Heidi Troester

10/1/2014
IDC 201
Book Review 1

The book That Used to Be Us was written by two men Thomas L. Friedman and Michael
Mandelbaum. These men have devoted their careers to writing about foreign affairs. The book is
their collaboration of the condition of America today. Both men have reliable backgrounds that
let me know that what they say in the book is factual. One of the men is a foreign correspondent
and columnist at The New York Times and the other is a professor of American foreign policy at
The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. The main topic of the
book is that America is not healthy, both politically and economically. They go through how we
have gotten this way and what ways we should be fixing it.
This book was a required reading assignment for my Nature of Knowledge 102 class. I
cant say that I immensely enjoyed reading this book, some of the chapter were harder to stick
with than others. Though as a whole I did take away new perspectives and broadened my
knowledge on things I didnt know much about. The content was very critical and sometimes
hard to swallow, but I think needed to be said. We as Americans can no longer stand around not
taking action. If anything that is what this book has taught me.
In part two of the book The Education Challenge sort of hit home for me. They talk about
how global hyper-connectivity has flattened the world bringing more pressure to better your
education to be able to compete with the rest of the world. The pressure is high Ive been taught
that if you dont want to like pay check to pay check the rest of your life you need a degree.
Being that the world is flat it makes you able to connect with people you may not have ever had
the opportunity to come in contact with before. This makes peoples values and behavior matter
more now because they impact more people. This brings up the value of communication, employers
look for this on resumes and it could be the deciding factor in whether they hire you or not. There is a
huge value in having communication skills, being able to communicate clearly and work well in groups is
essential in this flat world. An example of this is the people who live in the US but work for a company in
a different country. These people have to communicate differently than people who go to work each
day and use the face-to-face channel of communication. Its harder for someone working at home to
clearly communicate with the company because most of the channels available are cold and can be
misleading. They have to express themselves clearly through emails, and phone calls these channels
leave out nonverbal cues and sometimes paralanguage. This can often lead to people misinterpreting
information. This part of the book also goes over how America tries to improve productivity by whipping
out low skilled jobs. The book gave an example with a ski lodge. When the skiers get off the lift they
were greeted by a person who would punch their ticket giving a warm welcome and a personal touch.
But we lose that face-to-face interaction for the improvement of productivity. People were replaced by
machines that the people would only have to swipe and move on. A very cold channel if you ask me.
The book had a lot of things that I could connect with my life and the problems I have
experienced or have been told I will experience. In part three of the book The War on Math and
Physics it explains the urgency of needed change. America is in denial of deficit and climate
change. In order to sustain the America dream for future generations our goal needs to be to
reverse the damage on the planet and lower spending within budget while raising taxes. The
book says The old guard WWII generation believed in keeping the deficit under control, which meant
raising taxes if necessary. The new succeeding generation, deficit doesnt matter and opposed raising
taxes. During the first decade of the twenty first century when we needed to pay for two wars and the
great recession republicans were cutting taxes and democrats were determined not to cut spending.
This all lead to todays huge deficit and massive total debt. Learning this made me think wow who are
the stupid people making these decisions?? And why if its clearly written in this book what the problem
is, why cant we solve these issues? America has stopped making decisions, this book has taught me that
America can no longer wallow in its glory days and stand at the way side not making decisions. There
needs to be action! In the book someone said We had better hope China doesnt invade Taiwan. We
have a treaty that says we have to defend Taiwan in the event that it is attacked by China. The only
problem is that we would have to borrow the money from China to do it. This is scary, there will come
a time when go over our borrowing limit, we shouldnt be taking that risk and get closer to that
unknown number. Getting out of our debt will be a tough thing to do but it is necessary and if the
history of our country shows anything, its that America has the power to overcome tough obstacles and
I believe if we come together we can.
Part four of the book Political Failure stresses the importance of Infrastructure they say
"the longer we wait the more expensive it will be... This is as urgent an imperative as health care." Our
infrastructure needs modernization to accommodate both new needs and the increased demands of our
population growth. On our report card we got a D on overall Infrastructure, this is a crucial issue we
need to focus on things that are happening here at home and better ourselves and our living conditions
before we go getting into anything else. Another thing I read in this part of the book is about the US
needing to keep a constant flow of legal immigrants into our country, whether they be blue collars or lab
coats. It is a part of our formula that very few countries can copy. When all of the energetic, high
aspiring people are mixed together with a democratic system and free markets, magic happens. This
makes me think what are Americans not good enough? If this is what we need then it sounds like
were not doing something right. It sounds like were not producing ideas here so we have to go and find
them elsewhere, thats just sad. Makes me want to study harder. The book also points out that a lot of
immigrants have returned to their native countries. The immigrants think going back home will give
them a better quality of life, better career options, and the comfort of home. The authors say that for
most of their lives If you wanted to get really smart and have a degree that would allow you to be a
leader in the world, you came to America. Well, its hard as hell to get to America now. And once you
get here, its hard to stay. They mentioned something like I takes sometimes ten years for an immigrant
family to get into the US. This doesnt make sense to me seeing as the US feels they need this constant
amount of high IQ immigrants to bring ideas to the US. Wouldnt we make it easier rather than harder?
Finally the last part of the book Rediscovering America this part focuses on the strengths of
America rather than the weaknesses in the previous parts. They talk about how there still have waves
of people still either coming to this country or coming of age in this country eager to try something new,
or spark something extra, undetermined by obstacles, hard times, money shortages, or weak-kneed
politicians. This give hope that we still can come up with the answers, and come up with those crazy
ideas that will change things. This part also focuses on how we think that we have to go to college so
that we dont become blue collar workers. This will become a problem when there is no one to replace
this generations factory workers. There is nothing wrong with being a factory worker they get paid well
enough to live a comfortable life but some reason our society looks down on the blue collar workers.
We need manufacturing in this country in order to produce innovation and sustain the American dream.
When people are in the factories and are touching the actual product it leads to improvement and the
invention of new products. There is a need to have these blue color jobs its not to say that someone has
to do it but rather they are essential for Americas future. So instead of looking at it as a measly blue
color job look at it as helping to secure Americas future. This I think will come with a new attitude about
how people treat new ideas. No longer is it acceptable to think that you know whats best and thats
how it will be done. No one knows everything and we should be incorporating new ideas with people in
businesses whether it be the ideas of the factory workers or people from a different culture. We need to
understand and accept that they do things equally well and sometimes better. The power of the people
is immense, when we all come together just imagine what will come of it.



References
Friedman, T. L. (2011). That used to be us. New York, United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.