The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization [Paperback]

Thomas L. Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2000

From one of our most perceptive commentators and winner of the National Book Award, a comprehensive look at the new world of globalization, the international system that, more than anything else, is shaping world affairs today.

As the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman has traveled the globe, interviewing people from all walks of contemporary life: Brazilian peasants in the Amazon rain forest, new entrepreneurs in Indonesia, Islamic students in Teheran, and the financial wizards on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

Now Friedman has drawn on his years on the road to produce an engrossing and original look at globalization. Globalization, he argues, is not just a phenomenon and not just a passing trend. It is the international system that replaced the Cold War system; the new, well-greased, interconnected system: Globalization is the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way that is creating a single global market and, to some degreee, a global village. Simply put, one can't possibly understand the morning news or one's own investments without some grasp of the system. Just one example: During the Cold War, we reached for the hot line between the White House and the Kremlin--a symbol that we were all divided but at least the two superpowers were in charge. In the era of globalization, we reach for the Internet--a symbol that we are all connected but nobody is totally in charge.

With vivid stories and a set of original terms and concepts, Friedman offers readers remarkable access to his unique understanding of this new world order, and shows us how to see this new system. He dramatizes the conflict of "the Lexus and the olive tree"--the tension between the globalization system and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community. He also details the powerful backlash that globalization produces among those who feel brutalized by it, and he spells out what we all need to do to keep the system in balance. Finding the proper balance between the Lexus and the olive tree is the great drama of he globalization era, and the ultimate theme of Friedman's challenging, provocative book--essential reading for all who care about how the world really works.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One day in 1992, Thomas Friedman toured a Lexus factory in Japan and marveled at the robots that put the luxury cars together. That evening, as he ate sushi on a Japanese bullet train, he read a story about yet another Middle East squabble between Palestinians and Israelis. And it hit him: Half the world was lusting after those Lexuses, or at least the brilliant technology that made them possible, and the other half was fighting over who owned which olive tree.

Friedman, the well-traveled New York Times foreign-affairs columnist, peppers The Lexus and the Olive Tree with stories that illustrate his central theme: that globalization--the Lexus--is the central organizing principle of the post-cold war world, even though many individuals and nations resist by holding onto what has traditionally mattered to them--the olive tree.

Problem is, few of us understand what exactly globalization means. As Friedman sees it, the concept, at first glance, is all about American hegemony, about Disneyfication of all corners of the earth. But the reality, thank goodness, is far more complex than that, involving international relations, global markets, and the rise of the power of individuals (Bill Gates, Osama Bin Laden) relative to the power of nations.

No one knows how all this will shake out, but The Lexus and the Olive Tree is as good an overview of this sometimes brave, sometimes fearful new world as you'll find. --Lou Schuler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A brilliant guidebook to the new world of ``globalization'' by Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem, 1988). Like El Nio, globalization is blamed for anything and everything, but few understand just what it really is. In simplest terms, Friedman defines globalization as the world integration of finance markets, nation states, and technologies within a free- market capitalism on a scale never before experienced. Driving it all is what he calls the Electronic Herd, the faceless buyers and sellers of stocks, bonds, and currencies, and multinational corporations investing wherever and whenever the best opportunity presents itself. It is a pitiless systemrichly rewarding winners, harshly punishing losersbut contradictory as well. For nations and individuals willing to take the risk, globalization offers untold opportunity, yet in the process, as the Electronic Herd scavenges the world like locusts in the search for profit, globalization threatens to destroy both cultural heterogeneity and environmental diversity. The human drive for enrichment (the Lexus) confronts the human need for identity and community (the olive tree). The success of globalization, Friedman contends, depends on how well these goals can be satisfied at one and the same time. He believes they can be, but dangers abound. If nation states sacrifice too much of their identity to the dictates of the Electronic Herd, a backlash, a nihilistic rejection of globalization, can occur. If nation states ignore these dictates, they face impoverishment; there simply is no other game in town. Friedmans discussion is wonderfully accessible, clarifying the complex with enlightening stories that simplify but are never simplistic. There are flaws, to be sure. He is perhaps overly optimistic on the ability of the market forces of globalization to correct their own excesses, such as environmental degradation. Overall, though, he avoids the Panglossian overtones that mar so much of the literature on globalization. Artful and opinionated, complex and cantankerous; simply the best book yet written on globalization. (First printing 100,000) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 490 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (May 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385499345
• ISBN-13: 978-0385499347
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (410 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Business & Investing > International > Economics

More About the Author

Thomas L. Friedman has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work with The New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. Read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama, Hot, Flat, and Crowded was an international bestseller in hardcover. Friedman is also the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), and The World is Flat (2005). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

379 of 445 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Even Close to the Whole Story, February 23, 2002

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (Paperback)

The writer of this book, Thomas Friedman, has impressive credentials as a globetrotting journalist and expert on international economics. I'm sure that on the job he is required to be objective and impartial. But that's not the case in this heavy-handed and very arrogant book on globalization. You may find this book informative and fun to read, but beware that you're not getting anything close to the full story on this phenomenon.

Friedman's writing style is mostly conversational and easy to read, though he tends to talk about his own friends and adventures way too much. Also, Friedman can't stop making up his own terminology, like Golden Straitjacket, Electronic Herd, Globalution, Glocalism, and the especially irritating DOScapital. The problem is, Friedman merely throws these terms at numerous and scattershot examples of phenomena that may possibly lend them meaning, but fails to adequately describe them himself.

