Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been reading Tom Friedman regularly since he was a reporter for the NYT in the Middle East, and I have learned a lot from him. Unfortunately, in this book he starts out with breathtaking reports on advances in computer science and technology, something I happen to know a bit about (I worked for four decades in the field), and it's clear that he's in way over his head. There's no reason to expect a political columnist to be an expert in software or fiber optic systems, and Mr. Friedman clearly has consulted with folks whom he had reason to believe are leaders in their professions. But it seems that he didn't really understand what they were telling him, and his reporting is rife with factual errors that would not be tolerated if he were writing about, say, the G20. I gave up on P. 71, where he misinterprets an experimental result and gets the speed of light wrong by a factor of 2/3, and then makes a factually incorrect statement about how fiber optics works. Now, these are certainly trivial errors, in the sense that they don't affect his overall thesis, and the vast majority of his readers will neither notice them, nor care. But that's the problem: Tom Friedman is a *reporter*--he's supposed to get the facts right. If I see that he is sloppy with facts in areas in which I know more than he does, how can I trust him to get them right in the areas in which he knows more than I? I don't read Tom Friedman for entertainment or distraction (although he is certainly a very fine writer); I read him to learn, and if I'm not sure that he's getting the facts right, how do I know that I am, in fact, learning anything? So, I pass on this book.