The Lexus and the Olive Tree

New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/good. xix, [1], 394 pages. Index. Slight wear and small chip to DJ edges. Signed by the author. Thomas Loren Friedman (born July 20, 1953) is an American journalist, author, and three time Pulitzer Prize winner. Friedman currently writes a weekly column for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues. The author has won three Pulitzers and a National Book Award and is a longtime journalist on foreign affairs with vast experience and knowledge of global economics. Friedman first discussed his views on globalization in the book The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999). In 2004, visits to Bangalore, India, and Dalian, China, led Friedman to write a follow-up analysis, The World Is Flat (2005). The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list from its April 2005 publication until May 2007. Friedman believes that individual countries must sacrifice some degree of economic sovereignty to global institutions (such as capital markets and multinational corporations), a situation he has termed the "golden straitjacket". He has also expressed concern about the United States' lack of energy independence. He examines how globalization has changed the world economy, and considers the benefits of free-market capitalism, and the need to balance local forces (religious, national, and cultural) with international forces. Friedman's book is the result of his unique access to world leaders in business and government. A New York Times Notable Book for 1999. The Lexus and the Olive Tree is a 1999 book by Thomas L. Friedman that posits that the world is currently undergoing two struggles: the drive for prosperity and development, symbolized by the Lexus, and the desire to retain identity and traditions, symbolized by the olive tree. He says he came to this realization while eating a sushi box lunch on a Japanese bullet train after visiting a Lexus factory and reading an article about conflict in the Middle East. Friedman explains "globalization" by recounting stories of his actual experiences in interfacing with many of the global movers and shakers. He proposes that "globalization is not simply a trend or fad but is, rather, an international system. It is the system that has replaced the old Cold War system, and, like that Cold War System, globalization has its own rules and logic that today directly or indirectly influence the politics, environment, geopolitics and economics of virtually every country in the world." The "Big Idea" in The Lexus and the Olive Tree is found on page 232 where Friedman explains that: "if you can't see the world, and you can't see the interactions that are shaping the world, you surely cannot strategize about the world." He states that "you need a strategy for how to choose prosperity for your country or company." The book puts forward a capitalist peace theory called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention: No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. He supported that observation, as a theory, by stating that when a country has reached an economic development where it has a middle class strong enough to support a McDonald's network, it would become a "McDonald's country", and will not be interested in fighting wars anymore. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman evaded criticism of his theory as follows: "I was both amazed and amused by how much the Golden Arches Theory had gotten around and how intensely certain people wanted to prove it wrong. They were mostly realists and out-of-work Cold Warriors who insisted that politics, and the never-ending struggle between nation-states, were the immutable defining feature of international affairs, and they were professionally and psychologically threatened by the idea that globalization and economic integration might actually influence geopolitics in some very new and fundamental ways." He also explains how globalization can cause Brazilification—the loss of the middle class and increase in income gap—of countries impacted by the trend. Brazilification is a neologism included in Douglas Coupland's 1991 book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The expression was used in a similar way by the American writer Michael Lind as "Brazilianization of America" in his book The Next American Nation and by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck as "Brasilianisierung des Westens" in his book Schöne neue Arbeitswelt (translated title: Brave new world of work). In 2005, Friedman said that he framed this theory in terms of McDonald's Golden Arches "with tongue slightly in cheek". In his 2005 book The World is Flat he offered an updated theory he labeled the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.