Saket Vora

Yes, yes. Need I explain this book any further? Overall, this is not Friedman’s strongest work. His book From Beirut to Jerusalem is better, but discusses a separate topic altogether. Perhaps my reception to the book was influenced I am more aware of technology, my father has worked on and spoken to me about world-wide supply chains, and my parents came to the United States from India. Much of the descriptions of technology and advancements in communications and supply chains felt too ‘gee whiz!’ to me, and a main criticism is that much of the first half of the book has to exuberant a tone and invented words for my tastes.
That being said, Friedman deserves a lot of credit and praise for summarizing and describing one of the most significant transformations of human society in an easy to understand way. He points out several key factors and uses many many examples to illustrate his points. Friedman came to his realization that ‘the world is flat’ in a discussion with an Indian businessman, and a good portion of the book concerns India and how it is tranforming itself. This was of personal interest to me, as the rest of my family is in India and I have visited the country many times.

I feel the second half of Friedman’s book is stronger than the first, for it delves more into how the ‘flattening’ of the world is impacting societies and cultures around the world. In particular, my favorite part of the book is actually the section in which he offers a reasoning for why the Arab-Muslim world is what it is now. I agree with the majority of his narrative.

All in all, I’d be more interested in a 10 year anniversary edition, so we can see how this all plays out.