Friedman's strength is composing analogies to make globalization comprehensible. He describes the collective activities of investors, large and small, using the Internet to move money around the planet quickly and sometimes irresponsibly as the "Electronic Herd." He describes the American-style free-market capitalism that best takes advantage of globalization as the "Golden Straitjacket." He describes economies using a personal computer analogy; the basic economic system (e.g. capitalist, communist, authoritarian etc) is the "hardware" and the legal system, free press, social attitudes etc compromise the "operating system" and "software" of an economy. If a country just has an open economy with no political stability, no stock market regulation etc, it is like a computer without a surge protector when lightning strikes; the result is a meltdown.

As far as Friedman's evaluation of globalization, I would describe his view as cautiously optimistic. Friedman himself states, "Generally speaking, I think it's a good thing that the sun comes up every morning. It does more good than harm, especially if you wear sunscreen and sunglasses. But even if I didn't care for the dawn there isn't much I could do to stop it. I didn't start globalization, I can't stop it - except at a huge cost to human development - and I'm not going to waste time trying." (xxi-xxii)

In terms of documenting his position, the single largest problem with the book is the near total reliance on anecdotes and interviews. There is no bibliography and no footnotes in the book (well, there are some internal footnotes), merely a one and a half page list of acknowledgements for all the people he interviewed. While these definitely make the book interesting to read and personal, one always can and should ask, "Are these people representative of what's happening?" I think this sort of material should be used for purposes of highlighting points or illustration rather than the main content of a book. To be fair, Friedman does include statistics and other such information from a variety of sources (but his documentation is spotty; sometimes he will just say "The Economist says")

Friedman's main thesis is that globalization is the _system_ of international relations that has replaced the Cold War system of nuclear weapons, East vs. West and the rest of it. While there is certainly strong points to support him in this (e.g. the Soviets are gone) and the greatly increased importance of international trade and the ability of markets to move capital around the world quickly, an ability made possible by new technologies (especially the Internet), I think he has probably overstated his case.

To explain the title of the book, the Lexus represents all the forces of globalization; the Internet, investors, the Golden Straitjacket and so on. The Olive Tree represents the home, national identity and all the things provide a person's meaning and value in life. There needs to be a balance between these two forces. Silicon Valley executives that demand all Lexus and no Olive Tree are going to produce people with no sense of identity or self and people that only have the Olive Tree are either going to become poor or remain cut off from the major sources of growth in the world today.

The economic aspect of the globalization is the primary focus of the book, so there is only limited content dedicated to the effects (positive and negative) on the environment and culture. Friedman is also _very_ critical of those who would criticize globalization; his main criticism can be summed up with this quote: "Like other ideological backlashers against globalization, Zjuganov had more attitude than workable programs, more ideas about how to distribute income than about how to generate it." (page 328)

Critics of globalization ought to take note; simply saying, "This is all wrong!" is just not enough anymore. Real, workable alternatives have to be provided. I think one good example of this is the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which actually provides alternative Government budgets.

Friedman concludes the book with a long discussion (Part Four: America and the System) of how America is the country best suited to take responsibility for managing globalization AND how America is the country that is ideally situated to benefit from it. He thinks that there has to some safeguards on the system to prevent it from harming too many people. It is interesting to note that Friedman added about 100 pages in this second version of the book, which is only about a year old. He needs to change it to take account of September 11, the collapse of Argentina and the bankruptcy of Enron, among other things.

I have not decided what I think about globalization just yet though; this is a good starting place to begin though. The next book I read on the topic will be, "The Globalization Reader," edited by Frank Lechner and John Boli (ISBN: 0631214771); it covers all aspects of globalization from a variety of perspectives; critics, optimists, and those who are in between.

Furthermore, Friedman seems to love to quote people at length, but one wonders if indeed he is quoting word-for-word, or if he is just sort of crafting something to fit his book out of a vaguely similar comment the person may have made. But, then one thinks again, because the book is almost a little choppy in places because Friedman quotes random characters from all around the world for pages upon pages. One would prefer that he just paraphrase or use shorter quotes.

Because it was written 5 years ago, some of the reading is tedious (he explains what a DVD player is, for example), and in some areas he seems to be caught up in the "irrational" dot-com whirlwind. In his revised version of the book, it sort of just drones on, pontificating for about 20-30 pages too much. Thomas Friedman is a very personable guy, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about the world, but honestly, one doesn't care for his own political/religious philosophy being injected, mostly toward the end of the book. It was just awkward to read through the final chapter or two; the book has multiple personality disorder in some regards.

One almost feel like the book is written for an audience of Dick Gephardts. He wants to win the protectionist wing of the Democratic Party over with the book. He seems to be speaking to them. Maybe he is speaking to Republicans as well, but if so, he lectures a little too sanctimoniously on the environment and the notion of a social safety net (he calls Republicans "mean-spirited voices... uninterested in any compromise" and tries to argue that Africa, with its near-anarchy in places, would be a Republican's dream) to win conservatives over entirely. He sort of just randomly breaks into prostheletyzing, arguing, for example, "That the NRA should feel guilty about the Colombine massacres went without saying." Why even go into that? That's just tacky.

Finally, a reader gets sort of annoyed reading his own made-up terms (Golden Straightjacket, Electronic Herd, etc.), over and over, particularly since none of them caught on whatsoever in the past half-decade since the book came out.

Some of it is dead on, though, particularly when he writes as an observer of the world rather than an activist, and this book is a good way to conceptualize globalization for those who are having a hard time adapting their political ideology in the post-Cold War era. In general, I'd say The Lexus and the Olive Tree starts off strong, ends weak, and that's a shame. It was on track to get 5 stars from me, even with the early tributes to Al Gore and other political cheap shots, but the final part of the book was just THAT lacking, that it falls to 3 stars.