Jack Milito

Assignment 1 – Book Review #1

Gray, John., (2005). The World is Round. The New York Review of Books, v. 52, n. 13, Retrieved January 23, 2006, from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18154

The World is Round is an obvious pun and contradiction for the title of Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat. The author of the article, John Gray, consistently criticizes Friedman views as being “simple…(and) deterministic” (p 3). He explains that globalization may have a flattening effect to inequalities in some areas of the world, but this effect is often at the cost of others which in turn merely perpetuate “the conflicts of the past” (p 8). He claims that “the problems of globalization are more intractable than those of corporate life” (p 8). It is these problems that are more than just “grit in an unstoppable machine (of globalization but) an integral to the process itself.” (p 9)

Jack Milito

Assignment 1 – Book Review #2

Bass, Warren., (2005). The Great Leveling. The Washington Post, Sunday, April 3, 2005; page BW03. Retrieved January 24, 2006, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17314-2005Mar31?

Author Warren Bass lightly criticizes Friedman for “overestimating the novelty” of the flattening world by merely rehashing old ideas (p 2). Bass also sites Friedman’s inability to answer to a colleague’s rebuttal, “who calls Flat World’s new horizontal collaboration (as) ‘just a nice name for the ability to hire cheap labor in India.’” (p 2) Nevertheless, Bass commends Friedman for his broad knowledge of world events and careful treatment of very complex world trends which relate to his world flattening. Overall Bass claims that the book is an “enthralling read” that is “terrifically stimulating”.