Rating: 
Summary: When's His Next Book Out?
Review: Another masterly work from Mr.Friedman.
I will be buying, and reading and no doubt enjoying his next book but I must admit to a certain amount of disappointment. In this book he would have appear to have eased back on informality, humour and readability and opted instead to endorse all US and pro US propaganda since 1945.
I found this new thrust distracting from the many excellent points and ideas he so gracefully displays.
Rating:
Summary: Dated, yes, but tremendously insightful!
Review: I disagree with most of the reviews about this book. This book opened up my mind and increased my understanding of the turbulence in the world today. I think the other reviewers are reading this book as critics with a bias rather than truly opening their minds to a new perspective. I agree the book is not as cohesive as it should be and tended to be repetitive in parts; however, I found so many nuggets of greater understanding that I highly recommend it to everyone. For instance, before reading this book, I had trouble understanding the complexities of the Palestine and Israel conflict. The analogy of the Lexus and the Olive Tree opened my heart and my mind to the people of that region. The book brought me to tears in a couple places as I imagined the anguish and internal conflict that many people of that area of the world must be experiencing. I found this book to be a true gem. My book is highlighted and dog-eared and I find myself quoting it quite often. Open your mind, buy this book, and take the time as you are reading it to reflect on the specific ideas. Read it for greater understanding rather than reading it as a critic with a biased and closed mind that is just looking for books supporting your current point of view.
Rating: 
Summary: Bullish on Globalization, and bullish on America
Review: Friedman comes across as an intellectual dilettante who has leveraged his long experience as a successful, wide-ranging news correspondent to collect and organize his view of things into a philosophical framework that to him makes sense of the world. He's my kind of guy. He deals mostly with the economics of globalization in a breezy, informal style replete with pet, but useful, descriptors for various aspects of it. But however central those economic aspects may be, the embrace of globalization extends far beyond. It is the offspring of technology, nurtured in a rising sea of humanity. It is nothing less than the whole of the interaction and interdependence of the world's peoples in today's world environment.
Friedman's thesis is that globalization is the world system that replaced the Cold War, and that it's happening whether we like it or not. No argument from me on this point. We live in a world moved by market forces and technology as much as, if not more than, superpower politics.
The interaction of the new and the old explains our world today, which Friedman aptly captures with his metaphor of the Lexus and the olive tree. He looks at "how the age-old quests for material betterment and for individual and communal identity - which go all the way back to Genesis - play themselves out in today's dominant international system of globalization" (pg. 29).
He sees, understands, and explains globalization through his journalist's lenses, "assigning different weights to different perspectives at different turns in different situations, but always understand[ing] that it is the interaction of all of them together that is really the defining feature of international relations" (pg. 19). As such he interprets the world through a combination of at least six dimensions: economic, national security, political, cultural, environmental, and technological.
One of the hallmarks of globalization is rapid change - out with the inefficient; try something new. Change is scary to most people. This is the core reason, it seems to me, why globalization is disliked (feared) by conservatives of all stripes - too much change, too quickly. Change is occurring faster than many people can handle, be they individuals or grouped into nations, cultures, political parties, ethnic groups, or whatever. As he points out on page 62, Tip O'Neill's adage "All politics is local" Is fast becoming passe.
One has to wonder, though, if globalism isn't really just the triumph of Westernism and, in particular, Americanism. He alludes to this, as does Samuel P. Huntington among others. (See for example, Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington, eds.). Certain radical groups around the world certainly ascribe to such a view. As Michael Hirsh writes, "Every major international institution - the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, NATO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - was made in America. And taken together, all this institution building has amounted to a workable international system, one in which democracy and free markets seem to be an ever-rising tide" ("Bush and the World," Michael Hirsh, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2002, pg. 31). Add to that the Internet.
At the beginning of chapter 6 he uses Malyasia's Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to make the point that globalization is a given - a nation will resist it only at its economic peril. He could be (and perhaps is) speaking to opponents of globalization in this country. If globalization is the current world system, then it's logical for the United States, and certainly within our capabilities, to maintain our lead and use it to our geopolitical and geoeconomic advantage.
Of course, there are potential downsides to globalization - all of which, as he points out, are already occurring to some degree in various areas of the planet. These downsides include, for example, cultural homogenization (especially Americanization, which some around the world view with alarm and outrage); unplanned, unrestrained growth; and environmental degradation. He also discusses the problem of "winner take all." This is his metaphor for the disparity between incomes of superstars versus the rest of us and how this problem is exacerbated by globalization. He uses the NBA as a marvelous example.
This segues into a discussion of the backlash around the world. Much of it is in response to the various downsides mentioned above, but mostly, it seems to me, the backlash is driven by fear of change. He doesn't believe the backlash is a critical long-term danger though - not yet anyway, and probably never. Too many people around the world have a stake in globalization's success, even those that don't know what it is, because it brings a higher standard of living.
In the end Friedman is bullish (what he calls "rational exuberance") on globalization and on America. He recognizes a whole list of problems along with the possibility that the US may yet go bust. Still, he argues, America has the right tools, is at the right place, and has the right set of government, economic, and social systems to have and to maintain a commanding lead in globalization.
He makes an interesting, albeit somewhat obvious, point about the danger America now faces. Before globalization, when nation states were the key players and geopolitics was the playing field, if a person or group wanted "to wreak havoc on" America they had to first attain control of another nation state. Today even single individuals (e.g., hackers) can cause us serious harm, and organized groups not tied to any particular nation state (e.g., al Qaeda) can be dire threats.
This book, while not the final answer on globalization, does give me a new perspective on world and national events. For example, look at the hullabaloo over Enron, WorldCom, etc., and the new law requiring CEOs to certify their corporations' books in the context of what Friedman calls DOScapital 6.0, the electronic herd, a nation's hardware and software, and so forth. Now, is that a forced fit? Read this book and decide for yourself. It will be worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Formulaic and Biased
Review: Friedman's book is shamefully US-centric for a book on globalization (although it tries very hard not to be). His journalist background becomes painfully obvious throughout. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the book wasn't such a long, confused, and repetitive "study" of globalization. If you enjoy reading about (INSERT US CORPORATION) amazingly have an office in (INSERT COUNTRY HERE), yet co-existing with (INSERT LOCAL TRADITION/FOOD/ETC.), and enjoy reading it (INSERT LARGE NUMBER) times in the span of one book, then by all means buy this book. Personally, I find Mad Libs more enjoyable than this book is insightful. But maybe that's just me.One thing that I did find interesting was Friedman's "McDonalds" war theory. Also humorous in retrospect was the superiority of the US market/capital system, stemming from its "financial transparency".
Rating:
Summary: Ideology disguissed as journalism..
Review: Written from an implicit neo-classical orientation, a believer in 'perfect markets' with internet as example (as antidote for this nonsense, see Mirowski's 'Machine Dreams'). Believes that networking alone explains everything, a viwpoint now popular in some quarters of statistical physics and represented by the recent popular books 'Linked' and 'Nexus'. The news from Lake Wobegon: networking does not explain it all, especially not the lopsided distribution of wealth. Networking cannot even explain the observed statistics of financial markets! For the history of the development of the Enron Society (globalization via deregulated free markets since the implosion of resistance from the now-defunct USSR), see 'Liar's Poker' and 'FIASCO' (I hereby recommend MD, LP, and F to the authors of Lexus-Nexus et al). Friedman might also have benefited from an orientation that is not purely Wall Street, Israel, and The Grand Hotel (try an alpine village, where olive trees still win over Lexus). The main error of today's popular belief in the US, even within the Democratic Party leadership: that unregulated free markets must be 'The Answer' because they won over Communism. Europe has a middle way, and since the news from Enron, WCom, et al, I suspect that that middle way (social safety net, rules that prevent Enronization of society, etc) will now tend to persist. Enron and Wcom have done more damage to US credibility than could have been done by any enemy government, all compliments of Reagan-Friedman era deregulation. This is today's prediction from Lake Wobegon...
Rating: 
Summary: History
Review: If you want to understand how foolish people were about the Internet and globalization at the end of the 20th century, this is the book for you. You can learn how a brilliant guide to globalization could become the joke of the last century in a matter of two years. "The American stock market was at a record high, American unemployment was at a record low and virtually every study showed that NAFTA had been a win-win arrangement for the United States, Canada and Mexico" (Friedman, 2000, p336). Oh yeah? I wonder why there is no updated edition of The Lexus And The Olive Tree for 2002. In summary, the book says something like: "Globalization is not an option, but a must. If you want to globalize, you need to do it fast because globalization is like 100 meter dash over and over. If you do it fast, you will lose your olive tree (identity). It's not acceptable to lose the olive tree." I cannot make any sense out of it.
Rating:
Summary: A Learning Tool
Review: If you would like to learn more about globalization, technology, and world economics, do read Thomas Friedman's book. Friedman is experienced, sensible and brilliant. He skillfully explains and analyzes complex, world economic problems as well as simpler concepts, such as digitization, in understandable terms. Whether I agreed with him or not, I, a dummy in economics, learned much from Friedman. I give the book 5 stars as a well written "learning tool."
Rating: 
Summary: Could easily have been half as long and said the same thing
Review: Not a bad book, and some interesting ideas, but needed a more vigorous editor.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: This book provides a look at globalization and the world as it stands today. Not being a historian, this book does not delve very much into the history and development of globalization. So, if that is what you are looking for look elsewhere. Here is the history contained in the book in a nutshell: 1. The current "Post-Cold War System" (being defined for what it isn't, not what it is) has been replaced by "Globalization II". Globalization I was interupted in 1914 by WWI and did not resume until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 2. The current stage of globalization is largely the resut of the telecommunications revolution of the 1980s. Once again, this is not a history book. It is written much more in the Op/Ed style (befitting of a journalist) and is largely based on Friedman's experiences and insights as a journalist. He has a few original (to my knowledge) theories that I feel will stick around (The Golden Strait Jacket, Golden Arches Theory, etc.) Overall a very insightful book and highly recommended for ease of reading. It didn't quite change my view of the world, but brought it more into focus.
Rating:
Summary: An overblown selfcongulatory waste of time
Review: Tom Friedman is a thoughtful and insightful writer on many fronts--but not in this book. He offers a "blinding glimpse of the obvious". But it's no glimpse. It's a torrent of self-indulgent words and more words and more words. This could have been a tight five to seven page essay. But no book. "Common, Tom!!"--as he would say in his theatrical voice in this book...
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