Chain Reading

Now, if you know me at all you know that most of my reading is fiction, fiction, and more fiction. But from time to time I have a craving for a good hard read on current events.

The craving came. And I succumbed to it. Amazingly, I picked a pretty good book to satisfy my yearnings.

The World is Flat is an excellent read with a bad title. Unfortunately, the author is in LOVE with the title and spends the first 200 or so pages reiterating over and over again how the world is now flat. This is the only part of the book that I found to be tedious. Ok, ok, I get it. You thought of a clever euphemism for the fact that the competitive playing field is being levelled worldwide. Please don't beat me over the head with it.

If I were naming the book, I'd have called it "The Technological Revolution: How the U.S. Created Its Own Competition and Why We Should be Glad We Did."

Ok, so succinct names aren't really my thing, but my title really captures the essense of Friedman's book.

The focus on the book is how formerly bassackward countries such as India and China have taken advantage of the tremendous telecommunications and computing power of today and leveraged it into jobs and a high growth economy.

It demonstrates why this is actually good in many ways for the United States and why protectionism (of jobs) is a seriously bad idea. The book also makes policy recommendations as well as personal ones that should give U.S. citizens some idea of how to cope with the changes that are going to rock the world.

If you have children, I'd highly recommend reading this book because it clearly demonstrates that our children are going to be competing in a new world. I fear that they are not prepared for this world and won't be unless today's parents wake up and smell the coffee. Our sons and daughters will be competing against the best of the best in China, India, and other developing nations. And these people are hungry. Hungry for the best education and the best jobs. Unfortunately, they are also becoming better educated in the arenas that count the most - math and science. Friedman's book discusses this in detail and as a parent of young children, I found it very useful to know.

Friedman also discusses terrorism at length and the underlying causes of terrorism. He describes how in the Islamic terrorist's mind there is a huge conflict. On one hand, they exalt their own religion as highly superior and on the other, they see that their living standards and opportunities don't begin to compare by countries being run by the "infidel" (that would be us. And Europe.) It's scary stuff, but Friedman manages to get to the heart of the matter in a way that is easy to comprehend.

The World is Flat is an economics book at its heart, which may be a turn off to some readers. However, it is very, very liberally sprinkled with anecdotes and examples that are enlightening and which make the book very readable even by people without a background in business or economics. Of course I have a background in both so take this insight with a grain of salt.

The only negative, beyond the title, that I found in this book is that the last 100 pages or so were much less broadly applicable and interesting than the first 300. There's one chapter called "How Companies Cope" that I think can safely be skipped in its entirety unless you happen to be a manager of a company or are planning to become one. As a housewife, I am neither, and I found this chapter to be the least interesting of the book.

Engaging: 3 stars

Informative: 4 stars

Importance of the Message: 5 stars

Political bias: Balanced

Deserves to be a Bestseller: Yes