The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century author: Thomas L. Friedman rating: asin: 0374292795 binding: Hardcover list price: $30.00 USD amazon price: $14.67 USD

This book is Thomas L. Friedman's account of globalization and how it is has changed the world, or more specifically, how it has changed how business is done around the world.

This isn't a terrible book but it certainly does not deserve the hype and five star reviews I've seen it get elsewhere. Essentially the author has realized that we are increasingly interconnected these days and he picks 10 trends as causes for this interconnectedness. He then proceeds to provide his analysis of what this means economically and politically.

Unfortunately his choice of metaphor (the world is flat) is awkward at best and done to death in the book. His golly gosh, gee whiz, look at the Pizza Hut franchises in India approach to describing the phenomenon of globalization becomes very irritating after a while, particularly if you've been keeping up with current events in the past 10 years - none of this is new anymore. His political analysis is facile at best - his discussion of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism seems to boil down to the "they hates us for our freedoms" line, and ignores thousands of years of history.