I’ve spent the last few months reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It’s pretty sad really, that this book took me forever to read; not to say that it wasn’t interesting but I just, for some reason had difficulty reading it.

If you’ve ever taken Larry Smith’s 101 or 102 class at the University of Waterloo, you’ve pretty much already read this book. I could vividly remember Larry Smith shouting at us many of the conclusions drawn in the book. Nonetheless, it was a nice refresher on the recent globalization of the world and the effect it has had on the way people do business.

Thomas Friedman is a journalist and his writing style reflects that. That being said, his writing is not as interesting as sitting in a Larry Smith lecture and he seems to have a habit of repeating examples or facts throughout the book. Due to this, it is conceivable that the reader can take long breaks between sections and still be brought up to speed on the arguments quickly.

One of the good things about reading a book that has just recently been published was that many of the examples dealt with events that have occured only a little while ago, or are still happening as we speak. This enables the reader to be in the proper mood and mindset to understand the author’s reasoning. An excellent example of this is how Friedman links Al Qaeda to the un-flattening of the world.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: reading