Summing it up…

The World is Flat can be described in a single no less eloquent sentence: “The dummies’ guide to the modern world for those who just woke up from a 10 year long coma”. There is a very simple idea in this book that is being blown into a massive waste of paper. The idea is that the world is now ‘levelled’, which is really an altogether different concept to ‘flat’, but given the Americans’ love for shorter words it’s only fair he calls our world flat. What he really wanted to say (but failed to) was that the world is increasingly interdependent (too long a word for him to spell), making the balance of powers a very tricky thing whether in the arena of politics or economics and trade. The very word Flat is being repeatedly raped by the author to fit into every other sentence in any shape or form he finds suitable: flattened (v.), flattening (adj.), flatness (n.), flattener (n.).

This book is painfully long and painfully detailed in places that matter least. The author sees just about everything as symbolic, dismissing the fact that god is a dude with a sense of humour. Not every sentence has to sound like the revelation of your lifetime. There are audio versions of this book that can serve as very soothing bedtime tapes as they just go along like a story told. Worth listening to for the comic effect, but please don’t do the author the honour of buying this crap.

: 07 Mar 2007 18:07 |  Tags: Book Review |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem