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A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas Friedman
Book Reviewed by:A timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.
When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?
In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt. The World Is Flat is the timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.
An expanded and revised version was published in hardcover in April 2006.
ONE
While I Was Sleeping
Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who
love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine
of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me,
Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the
said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and
the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore
directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but
by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence
that anyone has gone.
-- Entry from the journal of Christopher Columbus on his
voyage of 1492.
No one ever gave me directions like this on a golf course before: "Aim at either Microsoft or IBM." I was standing on the first tee at the KGA Golf Club in downtown Bangalore, in southern India, when my playing partner ...
Thomas L. Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at The New York Times. He is the author of three best-selling books: From Beiruit to Jerusalem (1989), winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction and still considered to be the definitive work on the Middle East, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999), and Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 (2002). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family (more).
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