Parts One and Two of this book are actually quite strong as Friedman remains mostly objective in describing the rise of globalization and where things stand today. He also includes a surprising amount of coverage on the negative effects on the environment and non-Western cultures (for the time being). Unfortunately, this book collapses into a firestorm of arrogance in Part 3, which is misleadingly titled "The Backlash Against the System." Here Friedman actually spends more time criticizing those who can't or won't jump on the sacred globalization bandwagon. He uses the derogatory term "turtles" for people who are being left behind by the new economic realities around the world, and doesn't care if it's not their fault. He demeans concern for disadvantaged peoples and countries as "politically correct nonsense" (pg. 355).

Some portions of this book are getting outdated, which is not Friedman's fault, but the gaps are very revealing. Several times he cites Enron as a strong global company with the world's best interests at heart, and failed to predict the tech stock crash of 2000 and how it would drastically slow down the US-led growth of the world economy (see chapter 17). This shows that Friedman's predictions in this book are already starting to fall apart. Friedman also completely avoids the issue of corporate domination, as rulings by the pro-corporate WTO have allowed multinational companies to supersede the laws of sovereign nations (such as the blatant disregard for Nigeria's environmental laws by Western oil companies). Finally, Part Four of this book descends into anemic boosterism as Friedman tries to convince us that American culture and corporations will solve all the world's ills as peoples around the world happily embrace globalization. By this point, Friedman has left objectivity far behind. His clear contempt for those who are concerned about globalization's destructive effects, and his apparent belief that American corporations only wish to solve the world's ills, prove that he has not succeeded in telling the full story. Not even close.

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant overview of globalisation. Essential reading, December 7, 1999

By 

Bill Godfrey (Mt Stuart, TAS Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Hardcover)

A very wide ranging book written by an experienced journalist about the dilemmas created as globalisation transforms the world around our local communities and cultures. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting as bureau chief in Beirut, and it is this background from which the analogy of the olive tree comes. He explains how his career has enabled him to slowly come to see the many different dimensions of globalisation, how they link, and what we can do about it. It is a very systemic perspective. (Thurow, Lester: Building Wealth is complementary to it. Korten, David: When Corporations Rule the World provides a 1995 counterblast. Any of the books and pamphlets by Robert Theobald and also Harman, W.: Global Mind Change provide creative ideas on how globalisation can be redirected to achieve societal ans well as economic ends.)

The book is in four parts.

Part one explains how to look at the system we call globalisation and how it works.

Part two is a discussion of how nation-states, communities, individuals and the environment interact with the system.

Part three is a good look at the backlash.

Part four is an even better look at the unique role of the USA in this new world.

To understand and convey the complexity of what is going on, Friedman believes that he had to learn to combine six dimensions or perspectives in different ways and weights to understand the systemic interrelationships at play and then tell stories in order to explain it. This is what he does in the book. He also identifies what he believes to be the key driving forces to globalisation and the conditions necessary for a society to succeed in a globalised world.

As an analysis of the multiple forces at play and their interaction, The Lexus and the Olive Tree could hardly be bettered, and the comment that we know about as much about the globalised world that is emerging as we did about the Cold War world in 1946 really resonates.

I am less satisfied with Friedman's prescription, which is essentially that rape is inevitable - and may be pleasurable - so we may as well relax and enjoy it. That both under-rates the very real dangers posed by a large group of potential losers and, more important, absolves us from the need to search creatively for a third way that places more emphasis on the human spirit and sustainability and less on money as such.

It is notable how much of the business literature is beginning to focus on ethics, spiritual values and moral and ethical obligations. It is also notable how rapidly the various movements to reshape the world around more fundamentally human values are building strength. The balance is not just, as Friedman seems to suggest, between globalised progress and separatist stagnation, but other options need creative development, based on wider values than those that motivate the 'electronic herd'.

The conspiracy theorists claim that global business is consciously trying to promote the 'inevitability' of a system that happens to suit them very well. They would probably claim that Friedman has fallen into their trap. Whatever the truth or otherwise of a 'conspiracy', I am left with Russell Ackoff's phrase ringing in my head - 'If we don't work to get the future we want, we will have to learn to live with the future we get.'

Recognising the strength of the forces that Friedman describes so well, that is perhaps the issue. Are we clear about what kind of world we want and are we prepared to work for it?

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read to understand today's events, May 13, 2001

By 

William Tarr (Pepperdine University, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (Paperback)

Friedman's book is an engaging look at what globalization means in this post Cold War world. By describing the rise of global markets through examining the world through six different "lenses," he is able to take a complex subject and make an understandable and compelling argument for his view that globalization is like the dawn. In his own words "even if I didn't much care for the dawn there isn't much I could do about it."

As the New York Times foreign affairs columnist he is able to bring a wealth of experience and personal observation to the book, and he fills it with interesting, compelling, and sometimes disturbing anecdotes from his travels and relationships with foreign leaders.

He makes a case that through the democratization of finance, information, and technology, we have an increasingly interdependent global economy, fraught with both great rewards, and great dangers. Friedman artfully describes those groups of people who are well positioned for success (and also risk) in the global economy, "gazelles and lions," who have to run every day to eat or to avoid being eaten. The author also describes those people who are not positioned to compete in the global economy (the "Fast World") and see globalization as an unseen and uncontrollable force increasingly threatening the lives and livelihood of both themselves and their children (turtles, trying to avoid becoming road kill).

Friedman explains the danger to a backlash against globalization and gives real suggestions about things to change in our political construct, and things to preserve and strengthen. In his words "America, at its best is not just a country. It's a spiritual value and role model. It's a nation that is not afraid to go to the moon, but also still loves to come home for Little League."

I finished the book with tears in my eyes. The strength of his vision is compelling and this book is the first I have read that has both defined, and accurately caught the start of, this new system of globalization.