Thanks to Ms. Susan Ashcroft, Research Associate at Meghan-Kiffer Press, for the notification that the website for the book by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas L. Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller has added a long series of freely available articles of relevance to the book.
This is a description of the book from the publisher:
From boardrooms to classrooms to kitchen tables and water coolers, globalization has become a hot topic of discussion and debate everywhere, including a best-selling book by a famous journalist. However, Thomas Friedman’s runaway bestseller, The World is Flat, is dangerous. Friedman makes “arguments by assertion,” assertions based not on documented facts, but on stories from friends and elite CEOs he visits — not even one footnote reference. Yet his book influences business and government leaders around the globe. By what it leaves out, it does nothing more than misinform millions of people and our leaders.
In The World is Flat? Aronica and Ramdoo show that the world isn’t flat; it’s tilted in favor of unfettered global corporations that go the ends of the earth to exploit cheap labor, lax environmental regulations and tax breaks. This concise monograph brings clarity to many of Friedman’s misconceptions, and explores nine key issues that Friedman largely ignores. To create a fair and balanced exploration of globalization, the authors cite the work of experts that Friedman fails to incorporate, including Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Dr. Joseph Stiglitz. Refreshingly, you can now gain new insights into globalization without weeding through Friedman’s almost 600 pages of ill-informed, grandiloquent prose and bafflegab.
Some of the new articles added include:
- Paul Krugman: The Future of the Middle Class?
- Cambridge Universisty’s Ha-Joon Chang: Why the World Isn’t Flat
- Larry Rohter: Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
- William Greider: America’s Economic Free Fall
- The Economist: Unhappy America
- Susan Jacoby: The Dumbing of America
- Steve Fraser: Guilded Age 2.0
- David Brooks: The Cognitive Age
- Georgia Institute of Technology: Technology indicators show China ahead of the U.S.
- Vanity Fair: Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
See the video about “The World is Flat?“, posted with vodpod
David Shakhramanov
27 November 2009
After reading the excerpt on “America and the Free Trade” in The World Is Flat? by Ronald Aronica and Mtetwa Ramdoo, I was stunned at the truthfulness in the text regarding US consumption and rising debt. My thoughts instantly went to the current economic crisis, and that was before I realized the book’s publication date. Clyde Prestowitz, the former member of the Reagan Administration, may have had a prescient vision when he warned us about our rising debt and urged us to start saving, but he also failed to realize that as an individual-centered society—as opposed to the social-centered societies of the oriental—we could never allow anyone take away 40% of our checks for “security purposes.” On the other hand, I do strongly agree with him that David Ricardo’s free trade system is no longer in existence since the advent of the internet. I also agree with his disapproval of our capitalist driven economy in which even our president pushes us to spend—we need to stop consuming and produce, produce, produce. The notion that the middle class is deteriorating is also frank, especially now, years after the book had been published. We might believe that the big corporations are exploiting individuals in other nations, when in fact we are the ones being exploited. Jobs are on the decline, people are losing the houses, and the gap between the poor and the rich widens. Soon, along with rest of the world, we will become puppets to the oligarchy of conglomerates.
Even though I received a great deal of knowledge from reading this thorough text, I was very frustrated at the authors’ disdainful attacks on Thomas Friedman. In my opinion, such a comprehensive critique of a New York Times bestselling author is a petty and a desperate cry for attention by Aronica and Ramdoo.
Maximilian Forte
27 November 2009
“a comprehensive critique of a New York Times bestselling author is a petty and a desperate cry for attention”
Thus, because of the prestige manufactured for an author, we should avoid critiques. Once the person is a best selling author — for example, like Sarah Palin is now — any attacks must be illegitimate. Is this your argument, even after finding so much of value in their book? I hope I misunderstood, because it would be a very poor argument, premised on an appeal to authority.