The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty‐first century; Three billion new capitalists: The great shift of wealth and power to the east

These two books overlap considerably in content and argument. Both argue that China and India are forces to be reckoned with in the global economy, that the government of the United States is not paying close enough attention to clear signs of trouble on the economic horizon, and that Americans need to come to a more realistic appraisal of their own economic problems before anything constructive can be done to solve them. The two authors contrast markedly in the positions they take toward globalization: Friedman embraces it, Prestowitz abhors it. Prestowitz thinks well-designed industrial policies can work to preserve or enhance long-term international competitiveness; Friedman thinks that a more general policy of promoting education and training of the work force is the only viable answer to globalization. A decade or two ago, I would have sided with Prestowitz. Now I find myself agreeing more with Friedman. I am a big fan of Tom Friedman’s books, but he is a journalist, not a social scientist. His method is simple: interview a lot of people around the world and then tell stories about them in order to build up an image of what is new and interesting. He likes to bring in anecdotes about himself, his family, and his friends. He also draws a lot of material from interviews with business leaders, such as Bill Gates and Craig Mundie of Microsoft, Craig Barrett of Intel, Vivek Paul of InfoSys, Sergey Brin of Google, and David Neeleman of JetBlue; former government officials, such as Thomas Pickering; and politicians, such as former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo. Occasionally, he brings in the ideas of economists and political scientists. There is a breathlessness to the narrative as Friedman rushes around the globe from person to person, place to place, to obtain the latest gem of wisdom about the modern world. Unlike most social scientists, Friedman does not limit himself to ideas that have been subjected to intense scrutiny by a community of theorists and empiricists. The elite interviews have a random quality, and are not selected systematically, as they would have been in a work of social science. Friedman occasionally cites statistics that support his views, and rarely cites statistics that do not. Unlike a historian, Friedman makes only cursory attempts to put the ideas of his informants into a larger context. We are usually not told why a particular informant is making a particular argument, so it is up to the reader to guess when and where an informant is defending a vested interest. This makes for fascinating reading, but perhaps makes the book a bit dubious as a guide to policy and action. The main idea put forward in this book is that the world is “flat.” We do not get a definition of flatness until pp. 176–177, where Friedman says: