ILLICIT By Mosés Naím Doubleday PP: 340 Price: Rs 975

Smuggling, trafficking in contraband and counterfeiting are not exactly recent activities. As long as there have been national boundaries, these activities have thrived. Smugglers, traffickers and counterfeiters take advantage of the very rules, regulations and national boundaries that guarantee sovereignty to countries. And often it is these boundaries and rules that ironically thwart a country's authorities-customs, police and other enforcement agencies-from being able to apprehend perpetrators of these activities.

Yet, as Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy and former Venezuelan minister for industry and trade, writes in Illicit, never has the problem reached the enormous and dynamic proportions that it has during the current era of globalisation. The very same factors that have encouraged and brought about freer flow of ideas and trade across the world have also promoted the growth of illicit trade. It's the flipside of the globalisation story, says Naím, "just as crucial but far less known". Since the 1990s, when technologies made communication across the world cheap and fast, when borders became more porous because of the ease of global trade, and tariffs and restrictions were dismantled, global smuggling, whether it is in drugs, prostitutes, arms or counterfeit products, soared. As a result, smugglers became "more international, wealthier and politically more influential than ever before".

Illicit trade today, says Naím, who also holds a PhD. from mit, permeates every strata of society. Children in us schools find it easier to score marijuana, which is illegal, than buying vodka or cigarettes, which are, well, legal. Well-heeled business travellers routinely engage escorts on trips abroad, thus, encouraging transnational trafficking in prostitutes. Acquiring a fake Louis Vuitton bag from local physical markets for fake goods across the world or a fake Rolex watch via the internet is easy as it is common.

While Naím's book may not break new ground with revelations about the phenomena, it certainly brings a fresh perspective to a problem that is corroding the global economy even as it feeds off and grows on the back of licit globalisation.

BRUSHING UP THE YEARS By R K Laxman Penguin Viking PP: 304 Price: Rs 750

INDIA THROUGH HIS 'TOONS

When you've been around for almost 60 years on the pages of a newspaper, illustrating the funny and the sorry, the bizarre and the pedestrian of everyday India, you cease to be just a cartoonist. Instead, you become the voice of the common man. Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman has been this and more, and which is why his collection of cartoons from 1947 to 2004 reads like an illustrated history of modern India. Be it the first general elections or the five-year plans or the rise and fall of Rajiv Gandhi, Laxman always had a point to make, and more often than not, he was right. For instance, he bemoaned the government's policy of encouraging state enterprises at the cost of private companies, and he saw the mess Rajiv Gandhi was getting into in Sri Lanka. His Common Man, though never speaking, was everywhere, watching everything. Although 81 and ailing, Laxman is still the most popular cartoonist in India. The best part about Brushing Up, of course, is that even your 10-year-old can flip through it and get up to speed on India's post-Independence history.