The World Is Flat Written by Thomas L Friedman - Book Report/Review Example

The World is Flat’, written by Thomas L Friedman has created history in the field of geopolitical literature. The book could take the complexities ofgeopolitics into the common man with utmost simplicity. Thomas L Friedman is a journalist by profession and is a much renowned columnist in the New York Times. Since the start of his association with New York Times in the year 1981, he has written on many internationally relevant issues gaining much global attention. The experience he has had in dealing with varied critical subjects in geopolitics has contributed to a major count in the book, ‘The World is Flat’. This must be read together with the fact that the author starting as a financial reporter specializing in OPEC- and oil-related news handled a range of responsibilities including the chief diplomatic, chief White House, and international economics correspondent. Thus it is no wonder that the author could in his book, ‘The World is Flat’ put in order such a complex and wide issue into a comprehensively appearing flow. To add to his expertise, he has traveled miles and miles across the globe to visualize most of the geopolitically relevant issues of different times. The experience he had acquired through the extensive exposures while reporting the Middle East conflict, the end of the cold war, U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, international economics, the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat and many other globally relevant issues has well reflected in the book. His biweekly columns in the New York Times are taken with much seriousness by the international affairs experts all across the globe. This fact is confirmed by the reality that these columns are syndicated to a hundred other newspapers in different corners of the world. ‘The World is Flat’ was the fourth book written by the author following ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ (1989), ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ (1999) and ‘Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11’ (2002). It was published in 2005 by Penguin Books and was printed in the Great Britain by Clays Ltd. The book which has 489 pages is divided into six different chapters. However, it has separate 13 subheadings exclusive of the six chapters. The basic content of the literary work is about the economic leveling of the world and the processes which triggered the evolution of newer economic strengths in an economically leveled global scenario. The objective of this essay is to critically analyze ‘The World is Flat’ and to have a review of it, explaining its strengths and weakness in the process of extending the ideas to the reader. The most distinguishable feature of the work is the simplicity in the language and the simple methodology and flow used by the author in the whole book. It must not be forgotten that the context that has been dealt is quite complex and diverse in its nature. The geopolitical issue of the economic flattening of the world involves a number of crucial and complex issues and the plot of the whole write-up is spread across a wide geographical area. The issue in a way is very diverse as it involves the political and economic systems of a number of countries with huge variety including; America, China and India. However, these complexities in a particular way have reflected the unique skill of the writer to make things simple and better. No geopolitical expert in the world has been able to convey such a complex scenario in a simple way as Thomas L Friedman has successfully expressed the whole concept of economic leveling. ‘The World is Flat’ has been written in such a way that the common man can very well understand each and every complexity involved in the scenario. This fact is confirmed as USA Today has written a testimonial for the literary work; “Friedman writes in straightforward language that makes globalization’s complexities comprehensible” (USA Today 489). When the discussions in relation with globalization were least understood by the people because of the technicalities involved in the language and terminologies, Friedman could explain the impacts of globalization to the common man as like narrating a simple story. This simplicity is well reflected in the headings of the chapters as well. The headings of the chapters like ‘While I was sleeping’ and ‘America and the Flat World’ does not allow the reader to have a prejudiced mind on the complexity of the subject. The reader thus approaches the text with confidence to understand the most he reads. This in turn helps the understandability of the whole subject. The net result is that, it is only after the reader has read and understood the whole book that he or she realizes the wideness and seriousness of the subject. In this way the author has to a larger extend succeeded in expressing his thoughts effectively. However, the title of the book, ‘The World is Flat’ has the danger of misleading the potential readers. It is only after the whole text is read that one understands the way title implies to the whole context. For one looking for a literature in geopolitics, the term ‘The World is Flat’ may seem to be a bit absurd. Interestingly, Thomas L Friedman himself has raised this concern. In the publication, “Hot, Flat & Crowded’ that followed ‘The World is Flat’ Friedman has said; “When I wrote that the world is flat I wasn’t suggesting, of course, that it was getting physically flat or that we were all becoming economically equal. What the book argued was that a combination of technological, market and geopolitical events at the end of the twentieth century had leveled the global economic playing field in a way that was enabling more people than ever, from more places than ever to take part in the global economy-and, in the best of the cases, to enter the middle class.” (“Hot Flat & Crowded” 29). However, the caption that has been given to write-up which reads ‘A brief history of the globalized world in the 21st Century’ is very much explanatory