The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman

I can't believe I read the whole book! Thomas L. Friedman is fascinating in his exposition of how communications technology is globalizing and, as he puts it, flattening the world. I'm not sure he really needed to drag it out for 630 pages, but he is so entertaining in the stories he tells, especially of global businesses, that a little repetitiveness is easily forgiven.

His is a hopeful perspective paying much attention to India, China, Malaysia, and other countries with large populations of poor people. They are moving more and more people into the middle class, thanks to outsourcing in this country and the technological ease with which people can do business over great distances. Friedman realizes that Americans are going to have to compete more on a global basis and that we will probably experience some economic displacement because of this, but he believes that with better education Americans will adjust and remain leaders in innovation.

Furthermore, the world should be a better and safer place when wealth is more equitably distributed and more of us have a stake in keeping the global economic system going. It is almost as if what socialism and communism have failed to do, technology is going to bring about naturally with an underpinning of democracy rather than totalitarianism.

Excellent book.

Torch-Bearer to Light the Way by Neal Vahle

Ironically, I developed a cold while reading the biography of a spiritual healer. Torch-Bearer to Light the Way; the Life of Myrtle Fillmore is by Neal Vahle and includes an explanation of how Fillmore and her husband started the Unity movement from their home in Kansas City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Along the way there is much connection with the contemporaneous Christian Science movement, but eventually the Fillmores distanced themselves from it. They felt it is more important to rely on your own inner knowing than to accept the dictates of outside authorities, especially in your spiritual life. And Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy appears to have been pretty dictatorial.

I try not to proofread when I'm reading for my own pleasure but this book was amazingly full of typos and mistakes. At one place I pondered over how a daughter could have been born before her mother until I finally realized that the author had inserted a birth date where he should have used a death date.

Adequate biography if you're interested in Unity.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The ladies of my book club loved On Beauty and were amazed that the author who was born in 1975 was so able to get into the minds of characters in their 50s. She sets up two academic families, one in England and one in Massachusetts. The English family is black and conservative while the American one is mixed race and liberal. There is professional competition and hard feelings between the two patriarchs; and when the English professor comes to teach at his competitor's college, the men take opposing stands with regard to academic politics. In the small town environment their families also develop interesting relationships.

The juxtaposition of liberal and conservative attitudes is interesting and I kept watching to see which the author was going to prefer. However, she revealed no bias and showed both liberals and conservatives as a mix of good and bad traits with a touch of hypocrisy and a little infidelity here and there.

Good novel.