Francis Fukuyama, one of the most talented and original American sociologists of the 'middle generation', came to wide fame in 1989, when the famous article 'The End of History?' was published in The National Interest magazine. Since then, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and a consultant to the RAND Corporation, he has published four books, each of which has consistently generated public outcry. The Russian edition of Fukuyama’s classic work “The End of History and the Last Man” was recently published, and now the political and economic study “Trust: Social Virtues and the Path to Prosperity” is offered to the attention of the domestic reader.