An old fashioned analysis which has no meaning to modern society. The book praises the american way of life and sets it as an example for the rest of the world. An update of the content with the sequel of the analysis would be necessary.

There are so many anecdotes and constant metaphors that it just became confusing and infuriating. Some of it was also very questionable (the long rambles about the Golden Straitjacket added nothing to my understanding...)

لا شك ان الكتاب دعوة للعولمة بطريقة ذكية فيها طمس للدور الخفي الذي يلعبه هذا التوجه و تلك البرمجة التي في محتوى هذا الكتاب لعقول المجتمعات والأجيال المستقبلية، يوجّه اللوم للمجتمعات والدول التي إنهارت أو عانت بشدة من نتائج العولمة بأنها هي المسؤلة، في هذا جانب من الصحة كبير ولكنه يطمس من الذي يدير من خلف الستار، يسرد نماذج من شتى بقاع العالم فيذكر الجوانب الإيجابية من نهج العولمة التي لا مفر منها ويخفي سلبياتها يدس السم في العسل ، يحصر الأخطاء و السلبيات على الآخرين و يخفي الأدوار الممنهجة التي يلعبها الكبار، يحتوي على بعض من الصواب و الكثير من الخداع، من المهم جدا قراءة كتاب " سنة ٥٠١ الغزو مستمر " .

This book contains the author's anecdotes and personal experiences. A series of chapters have shown that Thomas Friedman, the author, has reflected on many things he called globalisation. Some metaphors were found helpful in explaining the phenomenon. For example, as the book title states, Lexus and olive trees represent distinguishable things that occur both globally and locally. The latter belongs to tradition and cultural roots held by communities. The former is about industrialisation involving multiple parties around the world, working material parts to produce cars. In another chapter, he used the term "electronic herds" to explain how traders and corporations operate multi-nationally and affect the decisions of country leaders and individual people.

Although Friedman's writing is sometimes successful in describing complex phenomena, in some other contexts, the narrative tends to oversimplify things. I am sceptical that this book is sufficient for many readers to understand globalisation if it is only based on personal experiences. The book should be treated as a subjective report. It can't be a serious account of analysis for policymaking.

This book is about globalization as the new world order following the Cold War and how our world/country need to adapt to survive and be successful in this new world order.

I've got two big problems with this book and I'll tell them to you right here. 1.) It's almost 400 pages long and very, very detailed. 2.) It's written by Thomas Friedman. I've got a few things to say about Thomas Friedman. I said, after reading "The World is Flat" that I didn't care to read anything he had to say again, but here we are. First of all, I believe the man is a thinly veiled xenophobe-- the American way of doing things is the only way to do things, according to him. He always prefaces these bashings of other cultures with, "I know nobody wants to hear this, but it's just true, so I'm going to say it." Second of all, he develops all these grandiose plans for how we should all run our lives and our governments. It's like one of those self-help books where each chapter is a different tip. It's almost funny because the whole time you find yourself thinking, "Who is this guy and where does he get off acting like he knows the meaning of life?" Third of all, he excuses poverty and inequality as a inevitable, or even necessary, byproduct of capitalism and globalization, implying in some ways that we should just get used to it, at least until the dust settles and I can only assume, the "superior capitalists" are left standing.

So okay, this wasn't a book I enjoyed reading, but there were a couple of interesting points in it. He talks about the process by which some people are left behind in a world where companies often lose sight of people who don't have immediate access to technology. The example he used was about airlines charging an extra fee for tickets not purchased through the website. I'm sure we can all think of people who've come into our labs who have been forced to go online for one service or another.

He talks about how as globalization proceeds, people will begin to feel more and more disconnected from the process, saying "even their elected representatives have to bow now to unelected market dictators".With politics happening on such transnational spheres now, how does one person's political or community activity matter? Of course, I think Americorps is a direct rebuttal to that concern.

He talks about how fewer and fewer people are needed to perform more and more services: "It takes 2 percent of Americans to feed us all, and 5 percent to make everything we need. Everything else will be service and information technology..." This only emphasizes the need for people to continue to learn new skills, new job competencies, and to increase their access to information. People can't hope to grow up and get a good job in a factory or an assembly line anymore..that is no longer the road to a middle-class lifestyle.

