The world is flat, but this book is not. It's Thomas Friedman's ginormous examination of globalization and the forces that drive it, starting with the end of the last century and continuing up to about 2:15 yesterday afternoon. The book traces the antecedents and consequences of global communication, outsourcing, and exportation of culture in the last few years, with an eye for excrutiating detail. Friedman is overly fond of creating supurfluous terminology for the sake of creating supurfluous terminology ("The 10 Flateners", "Steroids", "The Great Convergance" etc.) but he's nothing if not thorough. It was kind of interesting to see a big picture examination of the events and trends that I lived through --and to some extent participated in. Things like the explosion of telecommunications, the growth of the Internet, the dot com boom and bust, the proliferation of cell phones, and the love/hate relationship America has developed with outsourcing. It's neat to see how all these pieces (supposedly) fit together and fed off of each other to produce some kind of man-eating jigsaw puzzle.

Unfortunately, Friedman is a better researcher than he is writer. The World is Flat positively creeps along like a melting glacier, and its narrative is only rarely infused with any kind of character, whit, or entertainment. The author has this awful habit of repeating anecdotes and points ad nauseum, as if their repitition will bring him some kind of credence that's otherwise missing. Did you know that India is becoming a high-tech center for outsourced jobs that can be done more cheaply there? Also, India is becoming a high-tech center for outsourced jobs that can be done more cheaply there. In India, outsourced jobs that can be done more cheaply there are building a high-tech center. In India, outsourced jobs high tech purple monkey dishwasher. It just goes on and on and on and on. I get it! Move on, Friedman.

So as interesting as parts of it are, I can't really recommend The World is Flat, and I'm not even going near the book's shortcomings as a (one-sided) critique of globalization. If you really want the quick-and-dirty version of the book, the Wikipedia entry has decent summaries of each chapter.