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Book Review: The Lexus and the Olive Tree

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Book Review: The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Book Review: The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

Introduction

The author; Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, where he has won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work with The New York Times. He is also the author for five bestselling books. In the past he has been bureau chief for the Times in Beirut and Jerusalem. He has travelled extensively, from the Amazon to Southeast Asia to Berlin to Angola to rural China and much more as a reporter with the Times. His anecdotes and metaphors drawn from these experiences are alternately educational, insightful, and amusing, although his theory is overzealous. He styles himself “one of America’s leading interpreters of world affairs.”

SUMMARY

The title of the book represent two different things Lexus as a symbol of luxury thing and olive tree as a basic need in live. Lexus, a brand of a car which represent new and innovative world. The car itself drive for sustenance, improvement, prosperity and modernization which equal to the globalization system (p. 33).
While olive tree represent something which is old and traditional and roots us to a place, culture or family. Friedman views the olive tree is an important things to individual because it means everything that form the person as individual which have its own identity (p. 31).
Friedman starts the book with explanation of the old system which is during Cold War era and how the new system name globalisation replace this old system. According to Friedman during the Cold war, world was divided into three; 1st world, 2nd world or 3rd world. Each world have a different political and economic system and each of the world are guarded by walls. This walls has form a world that have their own olive tree; their own identity.
Today the walls start to diminished and disappeared due to three factors which are democratization of technology, finance and information. The main factor here is technology which helped foster the other two drivers.

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