CTEP is just one social net that can help to catch people who are falling off the globalization train because of lack of skills, knowledge or resources. Learning how to survive in the information age could very well be the major challenge of our generation, and is perhaps at the root of the recession American is experiencing right now.

I give it two stars because the guy knows how to tell a compelling story, but he lacks any data to back up his observations and conclusions beyond antidotes. Please Mr. Friedman, stop milking the Globalization cash cow and come up with a new idea!

Reading a book about globalization written about 20 years ago may seem useless, but I believe it's rather quite profitable, as it's still pretty fresh and you can also test some of it's assumptions and predictions and see how things can change over a few decades.

It is informative at a rather basic level, but it's still interesting and efficient in portraying the new world order. Its predictions are rather correct on most of its fundamentals, but wrong on some points (e.g. China's economic future is undervalued).

It is slightly annoying that it is so US-centric and US-propagandistic (however, here and there proven wrong, as in the Iraq war issue or blaming the less adapted economies for inducing system crises while not aware of the 2008 US-originated financial crisis that was to come).

Bottom-line, an informative book that is well written, still valid and often offers a useful post-factum outlook.

Would never read anything like this but it had been on my shelf for years, really enjoyed this book. It is deep, rich and dense. I listened to it on audiobook and that is the platform I recommend for all.

الدافع وراء قراءة هذا الكتاب هو مدى شهرة ونجاح صاحب العامود فى أكبر الجرائد الأمريكية توماس فريدمان وحاجتنا لفهم العولمة وما يجرى فى العالم فى ظل التحولات والتغيرات الاقتصادية التى تشهدها بلادنا.
بدايةً فريدمان مولع بالعولمة وبالنظام العالمى الجديد وكأنى أقرأ فى صفحات كتابه دعوة لكل دول العالم :
انصهرى فى النظام العالمى الجديد ولا تتمسكوا بجذوركم ولا بإثبات أنفسكم ولا بتطوركم الذاتى فهذا لن يحدث إلا من خلال نظام عالمى جديد قائم على مجتمع واحد تسيطر عليه وتحركه قوى خفية غير ملموسة
ثم يعود فريدمان إلى تأصيل العلاقة بين السيارة ليكساس وشجرة الزيتون من منطلق عام ويقول:
إن التحدى فى حقبة العولمة هذه بالنسبة للدول والأفراد يتمثل فى تحقيق توازن صحى بين الحفاظ على الإحساس بالهوية والوطن والمجتمع وبين القيام بكل ما من شأنه تحقيق البقاء داخل نظام العولمة والسعى الدائم لبناء السيارة ليكساس والدفع بها إلى العالم

An outdated book, at least by a decade. I stopped reading it halfway and then I wasn’t even sure what I was reading, it felt more like a memoir of Thomas’s travels in the post-cold war world.
He loops around again & again attempting to explain the simplest aspects of the world, using the most annoying jargon. All in all, it felt like the world longest article rather than a distinguished book that you actually learn a thing or two out of.

So I read this book in 2023. And it amazes me how much we already know about the globalization, financial crisis, environment and culture problems from year 2000, and how much we are still struggling with them. It's a proof that globalization is so fast and strong that we cannot keep up with it.
I give this book 4 stars, though, because I feel like it amphasize the importance of America in the today's world too strongly, which, as a person who is not American, I don't quite like the idea, and to my ignorance, I don't see American that way.

Anything from this guy, especially this book, needs to be reframed in terms of the realities of free-market capitalism before reading becomes a valuable exercise.

His explanation of the origins of Globalization feel about right, you could probably guess what he'll suggest as the leading causes before even cracking the cover. He of course, as a proponent, doesn't look at the side of corporate-cooperative political agents that have played a major, if not necessary role in explaining the terrors of exploitative international business; indeed he doesn't really touch on too much bad at all.

The best two things about this book: elites see it as a green light, and use it as "fantastic" support, and it's easily torn down by a junior-highschooler with only a hint of independent thought.