Lexus and the Olive Tree - Softcover

Friedman, Thomas L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385720157 ISBN 13: 9780385720151

Publisher: Bantam Books, 2000

Synopsis

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L.Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, offers an engrossing look at the new international system that is transforming world affairs today. Globalization has replaced the Cold War system with the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders - uniting Brazilian peasants, Indonesian entrepreneurs, Chinese villagers, and Silicon Valley technocrats in a single global village. You cannot understand the morning news, know where to invest your money, or think about the future unless you understand this new system, which is profoundly influencing virtually every country in the world today. Friedman tells you what this new electronic global economy is all about and what it will take to live within it. With vivid stories drawn from his extensive travels, he dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree" - the tension between the globalization system and the...

About this title

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

Review:

From the reviews of From Beirut to Jerusalem:

‘Jubilantly intelligent – a dashing hybrid of autobiography and journalism. Friedman’s book is a lifeline to the sane, a beacon to the hopeful.’
MICHAEL COREN, Sunday Times

‘Friedman’s approach is both original and thought-provoking... a striking achievement.’
ANDREW GOWERS, Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385720157
• ISBN 13: 9780385720151
• Binding: Paperback