The World Is Flat
Further Updated and Expanded
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Wyman
About this listen
When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations? And with this "flattening" of the globe, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?
©2007 Thomas L. Friedman (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLCCritic reviews
“Excellent...[This book's] insight is true and deeply important... The metaphor of a flat world, used by Friedman to describe the next phase of globalization, is ingenious.” —Fareed Zakaria, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“Captivating . . . an enthralling read. To his great credit, Friedman embraces much of his flat world's complexity, and his reporting brings to vibrant life some beguiling characters and trends. . . . [The World is Flat] is also more lively, provocative, and sophisticated than the overwhelming bulk of foreign policy commentary these days. We've no real idea how the twenty-first century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through.” —Warren Bass, The Washington Post
“No one today chronicles global shifts in simple and practical terms quite like Friedman. He plucks insights from his travels and the published press that can leave you spinning like a top. Or rather, a pancake.” —Clayton Jones, The Christian Science Monitor
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- Narrated by: Daniel H. Pink
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Lawyers. Accountants. Software Engineers. That what Mom and Dad encouraged us to become. They were wrong. Gone is the age of "left-brain" dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and emphatic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.
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A waste of a good credit
- By Lonnie on 11-07-08
By: Daniel H. Pink
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The Culture Map
- Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
- By: Erin Meyer
- Narrated by: Lisa Larsen
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.
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Insightful, fun, and educational
- By SHERIF M TARIQ on 10-15-20
By: Erin Meyer
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Too Big to Fail
- The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves
- By: Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.
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Best Book About Meltdown
- By Chuck on 12-08-09
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AI Superpowers
- China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
- By: Kai-Fu Lee
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In AI Superpowers, Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.
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Compelled to listen at 2x speed
- By LEE on 09-26-18
By: Kai-Fu Lee
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The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
- Incerto, Book 2
- By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world.
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Interesting, but over the top
- By Anonymous User on 08-08-19
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The Accidental Superpower
- Ten Years On
- By: Mr. Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Mr. Peter Zeihan
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Near the end of the Second World War, the United States made a bold strategic gambit that rewired the international system. Empires were abolished and replaced by a global arrangement enforced by the U.S. Navy. With all the world's oceans safe for the first time in history, markets and resources were made available for everyone. Enemies became partners. We think of this system as normal—it is not. We live in an artificial world on borrowed time.
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Only worth it if you don't already own
- By Anonymous User on 12-30-23
By: Mr. Peter Zeihan
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First, Break All the Rules
- What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
- By: Marcus Buckingham, Gallup Press, Jim Harter - foreword
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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They actually have vastly different styles and backgrounds. Yet despite their differences, great managers share one common trait: They don’t hesitate to break virtually every rule held sacred by conventional wisdom. They don’t believe that, with enough training, a person can achieve anything he sets his mind to. They don’t try to help people overcome their weaknesses. And, yes, they even play favorites. In this longtime management bestseller, Gallup presents the remarkable findings of its massive in-depth study of great managers.
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Content is dated
- By A. Yoshida on 09-09-19
By: Marcus Buckingham, and others
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Fooled by Randomness
- The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook is about luck, or more precisely, how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. It is already a landmark work, and its title has entered our vocabulary. In its second edition, Fooled by Randomness is now a cornerstone for anyone interested in random outcomes.
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Pass on this one and read The Black Swan
- By Wade T. Brooks on 06-25-12
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The Right Kind of Wrong
- By: Amy C. Edmondson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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We used to think of failure as the opposite of success. Now, we’re often torn between two “failure cultures”: one that says to avoid failure at all costs, the other that says fail fast, fail often. The trouble is that both approaches lack the crucial distinctions to help us separate good failure from bad. As a result, we miss the opportunity to fail well. After decades of award-winning research, Amy Edmondson is here to upend our understanding of failure and make it work for us. In Right Kind of Wrong, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely.
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Very pop psy
- By Student-prime on 09-28-23
By: Amy C. Edmondson
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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I'd kill for another book this good
- By Eric on 11-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
What listeners say about The World Is Flat
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Paul W. Johnson
- 01-14-08
worth the listen
I skimmed the hard copy and settled on the audio book version. There are quite a few epiphanies here that take a while for the author to walk through but are worth the listen. The underlying theme that pervades this tome appears to be "Wake up America"! It could have been shorter and less prose like. The only other reviews that I saw that were negative centered around the fact that he wasn't telling us anything new. This viewpoint depends on your level of exposure to the business world - if you already significantly well read in this area there are no great eye openers. If however you are not sufficiently tuned in to globalization, transnationals, supply chain, outsourcing, insourcing and etc then put on some comfortable earphones and listen away.
