When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development at the dawn of the 21st century--the attacks of 9/11, or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, and giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner? Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.

Includes index.

Pt. [1]: How the world became flat. While I was sleeping -- The ten forces that flattened the world: 11/9/89 (when the walls came down and the windows went up) ; 8/9/95 (when Netscape went public) ; Work flow software (let's do lunch: have your application talk to my application) ; Open-sourcing (self-organizing collaborative communities) ; Outsourcing (Y2K) ; Offshoring (when China joined the WTO) ; Supply-chaining (Wal-Mart) ; Insourcing (UPS) ; In-forming (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Web Search) ; The steroids (digital, mobile, personal, and virtual) -- The triple convergence -- The great sorting-out. -- Pt. [2]: America and the flat world. America and free trade (is Ricardo still right?) -- The untouchables -- The quiet crisis -- This is not a test. -- Pt. [3] Developing countries and the flat world. The virgin of Guadalupe. -- Pt. [4] Companies and the flat world. How companies cope. -- Pt. [5] Geopolitics and the flat world. The unflat world -- The Dell theory of conflict prevention. -- Conclusion. Imagination: 11/9 versus 9/11.