The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy is a book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw first published as The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World in 1998. In 2002, it was adapted as a documentary of the same title and later released on DVD. The Commanding Heights attempts to trace the rise of free markets during the last century as well as the process of globalization. Yergin attributes the origin of the phrase commanding heights to a speech by Vladimir Lenin referring to the control of perceived key segments of a national economy. Overview The authors take the thesis that prior to World War I, the world effectively lived in a state of globalization, which they term the First Era of Globalization. The authors define globalization as periods in which free markets predominate and countries place few, if any, limits on exports, immigration, imports, or information exchanges. Overall, they see globalization as a positive movement that improves the standard of living for all the people connected to it, from the richest to the poorest. According to the authors, the rise of communism and fascism, not to mention the Great Depression, nearly extinguished capitalism, which rapidly lost popularity. After World War II, the authors note that the work of economist John Maynard Keynes came to be widely accepted in Western economies. Keynes believed in government regulation of the economy, which the authors underline as Keynes' great influence and prestige. The authors consider that the so-called commanding heights were often owned or severely regulated by governments in accordance with Keynes' ideas. The authors then discuss how the political changes of the 1980s ushered in accompanying changes in economic policy. The old trend changed when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and when Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. Both leaders parted ways with Keynesian economics and governed more in the tradition of the works of Friedrich Hayek, who opposed government regulation, tariffs, and other infringements on a pure free market and those of Milton Friedman, who emphasized the futility of using inflationary monetary policies to influence rates of economic growth. In practice, Hayek's policies were applied only selectively, as Reagan's 1986 income tax reforms substantially increased taxes on the lowest quintile of wage-earners but dramatically decreased rates for the upper two quintiles. In contrast