Prologue A Flat World, A Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above?

When the Journal of Economic Literature asked me to write a review of The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman, I responded with enthusiasm, knowing it wouldn’t take much effort on my part. As soon as I received a copy of the book, I shipped it overnight by UPS to India to have the work done. I was promised a one-day turn-around for a fee of $100. Here is what I received by e-mail the next day: “This book is truly marvelous. It will surely change the course of human history. ” That struck me as possibly accurate but a bit too short and too generic to make the JEL happy, and I decided, with great disappointment, to do the work myself. What Might that “Flat World ” Metaphor Mean? Stumbling onto a book titled “The World is Flat ” by Thomas Friedman would leave a book browser puzzled about its likely content. My first guess would be epistemology and evolution. “The World is Flat ” must be a reference to the pre-Columbian sailor’s worry about falling off the edge of the earth, and the tenacious clinging to that idea by members of the Flat-Earth Society in the face of “overwhelming ” “scientific ” evidence. Put that into the current context, the debate about the intellectual legitimacy of “intelligent design”, and you are led to my conclusion: “The World is Flat ” is probably a book about faith-based decision-making and the teaching of intelligent design in the schools. This book is going to surprise. It will show that a flat earth is not a straw man at all, and that science is only another kind of religion, seeking to burn its heretics at the stake with all the vigor of traditional religion. Alas, the subtitle “A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century ” unsettles this brief flight of fancy about the content of this book, but it leaves the browser utterly confused. How could “The World is Flat ” and “A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century ” have anything to do with each other? That subtitle reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon that hung outside a history professor’s office at UCLA for many years. It depicted