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TechnoTV - The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
![The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514Z8C85T7L._SL160_.jpg)
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List Price: $49.95
Our Price: $7.72
Your Save: $ 42.23 ( 85% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Macmillan Audio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 327
EAN: 9781427200174
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 1427200173
Label: Macmillan Audio
Manufacturer: Macmillan Audio
Number Of Items: 13
Publication Date: 2006-05-02
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release Date: 2006-05-02
Studio: Macmillan Audio
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: New lipstick on a old pig!
Comment: A transparent attempt to justify the new colonialism. In the 16th century it was the great nations of Europe, in the 21st it is the multinational corporation. It is still exploitation of the haves by the have-nots, just a lot of new lipstick on the same old pig!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but overly optimistic
Comment: I think it's too optimistic for today's world. I mean, geez, how long ago was this written? So far, things aren't getting better like he seemed to think they would. It's all good for India but sucks for the U.S. Except he acts like it's good for all of us.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thomas Friedman is one of the most phenomenally stupid people who has ever achieved public prominence
Comment: If you want a good review of *The World Is Flat*, google these words: Matt Taibbi flathead. Here are some gems:
-Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says:
"I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins."
Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one.
-By the end--and I'm not joking here--we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.
-This is the intellectual version of Far Out Space Nuts, when NASA repairman Bob Denver sets a whole sitcom in motion by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" in a space capsule. And once he hits that button, the rocket takes off.
Thomas Friedman is a hack and a moron; and it does not surprise me in the least that those who bought his book also bought Malcom Gladwell's stuff. They are both mental midgets who pander to the same crowd of ignorant, grasping PC yuppies who put just enough effort BSing their way through high-school and college and just had enough family connections to land upper-middle-class corporate gigs and are now seeking to justify themselves by reading a book about how they're at a new vanguard and to get their children, who will have unfortunately regressed even lower than they--a leg up in the Braying New World. Any book that doesn't require them to know or learn anything or to think at all is suitable.
If you have a modicum of intelligence, this book, as well as anything else written by the monumental idiot Thomas Friedman, is a waste of your time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow! We Need to Change.
Comment: Purchaed as a gift, but plan to read, also. I know we will be changed by it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Keep in mind...
Comment: That this is a journalistic work, not an academic. This is not meant for intellectuals or professors, nor is it meant to be an analysis of, well, anything. It is simply subjective "gotcha" reporting. Friedman has done what he has always done best..find people to quote and make catchy slogans. I rate this 1 star because this is neither good for people wanting an introduction to political economy or people who have already built a firm foundation in the realm: As a starting point this will build a completely misleading and false foundation, as an ending this is laughable.
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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