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. -- Back cover.;Part I. The idea of trust: the improbable power of culture in the making of economic society --- Part II. Low-trust societies and the paradox of family values --- Part III. High-trust societies and the challenge of sustaining sociability --- Part IV. American society and the crisis of trust --- Part V. Enriching trust: combining traditional culture and modern institutions in the twenty-first century.