within itself. It is quite true to state that the literary work has explained the whole history of the ways in which the world changed into a globalized limitation free market. However, more than just the history, it also deals with the ways in which the world was affected and influenced by globalization. As far as the subject is concerned, the explanation as quoted in the previous paragraph as stated by Thomas L Friedman is the best abstract for ‘The World if Flat’. Through the chapters it takes the readers through the journey of the world ending up in a leveled economy. The first chapter explains the ten factors which helped the flattening process. The heading of the chapter, ‘While I was Sleeping’ is a symbolic depiction that all these flattening factors worked while the most of the world never noticed it. The chapter starts with an interesting comparison of the author’s visit India’s Silicon Valley in Bangalore, with the discovery of America by Columbus. It is quite wittily and interestingly cited that while Columbus accidentally ran into America thinking that he had discovered India, the author thought that many of the people he met in Bangalore were Americans. By this he means the acceptance of technology, business techniques and even culture from a corner of the world by people from another corner of the world. With this finding the author asserts that the World if Flat. Later in the chapter Friedman defines the ten historic developments pertaining to history and technology which defined the flattening process of the world. It included; the fall of the Berlin wall; The Netscape going public; the development of work flow software; the start of open sourcing; outsourcing; offshoring; supply-chaining; insourcing; in-forming; and the development of digital, mobile, personal and virtual technologies. In the next chapter titled ‘America and the Flat World’, the performance of America in the flattened economy has been well described. The way free trade in the flattened economy was going to affect America has been largely discussed in this chapter. Here the writer tries to answer the question whether David Ricardo, the English economist was still right on his free trade theory of competitive advantage in the flattened world scenario. The author compares the peculiar scenarios in the trade of the flattened world with Ricardo’s theory which stipulates that “if each nation specializes in the production of goods in which it has a comparative cost advantage and then trades with another nation for the goods in which they specialize, there will be an overall gain the trade, and overall income level should rise in each trading country” (Friedman, “The World is Flat” 226). In light of this theory Friedman has assessed the status of America as a trading nation. Similar to this, theories has been effectively used all through the book to support the viewpoints. Along with the analysis of the current scenarios, the writer urges the American generation to upgrade their skills and to be ready to utilize the enormous opportunities offered by the flattened world. The immense competition that America could face as because of global flattening is also explained. Friedman calls this the ‘Quiet Crisis’. Thus the book is not only cites the history of flattening, but puts light to the opportunities and challenges in relation with the flattened world. It urges reforms in the educational policies and capacity building of young Americans so that the country copes up with the challenge. Similar to the American context, the scenarios in the developing countries are also analyzed. Friedman considers the increased capacity of the developed countries to utilize more resources as a product of the flattened world. While the previous two chapters dealt of the nationality based impacts of global flattening, the fourth chapter deals with the way the companies have turned global as a result of the flattening process. The author has suggested seven interesting rules and strategies to be followed by companies so as to turn global. Finally a full chapter titled ‘Geopolitics and the flat world’ exclusively dealing with the policies and agendas which underlie the global collaborations and flattening process has been included. A key strength of the book is that the information at every stage of the description has been well backed by facts, statistics and theories. The abstracts from the columns as published by the New York Times are included in the text supporting the arguments posed by the author. A number of economic and political theories also have been utilized by Friedman. The approach taken by him in the structural framework of the write-up is also very interesting. He has explained many of the crucial points by developing a background through his own personal experiences. He uses dialogues with relevant persons and travel experiences to various places of contextual interest. An ideal example for this approach is found in the initial pages which explain the author’s visit to Bangalore. However, this approach has a large positive impact on the reader. This has helped the book to be more practical and less theoretical as far a general reader is concerned. On the other side for a reader with specific research interest it has substantial theorization involved within it as well. In conclusion, it can be stated that ‘The World is Flat’ written by Thomas L Friedman has been successful in extending the ideas intended by the author. The mesmerizing explanation on the combination of technological, market and geopolitical events that resulted in the leveling of the global economic playing field has succeeded in catering for a wide rage of audience. For a common man, it is globalization and its resultants explained in the simplest language, where as for a researcher in geopolitics, it is an ideal reference material. Works cited Friedman, Thomas L, ‘The World is Flat’ London: Penguin Books, 2005 Friedman, Thomas L, ‘Hot, Flat & Crowded, London: Penguin Books, 2008 USA Today. Testimonial. World is Flat. By Thomas L Friedman, London: Penguin Books, 2005, 489 Read More