The World Is Flat

The World Is Flat
- A brief history of the twenty-first centuary
Thomas L. Friedman

I had been reading New York Times editorial for quite a long time. Thomas Friedman is one of my favorate columnist. I read his book "Longitudes and Attitudes" before.

Competition between nation states -> Competition between multinationals -> Competition between individuals

Everybody is facing more and more competition and the world is busier and busier. When can we have a world, in which people could relax and be happy!

Anyway, since there is no way to escape, just standup and take my position and join the competition!

Collapse

Collapse
How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed
Author: Jared Diamond

Like his "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond's Collapse is also a great book worth reading. In high school, I learned the words "soil erosion" and "salinization". With so many examples in this book, I begin to understand the real meaning of these words.

Diamond's explainations about the earlier collapsed societies including Easter Island, Maya, Greenland's Norse are very convincing. Some of myths in my minds are replaced with scientific facts and reasoning.

His Malthusian explaination of Rwanda's genocide is also insightful. I guess that some social tensions in the middle of Qing Dynasty are also come from the population explosion.

The chapter about "mining" Austrilia is also very informative. Austrilia is a great country. I had never thought that it has so many environmental issues.

I just don't like his hostile tone towards China. Diamond should come to visit China and the trip could help him to improve his book.