutch East India Company, the American and French Revolutions, and the global expansion of capitalism—to illustrate how corporations have steadily gained legal rights, global reach, and economic power that often allow them to dictate terms to governments, especially in weaker or poorer nations.