Friedman is a skilled writer, but most of the backlash is from him taking well established ideas and presenting them as if he discovered them. For instance, his

Friedman is a skilled writer, but most of the backlash is from him taking well established ideas and presenting them as if he discovered them. For instance, his books "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and "The World is Flat" are basically just standard treatises on globalization, but reading them you'd think Friedman has done years of painstaking research to uncover this new, previously unheard of trend. Not all Friedman books are like that. "From Beirut to Jerusalem" was excellent and should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a better grasp of the conflicts in the middle east.