The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

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The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty first Century

  • ISBN13: 9780374292782
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

The World Is Flat is Thomas L. Friedman’s account of the fantastic changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in equipment and communications place people all over the globe in touch as never before—making an explosion of wealth in India and China, and challenging the rest of us to run even quicker just to stay in place. This updated and expanded edition features more than a hundred pages of fresh reporting and commentary, drawn from Friedman’s travels around the world and across the American heartland—from anyplace where the flattening of the world is being felt.
In The World Is Flat, Friedman at once shows “how and why globalization has now shifted into warp drive” (Robert Wright, Slate) and brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the regularly bewildering scene unfolding before their eyes. With his unique ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, he clarifies how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; how governments and societies can, and must, adapt; and why terrorists want to stand in the way. More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.
Amazon.com Review
Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Lime Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn’t going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman’s breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists–the optimistic ones at least–are inevitably prey to.

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 nearly anything else, straight away with billions of additional 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 equipment pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East–is when they really started to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete–and win–not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn’t forget the “mutant supply chains” like Al-Qaeda that let the tiny act huge in more destructive ways.)

Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his tale after his book’s relief and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What’s changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition–on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain–are largely unaltered. As a replacement for, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls “uploading,” the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes point recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the “New Middle” class. As before, Friedman tells his tale 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 well loved culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. –Tom Nissley

Where Were You When the World Went Flat?

The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty first CenturyThomas L. Friedman’s reporter’s curiosity and his ability to admit the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the leader of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Lime Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we’ve now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there’s nearly no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the pointer of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, “Can You Hear Me Now?”)

And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he’s made in “The World Is Flat 2.0,” including his response to parents who said to him, “Fantastic, Mr. Friedman, I’m glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?”

The Essential Tom Friedman

The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty first Century
From Beirut to Jerusalem		 The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty first Century
The Lexus and the Lime Tree		 The World Is Flat : A Brief History of the Twenty first Century
Longitudes and Attitudes

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