In Friedman chapter:
Thomas Friedman is among the most respected and widely-read American pundits working today, which is to say that he is among the most influential. His books crowd the bestseller lists. His lectures are much sought out and attended by the economic elite of every city on which he descends. If one goes home for Thanksgiving and waits around long enough, one will hear him praised by both elderly old Republicans and elderly old Democrats. If one meets one's girlfriend's upper middle-class father in his den or study, and if this room is composed largely of hardwood paneling or furniture or some such, one will find a copy of either The World is Flat or The Lexus and the Olive Tree, though usually not both of them.
Change to:
Thomas Friedman is among the most respected and widely-read American pundits working today, which is to say that he is among the most influential. His books crowd the bestseller lists. His lectures are much sought out and attended by the economic elite of every city on which he descends. If one goes home for Thanksgiving and waits around long enough, one will hear him praised by both elderly old Republicans and elderly old Democrats.
In Peretz chapter:
But most of these people are either dead or living in San Miguel de Allende, and their modern counterparts have descended into even greater irrelevancy than even the dead ones, if not the ones who are residing in San Miguel.
    I shall make a self-indulgent aside because there is no one here to stop me. My grandma used to live in San Miguel, and when I was 15 or so I made the acquaintance of several of these elderly and two-dimensional creatures. One of them explained to me over breakfast that the Aztecs knew perfectly well that Hernan Cortez was not actually some deity, but rather just a European operating on various proto-imperialist and early-stage capitalist paradigms, and that Montezuma was simply being nice when he allowed the Spaniard to seize control of the country and go up to big chunks of gold and lick them or whatever it was that you do with gold; the Aztecs as a whole, she asserted, simply felt sorry for these confused and evil Spaniards. Another trapped me in her apartment and told me about how she used to know Lenny Bruce, forced me to listen to recordings of Lenny Bruce, related to me anecdotes about Lenny Bruce, and gave me a sandwich which was in fact very good and which I did enjoy eating very much, so thanks, Benita. On another occasion, two of these obsolete old crones argued over whether or not one can find orange cats in Rome; one them claimed that Rome has no orange cats at all, and the other claimed to have owned one herself while living in that very city. One group of them eventually had another other group arrested over a dispute involving control of the local library. If only there were a metaphor in there somewhere. At any rate, I managed to steal a lot of pain pills in those days. I'll continue this anecdote in some other outlet ala Truman Capote because it sounds like some nonsense Truman Capote would have written if he had ever written more than six things.
Change to:
But most of these people are dead.