The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

“One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal,” the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times, reviewing The World is Flat in 2005. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for listeners, making sense of the advances in technology and communications that challenge us to run even faster just to stay in place. For these updated and expanded editions, Friedman has added more hours of commentary, fresh stories and insights. New material includes:

 

• The reasons the flattening of the world “will be seen in time as one of those fundamental shifts or inflection points, like the invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, or the Industrial Revolution”

 

• A mapping of the New Middle—the places and spaces in the flat world where middle-class jobs will be found—and portraits of the character types who will find success as New Middlers

 

• An account of the qualities American parents and teachers need to cultivate in young people so that they will be able to thrive in the flat world

 

• An account of the “globalization of the local”: how the flattening of the world is actually strengthening local and regional identities rather than homogenizing the world

 

          More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.