This best-selling book examines the political, economic, and environmental changes that affect people's lives in the United States and around the world. Using an accessible, narrative approach Robert Schaeffer explains contemporary global processes and developments. Just as a storm that moves across an area has differing local, regional and even national and global impacts that are welcome to some and disastrous to others, global events can have very different consequences-good and bad-for people in different settings. Though many of the global changes that he examines are interconnected, the stories Schaeffer presents are told separately. The result is a text that provides readers with accounts of change that can be studied individually or read collectively. In this fourth edition Schaeffer offers a new chapter on global migration in which he examines the causes and consequences of contemporary economic, environmental, and gender-based migrations. He also looks at the economic problems of 2008 which plunged the United States into a recession and triggered a global economic downturn. Throughout Understanding Globalization Schaeffer examines developments in past years that shaped or resembled current global challenges, making this text an excellent primer for understanding current global developments.