An engrossing insider's account of how a teacher built one of the  world's most valuable companies - rivaling Walmart and Amazon - and  forever reshaped the global economy.

In just a decade and a  half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an  English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's  largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of  Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the  largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs  and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming  private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of  middle-class consumers.

Duncan Clark first met Jack in 1999 in  the small apartment where Jack founded Alibaba. Granted unprecedented  access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark  draws on his own experience as an early advisor to Alibaba and two  decades in China chronicling the Internet's impact on the country to  create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba's rise.

How did Jack overcome his humble origins and early failures to  achieve massive success with Alibaba? How did he outsmart rival  entrepreneurs from China and Silicon Valley? Can Alibaba maintain its 80  percent market share? As it forges ahead into finance and  entertainment, are there limits to Alibaba's ambitions? How does the  Chinese government view its rise? Will Alibaba expand further overseas,  including in the US?

Clark tells Alibaba's tale in the context  of China's momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an  unlikely corporate titan as never before.