’Colourful anecdotes and wisdom served in bite-sized pieces ... He ranges widely, offering vivid accounts of all the new ways things are being done' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
’The book's energy will force sceptics to recognize that a world in which the cost of communications is falling towards zero and billions of people are trying to participate in the market economy is unprecedented' Martin Wolf, Financial Times
Thomas Friedman's international bestseller is the most up-to-date and exciting view yet of today's new era of globalization. In this expanded edition, published for the first time in paperback, he draws on his travels to India, China and the Middle East, and on the explosion of technologies including blogging, online encyclopedias and podcasting, to show how knowledge and resources are connecting all over the planet as never before. This 'flattening' of the world, he argues, can be a force for good - for business, the environment and people everywhere.
Introduction to the Updated and Expanded Edition / ix
How the Worm Became Flat
One: While I Was Sleeping / 3
Two: The Ten Forces That Flattened the World / 50
Flattener #1.11/9/89
Flattener #2.8/9/95
Flattener #3. Work Flow Software
Flattener #4. Uploading
Flattener #5. Outsourcing
Flattener #6. Offshoring
Flattener #7. Supply-Chaining
Flattener #8. Insourcing
Flattener #9. In-forming
Flattener #10. The Steroids
Three: The Triple Convergence / 201
Four: The Great Sorting Out / 234
America and the Flat World
Five: America and Free Trade / 261
Six: The Untouchables / 276
Seven: The Right Stuff / 301
Eight: The Quiet Crisis / 323
Nine: This Is Not a Test / 360
Developing Countries and the Flat World
Ten: The Virgin ofGuadalupe / 393
Companies and the Flat World
Eleven: How Companies Cope / 425
Geopolitics and the Flat World
Twelve: The Unflat World / 457
Thirteen: Globalization of the Local / 505
Fourteen: The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention / 515
Conclusion: Imagination
Fifteen: 11/9 Versus 9/11 / 543
Acknowledgments / 567
Index / 571
