If you think the joke in the headline above is funny, you might enjoy Thomas Friedman’s new book.?
Otherwise, Andrew Ferguson warns in the new Commentary (not yet posted online) that you’re bound to be disappointed. Ferguson delves into Friedman’s arguments and finds a lot of early references to the catchphrase title regarding our “hot, flat, crowded” world:
The pattern has been set for the next 410 pages, give or take a few dozen hotflatandcrowdeds: anecdotes whose only point is to draw attention to the writer; jokes at the level of a middle-school talent show; relentless repetition; the piling-up of distracting detail; too-cute catchphrases; helium-filled sentences with no meaning; repetition; shameless padding; cliches; repetition; grandiosity. Plus, he repeats himself. Over and over.
After blasting Friedman’s apparent ignorance of the harmful economic impacts of policies designed to fight global warming, Ferguson offers a warning:
Friedman is a marvelously successful instance of a classic American type, not the first in his line of work and surely not the last but one of the most formidable. He needs to be careful, though, that no policymaker follow the advice in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. An economy reformed to Friedman’s specifications would be one in which fewer and fewer people could afford to buy the books and pay the speaking fees of hucksters.
