Peter Sloterdijk is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Karlsruhe School of Design.

• First Part On the Emergence of the World System 11 Of Grand Narratives 32 The Wandering Star 153 Return to Earth 214 Globe Time, World Picture Time 275 Turn from the East, Entrance into the Homogeneous Space 336 Jules Verne and Hegel 367 Waterworld: On the Change of the Central Element in the Modern Age 408 Fortuna, or: The Metaphysics of Chance 479 Risk-Taking 5010 Delusion and Time: On Capitalism and Telepathy 5311 The Invention of Subjectivity – Primary Disinhibition and Its Advisers 5712 Irreflexive Energies: The Ontology of the Headstart 6613 Nautical Ecstasies 7714 ‘Corporate Identity’ on the High Seas, Parting of Minds 8115 The Basic Movement: Money Returns 8416 Between Justifications and Assurances: On Terran and Maritime Thought 8617 Expedition and Truth 9418 The Signs of the Explorers: On Cartography and Imperial Name Magic 9819 The Pure Outside 10920 Theory of the Pirate: The White Terror 11221 The Modern Age and the New Land Syndrome 116Americanology 122 The Five Canopies of Globalization: Aspects of European Space Exportation 12023 The Poetics of the Ship’s Hold 12224 Onboard Clerics: The Religious Network 12425 The Book of Vice-Kings 12826 The Library of Globalization 13127 The Translators 134Second Part The Grand Interior 13728 Synchronous World 13929 The Second Ecumene 14330 The Immunological Transformation: On the Way to Thin-Walled ‘Societies’ 14931 Believing and Knowing: In hoc signo (sc. globi) vinces 15532 Post-History 16533 The Crystal Palace 16934 The Dense World and Secondary Disinhibition: Terrorism as the Romanticism of the Pure Attack 17735 Twilight of the Perpetrators and the Ethics of Responsibility: The Cybernetic Erinyes 18736 The Capitalist World Interior: Rainer Maria Rilke Almost Meets Adam Smith 19337 Mutations in the Pampering Space 21138 Revaluation of All Values: The Principle of Abundance 22339 The Exception: Anatomy of a Temptation 233Americanology 240 The Uncompressible, or: The Rediscovery of the Extended 24941 In Praise of Asymmetry 25842 The Heavenly and the Earthly Left 263Notes 265Index 293

"Confirms Sloterdijk as the thinking European's Slavoj ?i?ek, as restlessly digressive as his Slovenian counterpart, but even more intellectually reckless and better company."The Guardian "In the last few years Sloterdijk has moved from a figure of relative obscurity in Anglophone debates to being one of the key thinkers of our time. This wide-ranging, engaging, thoughtful and provocative book illustrates why. An unashamedly grand narrative, it engages with both the philosophical and political complexities of the question of the world. It is once again presented in a very fine translation by Wieland Hoban."Stuart Elden, Durham University "Peter Sloterdijk never disappoints when it comes to producing an original point of view. Equally, he never disappoints in the magnitude of his ambitions. In this deeply original and hyper-ambitious book, he presents a history of globalization, no less. In doing so, he resurrects what has become a tired and hackneyed term by reconstituting it as a drama of location but one wherein the notion of location is itself brought into the play as a central element of the plot. And what a play it is, the play of an ever-increasing density of events and an ever-decreasing concentration of purpose which – if we’re not very careful – will produce a 'last orb'. Wonderful stuff which restores our faith in the power of grand narratives."Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick