The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Author: Visit Amazon's Thomas L. Friedman Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0312425074 | Format: EPUB
The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century Description
Review
"Captivating . . . an enthralling read. To his great credit, Friedman embraces much of his flat world's complexity, and his reporting brings to vibrant life some beguiling characters and trends. . . . [The World is Flat] is also more lively, provocative, and sophisticated than the overwhelming bulk of foreign policy commentary these days. We've no real idea how the twenty-first century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through."--Warren Bass, The Washington Post
"Nicely sums up the explosion of digital-technology advances during the past fifteen years and places the phenomenon in its global context. . . . Friedman never shrinks from the biggest problems and the thorniest issues."--Paul Magnusson, BusinessWeek
"[This book's] insight is true and deeply important. . . . The metaphor of a flat world, used by Friedman to describe the next phase of globalization, is ingenious."--Fareed Zakaria, The New York Times Book Review (front cover review)
"A brilliant, instantly clarifying metaphor for the latest, arguably the most profound conceptual mega-shift to rock the world in living memory."--David Ticoll, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"No one today chronicles global shifts in simple and practical terms quite like Friedman. He plucks insights from his travels and the published press that can leave you spinning like a top. Or rather, a pancake."--Clayton Jones, The Christian Science Monitor
"[The World is Flat] is filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman's winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From the Back Cover
“One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal,” the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times, reviewing The World Is Flat in 2005. For this updated and expanded edition, Friedman has seen his own book in a new way, bringing fresh stories and insights to help us understand the flattening of the world. New material includes:
• The reasons why the flattening of the world “will be seen in time as one of those fundamental shifts or inflection points, like Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, or the Industrial Revolution”
• An explanation of “uploading” as one of the ten forces that are flattening the world, as blogging, open-source software, pooled knowledge projects like Wikipedia, and podcasting enable individuals to bring their experiences and opinions to the whole world
• A mapping of the New Middle—the places and spaces in the flat world where
middle-class jobs will be found—and portraits of the character types who will find success as New Middlers
•An account of the qualities American parents and teachers need to cultivate in young people so that they will be able to thrive in the flat world
•A call for a government-led “geo-green” strategy to preserve the environment and natural resources
•An account of the “globalization of the local”: how the flattening of the world is actually strengthening local and regional identities rather than homogenizing the world
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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- Paperback: 660 pages
- Publisher: Picador; Third Edition edition (July 24, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312425074
- ISBN-13: 978-0312425074
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I picked up this book without reading any reviews on it hoping that I would get a neutral view and take on the phenomena of globalization. Now I wish I hadn't and I really wish Thomas Friedman hadn't "expanded and updated" the book - twice.
As I wanted to read a neutral book, I will give as neutral a review as possible.
His writing is engrossing, no doubt, and he makes very solid (while very obvious) points about what, who, and how globalization came to be and continues to advance. Within the first 300 pages or so, I really didn't take away anything new except a few of his personal delightful stories to use as examples of his points.
And then . . . came in the non-neutrality. He began making statements about Bush and other things that just leave a bad taste your mouth. Within the rest of the context of the book it seemed like he really didn't have to go into political scuttlebut. Typically it seems journalists have more credibility when they do not do as he did. Also, he points out some examples of (obvious) problems, but lots of his suggested solutions seem unrealistic; which is probably why I have still yet to see any of them come to be used. Some suggestions and prose were good, but the bad outweighed them.
Many times I found myself reading the same points over and over again in the same section. It seemed to me that he would grind many of them in so much and really drag on many of the chapters or sections that did not need to be as long to get the point across. An example of this (and I don't have the book right in front of me to point out the page numbers) is when he even uses the same word over 12 times in 2 1/2 pages to describe something. Not very flattering and it made the sentence structure hard to follow through.
Friedman relies on personal anecdotes to generalize about a complex topic. His anecdotes are heavily biased, since he hangs around with captains of industry, who are big beneficiaries of laissez-faire globalization. He even justifies his approach with this quote: "One example is worth a thousand theories." Well, this topic is much too complex for such an approach. He is an entertaining (if very repetitive and self-absorbed) raconteur, but he misses the forest by spending over 600 pages congratulating himself for climbing a few low-hanging branches in the most obvious trees.
It is a mark of Friedman's approach and personality that he dates the beginning of "Flat World" phenomena to a few years ago, when he discovered them. He seems blissfully unaware of the long history of globalization. A few examples: 200 years ago, before refrigeration, North American entrepreneurs destroyed the English trade in domestic ice by building insulated ships and shipping New England ice to London (and even Calcutta); cheap water power and cotton in the US destroyed the British weaving trades 50 years later; 500 years ago, the takeover of Peruvian silver mines by Spanish entrepreneurs bankrupted silver production in Spain; there are countless examples of the effects of globalization from the Roman Empire's rise and fall as well (well-managed during the rise, disastrously so during the fall). Friedman's "born yesterday" myopia on this topic, and on the lessons of history, is puzzling.
Friedman glances by what is, in my mind, the central issue (e.g. the one that has the biggest impact on people): the different ways governments act and respond.
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