The Lexus and the Olive Tree Thomas L. Friedman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (1999) Globalization, with its attendant rapid change, is a fact of life.  This book tells how it occurred and what it means - for individuals, for organization, and for governments. Book Review © Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC

Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, has written a wonderful, important, and thought provoking book about the world and our age.  He has also written a breathless, anecdotal, and, at times, irritating one.  Upbeat and global throughout, he ends it sober and parochial.

This engaging book is full of entertaining and informative stories and anecdotes, as befits someone so well-travelled.  Friedman has a gift for turns of phrase and a talent for metaphor - Electronic Herd, Golden Straightjacket, DOScapital (pun intended!), 6 Dimensions - which fill the book.  On the whole, these are helpful constructs, but a few times he gets carried away and writes entirely in metaphor.  A glossary would have been helpful to keep them all straight.

Friedman's globalization theme revolves around the confluence of three democratizations - technology, finance, and information.  Factors that were once in the hands of the privileged few or controlled by governments are now in the hands of all, to be embraced and used for individual purposes, subject to few external constraints except those created by the collective behavior of other individuals.

The current globalization - there have been quite a number in history - dates from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism.  Centering on free market capitalism as it does, one would have expected more than a single passing reference to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

In many ways, this book is fundamentally about Friedman's own journey in trying to understand the world that has changed so radically in the past decade. Indeed, much of the charm and attraction of this book is that it parallels our own journeys of discovery.  His experiences we recognize.  His stories we have told.  His anecdotes we have heard.  His awe we share.

The price the author pays with this approach is that the book is too anecdotal, too plausible, too believable.  What is missing is more systematic presentation of facts beyond those personally experienced, so that his synthesis of a world view could be verified and the reader's understanding rest on sounder ground.

There are many profound insights in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree,"  not least that globalization is, first and foremost, about globalization of individuals, not of companies and institutions.  That insight alone has caused me to look at the world in a new light..

Read this book.  Enjoy this book.  Think about its issues.  The seeds are here for your understanding of the world to blossom.

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