There's little to learn from Thomas L Friedman's new book

Thomas L Friedman is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author. Among his several books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded are the titles that are immediately recognised. His interests have always (at least in recent times) been technology, globalisation and environment, and the uncertainty these bring about in our lives, just as they open up opportunities too.

There are 14 chapters in this book, divided into four parts. Part I (one chapter) is a bit like an introduction, while Part IV (one chapter) is a bit like a conclusion. Part II (titled “Accelerating”) has five chapters and Part II (titled “Innovating”) has seven chapters.

Here is a quote from part one, which is almost self-explanatory. “In short, this book is one giant column about the world today. It aims to define the key forces that are driving change around the world, to explain how they are affecting different people and cultures, and to identify what I believe to be the values and responses most appropriate to managing these forces, in order to get the most out of them and to cushion their harshest impacts.”

Elsewhere in part one, he writes: “Columns are about people — the crazy things they say, do, hate, and hope for. I like to collect data to inform columns — but never forget: talking to another human being is also data. The columns that get the most response are almost always the ones about people, not numbers.”

That second sentence is something every successful columnist knows, or should know. However, this is also the problem with Friedman’s present book. He writes well. But this is a template he has experimented with in his earlier books. If you have read any of Friedman’s earlier books, especially the recent ones, there is a sense of déjà vu. There is a style of talking to a few people, not necessarily experts, and the book trundles along.

In the case of this book, it starts with a conversation with a parking attendant in the public parking lot of the Hyatt Regency Hotel (New York) named Bojia, who originally comes from Ethiopia. As I just said, what’s new? Friedman has done this several times before.

What’s new might have been in the content. But on the content as well, this is territory already traversed. In the preliminaries, before the book starts, Friedman writes, “This is my seventh and, who knows, maybe my last book.”

I don’t recall such a remark from any of his earlier books. Perhaps Friedman himself realises he has got into a set groove and there is nothing new, except at the fringes. If you haven’t read much of Friedman before, you will find this a great book.

But if you have read a few of his books before, you might want to skip this. That being said, this is a well-written book, albeit written by an American with an American lens. (Therefore, don’t take the remarks on Middle East too seriously.)

Unlike The World is Flat, India features peripherally. There are the inevitable references to IT (and IIT) and Facebook (subscribers from India). And there is a mention of China and India as the two largest countries in the world.

In an odd way, despite the thrust on globalisation, this book is less globalised than Friedman’s earlier ones. Perhaps his mind was focused on the US and the imminent presidential elections there.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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