That Used To Be Us

That Used To Be Us By Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum is the story of "how America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back".  I'm reading this book for my population analysis class and it seems that are future depends on IT and Globalization. A lot of the topics in marketing relate to this book, however Friedman and Mandelbaum cover it much more broadly. I'm halfway through and my gist from it is; America has lost its values, become lazy, and is lost in politics within the U.S.. One primary example that stands out dramtaically was China building a world-class convention center including giant escalators in 4 corners in 32 weeks, while in our capital Washington D.C., it took Washington Metro crew twenty four weeks to repair two tiny escalators. The book goes on to explain many of the U.S. successes and why in a time like this (flat word, the ability of the internet and sophware utilization) we should be more motivated than ever to once again take iniative as we did during both world wars and during the Cold War. Highly reocommend it and should be some copies in SMC book store.