The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Hardcover

Friedman, Thomas L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374192030 ISBN 13: 9780374192037

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc, 1999

Synopsis

A foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times offers an incisive look at globalization from a social, economic, political, and cultural perspective and assesses the impact of this trend both at home and abroad. Tour.

About this title

Product Description:

394 pages. Book and Jacket are both in Very good condition throughout. The Groundbreaking New Book About Globalization, The System That Has Replaced Cold War Geopolitics As The Defining Force In World Affairs Today.

Review:

One day in 1992, Thomas Friedman toured a Lexus factory in Japan and marvelled at the robots that put the luxury cars together. That evening, as he ate sushi on a Japanese bullet train, he read a story about yet another Middle East squabble between Palestinians and Israelis. And it hit him: half the world was lusting after those Lexuses, or at least the brilliant technology that made them possible, and the other half was fighting over who owned which olive tree.

Friedman, the well-travelled New York Times foreign-affairs columnist, peppers The Lexus and the Olive Tree with stories that illustrate his central theme: that globalisation--the Lexus--is the central organising principle of the post-cold war world, even though many individuals and nations resist by holding onto what has traditionally mattered to them--the olive tree.

Problem is, few of us understand what exactly globalisation means. As Friedman sees it, the concept, at first glance, is all about American hegemony, about Disneyfication of all corners of the earth. But the reality, thank goodness, is far more complex than that, involving international relations, global markets and the rise of the power of individuals (Bill Gates, Osama Bin Laden) relative to the power of nations.

No-one knows how all this will shake out, but The Lexus and the Olive Tree is as good an overview of this sometimes brave, sometimes fearful new world as you'll find. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0374192030
• ISBN 13: 9780374192037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 413