BOOK REVIEW: Around the World in 80 Trades: From Camels to Coffee: An Economist's Adventures in the World's Oldest Trading Culturesby Conor Woodman; Macmillan; £17.99 (€20)

WHAT LINKS a chief executive in Taiwan, a stockbroker in London, or an oil magnate in Saudi Arabia with a camel trader in Egypt, a horse dealer in Kyrgyzstan or a jade merchant in Taiwan? What makes each individual businessman successful and allows him to make a profit, even in times of economic hardship?

Conor Woodman is a business analyst who has cut his teeth in the heart of London but has now got a hunger for adventure beyond the City walls (though he does admit to learning a thing or two about buying and selling in his grandparents’ shop in the west of Ireland).

He sets himself a daunting challenge: to travel the world, trading his way around the globe by buying and selling goods along the way, in an effort to end up back where he started with a handsome profit, a sack of lessons learned and a host of tales to tell.

But first he must learn the key to good business and the answer to those earlier questions: the fine art of negotiation, and where better to learn than from the

cut-throat carpet dealers in the souks of Morocco?

Woodman’s idea is an inspiring one, and more than a little heart-warming, even factoring in the cold, hard commercial motives. He throws himself into business after business, looking for products that he can shift further down the road, always with a nose for a good deal and an eye on the balance sheet, but it seems he can’t help falling for a good story to boot.

He tries his luck with camels in Sudan, brings coffee beans from Zambia to South Africa, hits on the improbable idea of selling chilli sauce to Indians, and attempts to woo Chinese palates with South African wine. Jade catches his eye in China, and he finds himself with four horses and barely half a clue in a market in Kyrgyzstan, before bringing to boogie boards to Mexico; on and up the road he goes, buying, selling, winning, losing and learning all the way.

Woodman’s tactics are as old as they are shrewd. He looks to buy a product and travel with it, goes directly to source, cuts out the middlemen, and attempts to haggle his way to the best price possible.

He goes up against some of the most seasoned negotiators in the world, and it is the people in the wilder places that prove the toughest to break a buck from.

There are hard lessons to be learned and Woodman is painfully honest about his shortcomings, but his irrepressible enthusiasm for doing deals, picking products and, perhaps most of all, meeting people that makes this such a worthwhile read.

This is entertaining and enlightening stuff, and there is an accompanying Channel 4 series which I have not seen. Woodman has a nose for a bargain (sometimes), the courage to go with his gut, and a facility to bring his western economic insights to bear on the world’s oldest trading markets without being patronising.

At one point he deftly compares the camel-trading routes of northeast Africa to the global financial systems – no prizes for guessing which comes out looking the more sensible; in fact, it is largely the traditional trading methods that cover themselves in economic glory. He even tackles the old adage of selling ice to Eskimos, even if in his version the Eskimos are Indians and the ice is searingly hot chilli sauce.

There are a few intriguing elements in this book that will have more than a few readers googling locations and dreaming of making a fortune from the path that Woodman has blazed (a ski resort in Kyrgyzstan sounds like a particularly sound investment).

But towards the end of the book, as the global markets disintegrate, it becomes readily apparent that what Woodman is really trying to do is earn a living, with the emphasis on the living. His last few trades largely rely on quality workmanship, and the real profit to be made is surprisingly not in the bulk-buy market, but in traditional, face-to-face trading.

Huge corporate deals might look good on paper but perhaps the most fascinating conclusion he reaches is that the world is not dominated by big business in the way he believed and perhaps the most satisfying way to make a living is to buy, trade and sell a product, making connections and partners along the way that can be relied on to maintain a livelihood in the future.

This is a sobering and reassuring thought at a time when business has never looked so morally bankrupt.