In a post last Friday I mentioned Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. This Monday, his book won the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. (Apparently first reported in Pravda, of all places; how ironic.)

I finally finished reading it this morning. Interesting, and good work, but what a rambler. It’s as if he took speed and babbled into a microphone for three days, directly transcribing his soliloquy into print. I’d love to hear him talk sometime.

In the book Friedman broadly discusses globalization and tactics for coexisting happily and peacefully in a globalized world. Towards the end he ramps off on a tangent about the relationship between economics and terrorism. That piece alone makes the book worthwhile, for it sheds much-needed light on our current situation. In a nutshell, the visible specter of the Arab world falling economically and scientifically behind Europe, North America, and now India and China, is a significant driver of terrorism. That growing gap fuels humiliation, frustration, and rage.

My favorite quote:

[Since 9/11]…we have gone from trying to coax the best out of the world to snarling at it way too often. … Mr. Bush not only drove a wedge between Americans, and between Americans and the world, he drove a wedge between America and its own history and identity. His administration transformed the United States into “the United States of Fighting Terrorism.” This is the real reason, in my view, that so many people in the world dislike President Bush so intensely. They feel that he has taken away something very dear to them — an America that exports hope, not fear.

Well said. Don’t let anyone hijack your optimism, my friends!