Walter P.
St. Louis, Missouri

Mark Guerrero
Dallas, TX

Charles Snell
Beverly Hills, CA

Robert Stroz
Reno, NV

StocksAtBottom.Com Book Reviews

The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman

First, before you read another word, if you are buying this book, you want the expanded and updated version, which was published on April 18, 2006. It has another 100 pages that are not in any other versions. These 100 pages by itself are worth the entire cost of the book. Also make sure you read the section on terrorism, Friedman is as good as it gets on this subject.

Now having said that, how often in a lifetime do you come across people that REALLY make you THINK? People who CHALLENGE the assumptions that underpin the entire framework upon which each of us has to understand, interpret, and ACT ON the world. This is Tom Friedman's gift to us. Even if he's not completely right, it matters only that he has the rest of us thinking about what he's saying, and for this we should be grateful.

You want to read this book if:

1) You find a compelling need to understand what telecommunications, and the new information age means to you, me, and the rest of us?

2) You find it important to know if you and I are going to be able to do the work we are doing right now for the rest of our lives?

3) You want to know if the United States is going to continue to be the world's only superpower with hegemony over different areas of the world, and technology.

4) You want to know if we are in fact at an INFLECTION POINT (Andy Grove -Intel), where the world as we know it is about to change radically in ways we can not currently envision?

Are these questions important to YOU?

I believe these are vital questions, that each of us has to explore and make decisions about, and then EXECUTE what is best for each of us. Tom Friedman does an extraordinary job in conveying to you the state of the world as it really is, not as we would like it to be, or as our politicians would like us to believe. It would seem that some readers are not happy with Friedman? They find him arrogant, too intellectual, just full of himself, and irritating.

This isn't about the messenger - it's about the MESSAGE

The message is one of hope, but we have to be listening. What has happened very simply is that a trillion dollars worth of new high-tech telecommunications cables were installed around the world in the late 1990's, with no real intended purpose, except there was the money to be spent. It then became apparent that you could talk via telephone or computer across the planet for the SAME COST as someone 200 feet away in your neighbor's home - The world was never the same again, or as the book's title indicates, THE WORLD IS FLAT.

CHEAP Bandwidth and the Internet - CHANGED EVERYTHING

Friedman gives you the whole story. You can now get an x-ray, or CAT scan in a hospital in Iowa at 3AM, and have an Indian doctor 12 time zones away interpret the results for you real time at 1/20th of the cost. Your child needs tutoring. You can have a PhD tutor your child on the telephone from India for $10 per hour, rather than $50 or a $100 per hour here. The world is changing certainly. You either get on the train and go with it, or you get taken out by that train as it sweeps by. Either way, you are not going to stand still according to Friedman.

Look at the website you are reading right now. You can read reviews and access any book, and have it delivered to your within days without leaving your front porch. You can even download many books them instantly. You can obtain the knowledge of the universe while sitting on a river in Montana, or a cattle ranch in Texas. This is fantastic, and this is indeed transforming the way we think, act, and execute.

You Can't Ignore Friedman, but you can't EXTRAPOLATE the future either!!!

Friedman talks about, how many people seem preoccupied with the notion of China and India overtaking the United States, and or the world changing to become something we don't recognize today. If there is one thing that is certain about the future, it is that you cannot take what you see right now, and extrapolate into the future. Life just doesn't work that way.

The United States is the only country in history that imports more people and makes them citizens of America, than the rest of the world COMBINED. Think about it, we are in a constant state of REJUVENATION. No other country can begin to claim this.

In addition this country produces genius level individuals greater than any other country, witness the sheer number of Nobel Prize winners, and the innovations that just don't happen anywhere else. Whether it's the invention of the Internet, the PC, vaccines, new media, or managerial ways of thinking and executing. It's all happening here, and probably will, for decades to come.

Read Tom Friedman, embrace the future, and enjoy a remarkable new world, just as Columbus, the Mayflower settlers, and our founding fathers enjoyed. Tom Friedman provides a roadmap, but only up to a point. How the rest of the story gets written is up to us. Good luck.