Customer Reviews

Falling off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On the positive side, let me salute any author who takes on globalization. (Believe me, there's a lot more to this story than kooky G8 protesters.) Perry is also quite an engaging writer, and he has some very interesting stories to tell. I also learned some things - the amount of oil in Africa and the degree of tribalism in Kenya, for example.

On the negative side, though, this book really isn't about globalization. His opening chapters on India and China are right on the mark, but the rest of the book just wanders all over the place.

The chapter on Indonesian pirates, for example, is very intriguing. Only once, though, does it mention globalization, and that in terms of the very simplistic idea of more global commerce equals more opportunities for pirates. Similar arguments can be made for Nepal, Darfur, and other places he visited.

Overall, the book is really just about Perry's adventures in global hot spots. Very entertaining, but very journalistic. If you'd like to read something about globalization with a little more depth, try No Logo. or When Corporations Rule the World.

So many other writers have waxed on endlessly with how this "flat & globalized" world has allow countries like India and China entrance into a fantastic, almost limitless leap forward... thus giving the impression that within a few years these giants are almost guaranteed to gain a middle class like those of Europe.

Having just returned from Calcutta's international airport that contains ONLY one international departure gate within a setting that seems like an overexpanded 1960's high school classroom as a waiting area, small bathroom, only a little kiosk selling bottled water and candy bars... for a city of 14 million, one of the largest cities in the world!!! Where's the economic miracle in that? Somehow many of those writers were probably foggy with jet-lag as they zoomed over to the outsourcing company for their snappy outlooks...or only visited Shanghai and Bangalore to sketch out their ideas.

A narrow point-of-view does make the world look rather flat. Alex Perry's book widens the focus to show that a huge proportion of the planet is falling off the edge - which may turn out to be the REAL story in the upcoming years. I read somewhere that India's population is growing by about 150 million per decade, so even with the 1.5 million good paying outsourcing jobs created within the past decade, what jobs were created for the remaining 148 million souls? From the looks of Calcutta, it seems like a lot were falling off the edge, missing the globalization train completely. FALLING OFF THE EDGE provides some excellent counter-balance to the developing theories of what globalization may provide our world in the years ahead.

Fascinating. Perry spends the whole book depressing you with stories showing how globalization is playing havoc with the poor, powerless unhealthy and uneducated people of the world and then in the last chapter makes a case for how we need war, violence and chaos in order to lurch forward to the next level of prosperity, innovation and general well-being.

His writing is very much that of a newspaper correspondent and he makes a case for the value of his profession as the eyes and ears and feet on the ground to inform the rest of us what is really happening out there in the scary places we can't all visit.

There is a wealth of information here on individual situations in Nepal, China, Darfur, Somalia and India so that anyone can learn something. I had met a Tibetan-Buddhist nun from Nepal the previous day in Phoenix and his chapters on Nepal filled in a lot of background that her poor English had not been able to communicate.

I loved his chapter on India and his even-handedness over the wealth divide there. I have rarely seen it spelled out so clearly about the rich elite and poor majority and put in to perspective so simply. The elite is so tiny but the whole citizenry so huge that the elite is still the size of a small European country's entire population.

I highly recommend the book for its clear writing, information and interesting conclusions.

The planet's most dangerous political and social hot spots are reviewed by an award-winning correspondent who travels from China to Afghanistan to consider the effects of globalization on the ordinary person. His journeys around the world consider culture, politics, and the far-reaching effects of globalization strategies and influences on the common man, and makes for a blend of travelogue and social observation key not just for general-interest libraries strong in travel, but for college-level collections considering the social effects of globalization.

Highly recommended. Another look at globalization, that will make you realize all is not what it seems.