Rating: 
Summary: His conclusions drive the narrative
Review: "The Storm Upon Us ... everything seems new and strange ... nothing seems certain ... masses of people are tangibly deprived of their claims to self-sufficiency ... this revolution is steadily creating the predicate for its own collapse ... the prospect of an economic or political cataclysm of unknown dimension ... ." These and similar claims are found on just the first two pages of the book. To be fair, Mr. Greider also references the "great fortunes" thrown off by globalization and the fact that millions escape poverty, but right from the start you get the feeling that he is working backwards from his conclusions and choosing his rhetoric and his examples to sell his point of view. It's almost as if Mr. Greider is suggesting that, now that the West has gone through the very sort of radical transformation he describes with shock and dismay, the rest of humanity should just stay where they are at while we in the industrialized world figure out if and how they should reach for the security and the lifestyle that we take for granted. If you are looking to validate an anti-globalization bias you already hold then this may be the book for you, but I think it's fair to say that most readers would like to benefit from Mr. Greider's considerable experience and expertise without having to interpret his selective or overly cynical presentation. In a nutshell, my problem with the book is not that it argues against globalization and is wrong, but that it is as committed to persuasion as it is to education. I chose not to finish the book and will look for a more neutral resource.
Rating: 
Summary: The Dark Side of Globalism
Review: (By Edward Trimnell, author of "Why You Need a Foreign Language-And How to Learn One" (ISBN:1591133343)) Greider raises some legitimate points about the perils of a global market: worker displacement, rogue currency traders, etc. Moreover, the book is well written and easy to read (if you like economics). My only complaint is that the book is unbalanced: it focuses only on the negative aspects of globalism. At times, Greider sounds a bit like Malthus. I would like to see the author write a sequel that also explores the benefits of a global market.
Rating: 
Summary: His conclusions drive the narrative
Review: ?The Storm Upon Us ? everything seems new and strange ? nothing seems certain ? masses of people are tangibly deprived of their claims to self-sufficiency ? this revolution is steadily creating the predicate for its own collapse ? the prospect of an economic or political cataclysm of unknown dimension ? .? These and similar claims are found on just the first two pages of the book. To be fair, Mr. Greider also references the ?great fortunes? thrown off by globalization and the fact that millions escape poverty, but right from the start you get the feeling that he is working backwards from his conclusions and choosing his rhetoric and his examples to sell his point of view. It?s almost as if Mr. Greider is suggesting that, now that the West has gone through the very sort of radical transformation he describes with shock and dismay, the rest of humanity should just stay where they are at while we in the industrialized world figure out if and how they should reach for the security and the lifestyle that we take for granted. If you are looking to validate an anti-globalization bias you already hold then this may be the book for you, but I think it?s fair to say that most readers would like to benefit from Mr. Greider?s considerable experience and expertise without having to interpret his selective or overly cynical presentation. In a nutshell, my problem with the book is not that it argues against globalization and is wrong, but that it is as committed to persuasion as it is to education. I chose not to finish the book and will look for a more neutral resource.
Rating: 
Summary: WE ARE ALL CONNECTED
Review: As long as citizens of the U.S. think only of themselves and don't think about their fellow workers in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Mexico, and other places of the world we will never get out of the economic ditch. Mr. Greider emphasizes this in his book ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT.
Rating:
Summary: TOO LONG!
Review: For what Greier is trying to say, ie the state of current capitalism, a half page newspaper add would have been sufficient. He uses basically the same example over and over again.....i hate to be the one who shoots the messenger of bad news, but BANG! Damn you Greider for wasting my time!
Rating:
Summary: CITIZEN GREIDER
Review: GREIDER LIKES TO TAKE ON BIG JOBS, FROM QUESTIONING THE "HOLY WRIT'' OF REAGONOMICS, TO UNEARTHING THE SMUG SECRECY OF THE U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE, TO MORALLY DISGRACING POWERFUL MULTINATIONALS SUCH AS GENERAL ELECTRIC. ANYONE WHO RECIEVED AN IN-YOUR-FACE CONFRONTATION BY CENTRIST BILL CLINTON DESERVES A GOOD REVIEW. AND NOW HE TAKES ON THE MONSTROUS, NO-ONE-AT-THE-HELM GLOBAL ECONOMY. HERE IS A VERY THOUGHTFUL MAN REACHING THE DARK, DAMNING SECRETS OF THE ONE WORLD SWEATSHOP. CONGRATULATIONS TO WILLIAM GREIDER FOR THIS EFFORT.
Rating:
Summary: You can't be serious.
Review: Greider offers an interesting and wide-ranging examination of the globalizing economy. Interesting does not always translate to serious, however, and wide-ranging does not necessarily mean thorough. Greider's melodramatic snapshots of miserable working conditions and downtrodden cultures in third-world nations impart the desired emotional effects, but erode his intellectual credibility. I'm sorry the factory burned down; yes, it WAS the company's fault; don't you have a more scintillating point than than Proletariat Good, Big Business Bad? Dramatic vignettes are not scholarship. Greider's corny image of globalizing capitalism as a manic self-feeding machine at the beginning of the book (an image which later becomes inconsistent and inadequate) is reminiscent of the dangerous thresher in 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles,' but Greider is no more Thomas Hardy than he is a scholar. For a deeply interested reader who is willing to accept Greider's Neomarxist slant (he is Neomarxist, in spite of his claims otherwise), this book is all right. But a few issues of Newsweek are just as good, and probably less pandering.
Rating:
Summary: the laws
Review: Greider review I don't know where to start. Saving the world. The only world we'll ever have. Greider has some suggestions, which will be hard to implement, but as he says we've solved harder problems before. The system is a huge robotic monster tearing its way across the earth, consuming human life, nature, and its own excrement. It is out of control. No one can control it unless we organize ourselves into a more potent political scheme. And this we must do, else face a race to hell. The system has no needs, only wants. While we within it have both. Humans are not disposable machines, useful for what you can force them to do. But how else can the robot see us? Half of the people live on two dollars a day. And there's no reason why that stat can't become most of the people wage enslaved. Why pay a programmer $50,000 here when you can get one in India for a tenth of that? Indians can program just as well as Americans. To be fair, Americans don't deserve that much, while Indians deserve more. Maybe. Who says with intelligence, technology, and an entire world, we can't all be rich. Or at least have none of us starving. There are geniuses starving to death. Not that this isn't more of a tragedy than people eating chickens' eggs, which is the equivalent of directly torturing the birds yourself. Consciousness is consciousness. If a creature has it, this creature should be valued by us, and helped if possible. But how can we change things? That's like changing the laws of nature. But it's not impossible that we can learn how to do that, and give birth to god.
Rating:
Summary: Global Threat or Global Opportunity?
Review: Greider's thesis is that global capitalism, left unchecked, will:(1) concentrate all the wealth in the hands of an elite few, (2) lead to vast surpluses of manufactured goods, (3) leave ruined societies and worsened enfironmental conditions in its wake, and (4) eventually grow so powerful that it will dominate national governments. He also visualizes it will result in large scale unemployment in technically advanced countries such as Europe and America. The book was published in 1997, although Greider's references stop with 1995. He admits that this a minority position. It is not subscribed to by most political and financial leaders, who he contends are greedy and short-sighted, the former being funded and controlled by that latter. A philosophy group I belong to spend four months reading this book and discussing it chapter by chapter in weekly hour and a half sessions. The group does not lack liberal voices, nor are defenders of the global system absent. I think we gave the book a fair read. Since the book was written the world has had five more years of experience with global capitalism. Are ominous cracks showing? I was surprised to find that Greider did not come up with specific examples of countries in which global capitalism has demonstrably worsened societal conditions and wreaked economic havoc. In fact, he reluctantly points out several possible benefits of globalization: (1) the women's movement has been considerably advanced in countries where women have become major breadwinners (this may help solve the over-population problem!), and (2) the likelihood of war may be decreased because "it becomes increasingly difficult to select a proper enemy--someone who is not also a major curtomer or co-coproducer" (p. 470). Note, incidentally this is the converse of the usual argument that global arms sales threaten world peace. The cracks in the global economic foundation should appear in America first, according to Greider, since our well-paid workers are the first to be displaced by cheaper foreign labor. Yet our unemployment rates are currently at 30 year record lows. In April an article with the title: "0% Unemployment. Everybody Has a Job in Madison, Wisconsin" appeared in the New York Times Magazine. I think the clue to the error in Greider's thinking is contained in the NY Times article. Madison is a university town, a forward-looking town. Industries are springing up there which were not even conceived of ten years ago. This suggests that the future lies with the innovators, and not in trying to retain ideas and arrangements that have worked in the past. Innovative global capitalism has spread much more wealth around the world in the past twenty years than global Communism could deliver in its eighty year span of influence. Greider comes close to the latter when he proposes as his two main courses of action (1) national government controls on international investment, and taxes to redistribute the wealth. What is vitally needed in order to understand global capitalism is a well-thought-out, balanced perspective. In my opinion, Greider does not provide that in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner could only be so lucky.
Review: Greider, thought by many to be the Tommy Lee of the economics world, has rocked us with this lively and subversive text. Sure, life may ...for two-thirds of the world's population, but with such brilliant writing, who cares? I gladly knocked Ulysses off my favorites list when I finished this behemoth. That's right: BEHEMOTH.
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