Globalization in Your Face

Abstract

A Future Perfect: The Challenge and write gloriously. As journalists, they have Hidden Promise of Globalization, BY learned the art of making a point vividly JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN by buttressing it with an apt anecdote, a WOOLDRIDGE. New York: Crown striking interview, or a telling quote. Yet Business, 2000,386 pp. $27.50. the book's substance is what really makes it stand out. The authors neatly sketch and If you thought globalization is the fastestdefend globalization, examine its pitfalls, growing phenomenon today, think again, and analyze how to avoid them. Given Books about globalization are. A Future such an overwhelming agenda, they canPerfect is only the latest in a torrent of not hope to paint on this immense canvas writings on the subject, chief among without incurring minor blemishes them being The Lexus and the Olive Tree of detail and errors of judgment. But by Thomas Friedman. Yet it stands as judged in its entirety, with all its ambione of the rare exceptions to the law of tion and achievement, the book is a diminishing marginal utility; its many spectacular success, merits far outweigh the sense of deja vu The authors' predilection for free that afflicts most books taking yet another markets makes them skeptical of the look at globalization. many populist critiques of globalization. It is not just that Micklethwait and Yet they often manage to turn these criWooldridge (both of The Economist) tiques on their head to show the exact