A field guide to the 21st century, written by one of its most celebrated observers
In his most ambitious work to date, Thomas L. Friedman shows that we have entered an age of dizzying acceleration – and explains how to live in it.
Due to an exponential increase in computing power, climbers atop Mount Everest enjoy excellent cell phone service, and self-driving cars are taking to the roads. A parallel explosion of economic interdependency has created new riches as well as spiraling debt burdens. Meanwhile, Mother Nature is also seeing dramatic changes as carbon levels rise and species go extinct, with compounding results. How do these changes interact, and how can we cope with them?
To get a better purchase on the present, Friedman returns to his Minnesota childhood and sketches a world where politics worked and joining the middle class was an achievable goal. Today, by contrast, it is easier than ever to be a maker (try 3-D printing) or a breaker (the Islamic State excels at using Twitter) but harder than ever to be a leader or merely average. Friedman concludes that nations and individuals must learn to be fast (innovative and quick to adapt), fair (prepared to help the casualties of change), and slow (adept at shutting out the noise and accessing their deepest values). With vision, authority, and wit, Thank You for Being Late establishes a blueprint for how to think about our times.
Another Great Freidman Classic I think this will be another great Friedman book; up there with “The World is Flat”Got it two days ago, already 35% through, and looking forward
Friedman’s 3rd Seminal Work I had one of those nights where too many ideas prevented me to sleep. I had pre-ordered Friedman’s new book and it was now available, so I started in. I have not endorsed all of his books, but two profoundly impacted me. Lexus and the Olive Tree and World is Flat are seminal. After racing through the beginning, I can tell this one will be as well.
A Clear Explanation of How We Got to Where We Are Friedman offers a compelling, well-researched paradigm for understanding how the US arrived at its current level of dysfunctional politics. His hypothesis, restated throughout the book is that the US, as well as the rest of the planet, is being subjected to three relentless, ineluctable forces: the exponential development of technology, the forces of globalization and concomitant interdependence, and severe climate change, all of which have altered forever the complacent stability to which we…