The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded] Audiobook By Thomas L. Friedman cover art

The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]

A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

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"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.

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The book was quite educational and helped explain how technology has developed a global economy. However, to blame the ills of the world on Bush gave me the impression the author was pushing a political agenda.

Too much blame

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A great and worthwhile book. The reader has a great voice and is easy to listen to for the most part. However, when reading the many quotes in the book from Indian sources, the reader makes this really off-the-mark attempt to switch to an Indian-like accent. After awhile it becomes excruciatingly difficult to listen to. Would he use a Brit accent when quoting a Brit? German? Chinese? Come on!

Great except for quirky reading.

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This book has a good history of how things ended up the way they currently are, and a lot of really interesting stories and examples of how people can adapt, etc.

I spent a long time trying to decide between the abridged and unabridged version...there's a big difference in size...I decided on the abridged, and I'm REALLY glad I did. I'm not sure what was in those hours and hours I missed out on...but the abridged version was just the right length for me!

Worth reading

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Old story now about origins for the flat earth. It happened to me at work with outsourcing from India for great people at cheap prices. All your internal subject matter experts sit offshore. China took the manufacturing as a dishonest player stealing intellectual property.

Pretty good explanation of globalism but no defense against it!

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Recommendation: do not bother - unless you want to feel inadequate because you do not have a post doctorate degree or cannot design and install a large commercial IT system in your spare time. Even if we do not realize it, computers and information technology are more a part of all our lives than ever before. Such is the nature of ever-expanding technology. But to conclude that even if we provide our children with an excellent education in another field, absent a PhD in computer science or something analogous - they will not be able to find gainful employment in the ?flat world? is simplistic and, to my mind, absurd. Exponential growth in granting common business, liberal arts, and even law degrees has taken its toll via the unbalanced capacity of our under-graduate and even graduate prospective work force. This trend is problematic and a considerable shift in the other direction toward the sciences would be prudent. Here is the book?s most aggravating conclusion: The author implies, but does not put into words, a dooms-day scenario that without science or computer expertise at its core, every education curriculum will be sub par. Even more problematical is taking a foreign company?s CEO at his word, when his company?s agenda is to usurp the career, vocation, and lifestyle of the average American. Our economy is much more complex and diverse than that of China or India. It is too one-dimensional not to consider this key element in any analogy between our respective labor forces and economies. Has anyone recently read all the documentation that came with your latest PC purchase, including the technical manual for Windows? XP that cannot be feasibly printed and shipped with the hardware because it is too bulky and expensive? God help us all, even the well educated, if conclusions drawn in this book prove correct.

Nothing but engineers and computer scientists?

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