I read Thomas Friedman’s early book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, when I was trying to get a handle on what people meant by “globalization.” I’d been told it was one of the pithiest, easiest to understand introductions to the topic available. Although Friedman’s columns are occasionally insightful and useful, I thought this book was almost entirely free of content, and entirely forgettable. Several years on, I can’t remember a thing he wrote in it.
I haven’t read Friedman’s latest book, but Matt Taibbi in the New York Press gives it an incredibly scathing review.
Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end—and I’m not joking here—we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.
(via Collision Course)
