Product Review
After the release of the influential book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman has come up with The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Its an excellent introduction to globalization in our world today.
The world is flat. What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments, when the dot.com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East, is when they actually began to accelerate.
The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is the unprecedented hardcover update of the original book, a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture and our political leaders are not helping us keep pace.
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