The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century

The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, Friedman argues, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalisation – a 'flattening' of the world. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that suddenly knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, levelling the playing field as never before, so that each of us is potentially an equal – and competitor – of the other. The rules of the game have changed forever – but does this 'death of distance', which requires us all to run faster in order to stay in the same place, mean the world has got too small and too flat too fast for us to adjust? Friedman brilliantly demystifies the exciting, often bewildering, global scene unfolding before our eyes, one which we sense but barely yet understand. The World is Flat is the most timely and essential update on globalisation, its successes and its discontents, powerfully illuminated by a world-class writer.

Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign-affairs columnist for The New York Times, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (winner of the National Book Award for non-fiction and the Overseas Press Club Award); The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (also winner of the Overseas Press Club Award); Logitudes and Attitutdes: Exploring the World After September 11; and The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (winner of the first Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.