The World Is Flat?: A Critical Analysis of New York Times Bestseller by Thomas Friedman

Millions of Americans are preoccupied with the outsourcing of American jobs and the threat of global economic competition. From boardrooms to classrooms to kitchen tables and water coolers, globalization has become a hot topic of discussion and debate everywhere --including a best-selling book by a famous journalist. However, Thomas Friedman's runaway bestseller, The World is Flat, is dangerous. Friedman makes "arguments by assertion," assertions based not on documented facts, but on stories from friends and elite CEOs he visits --not even one footnote reference. Yet his book influences business and government leaders around the globe. By what it leaves out, it does nothing more than misinform the American people and our leaders.

Aronica and Ramdoo show that the world isn't flat; it's tilted in favor of unfettered global corporations that exploit cheap labor in China, India and beyond. This concise monograph brings clarity to many of Friedman's misconceptions, and explores nine key issues that Friedman largely ignores, including the hollowing out of America's debt-ridden middle class. To create a fair and balanced exploration of globalization, the authors cite the work of experts that Friedman fails to incorporate, including Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz.

Refreshingly, you can now gain new insights into globalization without weeding through Friedman's almost 600 pages of ill-informed, grandiloquent prose and bafflegab.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

With enemies like this, who needs friends?, 2008-07-12
Thomas Friedman is a poor excuse for a 21st century sage. Aronica and Ramdoo correctly point to his poor method, overly glib and too-self-satisfied anecdotes and annoying neologisms... and then they proceed to commit so many of the very same crimes against reason and serious research in their own "contribution" to our field of political economy.

Knowing, as I do, so many truly gifted scholars who will reach and influence fewer in their entire careers than will Friedman will in any given week through his contributions to the NYT, it has long been a puzzle to me how he has maintained his audience and popularity. Why on earth would anyone take this man seriously? Perhaps the answer is found here, in this "critical analysis of Thomas L. Friedman's New York Times best seller": his critics have an even less-firm grasp on "globalization" (such as it is) than he. I would not have thought this possible, but this book has exploded far more myths than it set out to. Truly, if this is the quality of his opposition, then Friedman's continued relevance has become less puzzling to me, and perhaps I have this to thank Aronica and Ramdoo for.

If you, like I, wondered how the other side saw Friedman, then perhaps you should pick up a copy of this book. If you wish to gain further insight into the brave new world into which we are entering, read anything else... perhaps even Friedman's own The World is Flat, I man who's work I never would have otherwise recommended in this life.


4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Read Collapse by Jared Diamond instead, 2008-01-05
I really wanted to like this book since my friends are so critical of Thomas Friedman's politically incorrect views, but I enjoyed the World is Flat a heck of a lot more than this book. It was nit picky and whiny. It's two redeeming features were the description of farmers in India and their inability to cope with changes brought on by multi-nationals' actions in the field of agriculture and the list of sources at the end of the book. So what if Thomas Friedman golfs and speaks to CEOs! I don't, so hearing about it is interesting to me. Maybe if the authors of this book had a writing style as accessible as Thomas Friedman's, it would have a higher rating from me. Read Jared Diamond's Collapse if you want to read about the effects of globalization in China.


3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

What do economists think?, 2007-09-23
We've used this book in my globalization course, and it certainly sparked the discussion on this crucial subject. Don't read Friedman without also reading this book.


7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

A Perspective from India, 2007-09-12

Thomas Friedman's book was triggered by the CEO of an Indian software
company in Bangalore who said the playing field was being leveled. Then,
as only a celebrity pundit can do, Friedman spun a sound bite, "The World
is Flat," and garnished story after story from his elite contacts,
while avoiding contact with the likes of Dr. Vandana Shiva, Director
of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology and others
who have a different perspective on what's really happening in India.

Here's a snippet from Dr. Shiva in Aronica and Ramdoo's book,
"Friedman presents a 0.1% picture and hides 99.9%. And in the 99.9%
are Monsanto's seed monopolies and the suicides of thousands of
farmers. In the hidden 99.9% economy are thousands of tribal children
in Orissa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan who died of hunger because the public
distribution system for food has been dismantled to create markets for
agribusiness. The world of the 99.9% has grown poorer because of the
economic globalisation. Free-trade is about corporate freedom and citizen
disenfranchisement. What Friedman is presenting as a new `flatness'
is in fact a new caste system, a new Brahminism, locked in hierarchies of
exclusion. By presenting open sourcing in the same category as outsourcing
and off shore production, Friedman hides corporate greed, corporate
monopolies and corporate power, and presents corporate globalisation as
human creativity and freedom. This is deliberate dishonesty, not just
result of flat vision."

Small wonder that at the last minute, Friedman cancelled the appointment he had with Dr. Shiva.

Perhaps Friedman could have borrowed a more appropriate title for his
book from former Harvard B-school professor, David Korten's book,
"When Corporations Rule the World."

If you want to understand the megatrend of our time, this book
offers a great starting point.
For someone looking for a more complete picture of globalization,
Aronica and Ramdoo offer a concise, but comprehensive overview.
And if you want more, the book provides a roadmap of extensive
resources for further exploration. Aronica and Ramdoo are
pro-globalization, but open your eyes to the many forms of
globalization that Friedman ignores. There is also a
companion web site which contains a number of links
to articles and presentations from some of the most qualified thinkers
on globalization: www.mkpress.com/flat



5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

This is simply a GREAT BOOK!!, 2007-09-11
This book provides an informed review and critical analysis of Thomas Friedman's book of the same name "The World is Flat". Like Clyde Prestowitz's book "Three Billion New Capitalists" this book provides a thoughtful and reasoned review of the significant demographaic and geo-political shifts that are taking place today.

For anyone looking for a thoughtful, intelligent review and critique of today's modern geographic, political, economic situation or otherwise trying to understand the great shifts in economic and political power moving to China and India and away from the rest of the world, this book is an important read.

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