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31 people found this helpful
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- naser
- 09-17-12
good
Would you try another book from Thomas L. Friedman and/or Oliver Wyman?
Plenty of information, very revealing, yet too long. It could have been condensed to a smaller volume, with more impact. There were several stories for further elaboration on the subject which seemed redundant. Overall the book is a major achievement.
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- Joe
- 12-20-13
Just feels out of date
There's a problem with The World is Flat and it's not Thomas Friedman's fault. His research is impeccable, his questions probing, his prose light and readable. No, the problem is that this book is now antiquated. It's sad to say that only a few years after the most recent publication, but I believe it's true.
The World is Flat discusses about how telecommunications in the digital age substantively changed the economics of the whole world. It describes how America has fallen behind parts of the world like India and Russia in taking greatest advantage of these changes and he predicts a shifting of economic supremacy in the future. Like I said, his research and reasoning is sound. But this was published before the 2008 economic collapse. That changed not only the United States but much of the Western and the developed world as well.
Because of the timing, his predictions are no longer exacting. If he wrote a new book, one discussing who will rise from the economic ashes best and fastest, using the technology he discussed in this book, I would read it. Friedman is good author, I just feel this book has been eclipsed by history.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Christopher
- 04-11-08
Revisionist history, v3.0
I heard a free sample of this book on my GPS/Audible player and thought I'd give this book a try. I was, unfortunately, greatly disappointed by what I heard.
While this book does give good insights into just how the world has and is flattening, it is also amazing how the author has the audacity to focus solely on a Windows/Mac/AOL-centric model of technology, completely ignoring all the smaller yet just as important players and events into how the technology evolved.
Also, the personal attacks the author made on President George W. Bush are very unfortunate and not relevant to the overall arc of the book.
If you like revisionist history, this book is right up your alley.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Marcelo Pedott
- 08-18-15
An explanation of the changes we're living in
An excellent and remarkable explanation of how we are forced (or blessed) to reinvent ourselves to keep up with the world aroud us.
I simply loved it! Worthed every second!
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- DAB
- 10-09-20
The world is "flatter" than ever?!?
Great read. An eye opening thought provoking publication...a bit dated though. By the end of the book, (it felt as if every chapter was going to be it's last but Friedman kept on going, giving new examples of situations to drive his point of how the world is flat or flattening) I'd have to say, "I get it."
Enjoyable: It's the kind of book that brings up great conversations with those alike.
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- Rodolfo Romanach-suarez
- 06-27-21
Endless
Could have provided message with less words. The examples took too long to develop.
The narrator did not help, appeared too much like slang.
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- Robert
- 02-21-09
Keeps going and going and.....
It's ironic that at least twice in this book Friedman decried those bloggers and other content uploaders who click the send button before checking what they have written. This book is in desperate need of a good editor who would tell Friedman things like,"You've already made this point." or "That metaphor was clever only the first time you used it" or "I don't think we need yet another example" or, "Let's cut out this kum-ba-ya moment."
There is plenty of good insight and commentary in this book, for example when he explains his concept of Islamist-leninism. However, there is a lot of repetition. I almost screamed as he went through the creation of his personalized Dell computer describing where each and every part of the computer had been manufactured and how it was assembled. The point he was trying to make was a good one, but it had already been made clear before.
I would recommend this book in its abridged version as there is just about 10 hours of worthwhile material in it. And that good material is very good.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Allen
- 11-30-07
average book, bad reader
The book's concepts are mostly just the author preaching his biases, which is fine, but his concepts are nothing new at all. If you read any news or books in the last 3 yrs, you should already have thought about these concepts.
However, the killer is the audio reader, Oliver Wyman. when he reads people's quotes from the book, he fakes an accent. So when he reads an Indian guys quote, he tries to imitate a slight Indian accent. After a few hours of listening, it gets a bit annoying.
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10 people found this helpful
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- LaneL
- 05-29-16
Excellent and thought provoking!
The World is indeed flat, and this book explains it in a manner that makes sense, and connects so many world events to form what we know as the flat world.
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