I made it through 10 pages of this book and finally said "THIS is a NY Times bestseller?!" And tossed it down, never to be opened again. I'm glad a critic agrees. The world is round Mr. Friedman, and your metaphor is flat.

there are plenty; it's just that if they hunt, they're called pack animals or swarms.

anyway, the review is good -- I like the descriptor of Friedman's writing as "middlebrow horseshit"

Good point. But I think the metaphor is still awful. Try to a herd pride of lions.

"Columbus's discovery that the world is round" What?! The review is just awful, goes on and on...

I liked "The World is Flat", even if I was rolling my eyes a third of the time. Friedman definitely lays it on thick. He presents common ideas as if they are breakthrough concepts, he takes three pages to build up a simple idea, and he repeats himself over and over. At the same time, he makes assumptions that are clearly open to debate without justification.

My difference with this reviewer, however, is that I also think there's plenty to enjoy and think about it this book. I think "The World is Flat" would have made a wonderful 40 page essay - perhaps the kind that gets printed in two parts in the Atlantic.

So my objection is that a 40 page essay was stretched into a 400 page book, whereas I think the reviewer would still object even to the 40 page essay I have in mind.

Humans?

I like Friedman, but enjoyed this article nonetheless. However, I had to stop reading when I got to the Columbus discovered America part.

Fools! Single celled organisms colonized America four billion years ago.

cglee probably meant to say "Columbus discovered that the world is round part", which is what the article says, essentially. Matt Taibbi is a smart guy, and he probably didn't mean to say that, but considering how arrogant his tone is, it's still rather embarrassing.

He repeats the misconception and goes on to build an argument on it. I can't see how he could not mean it. But then again, later he argues that the 'earth is flat' argument reverses "2000 years of human thought." (?)

Hilarious critique anyway.

Dog.

I find interesting Kunstler's comments on Friedman's globalism cheerleading.

"I think we will discover (probably painfully) that globalism was a set of transient economic relations made possible by a half century of cheap oil and relative peace between the great powers, and the enterprises that rely on these transient mechanisms - such as Wal-Mart, with its 12,000-mile merchandise supply chain to China, and its "warehouse on wheels" of tractor-trailor trucks circulating incessantly on America's interstate highways - will be on their knees in a few years as we enter the export crisis phase of post-peak terminal oil depletion and the great powers of the world act with increasing desperation to compete over the remaining supplies." http://www.321energy.com/editorials/kunstler/kunstler060107....