About this item
A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observersWe all sense it -- something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once -- and it is dizzying.In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts. You will never look at the world the same way again after you read this book: how you understand the news, the work you do, the education your kids need, the investments your employer has to make, and the moral and geopolitical choices our country has to navigate will all be refashioned by Friedman's original analysis. Friedman begins by taking us into his own way of looking at the world -- how he writes a column. After a quick tutorial on that subject, he proceeds to write what could only be called a giant column about the twenty-first century. His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet's three largest forces -- Moore's law (technology) ; the Market (globalization) ; and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) -- are accelerating all at once. These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community.Why is this happening? As Friedman shows, the exponential increase in computing power defined by Moore's law has a lot to do with it. The year 2007 was a major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform. Friedman calls this platform "the supernova" -- for it is an extraordinary release of energy that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world -- or to destroy it.Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to write and think about this era of accelerations. It's also an argument for "being late" -- for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we're passing through and reflecting on its possibilities and dangers. To amplify this point, Friedman revisits his Minnesota hometown in his moving concluding chapters; there, he explores how communities can create a "topsoil of trust" to anchor their increasingly diverse and digital populations.With his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations -- if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman's most ambitious book -- and an essential guide to the present and the future.
About the Author
Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and, columnist - the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of six bestselling books, among them and Thomas Loren Friedman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 20, 1953, and grew up in the middle-class Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. He is the son of Harold and Margaret Friedman. He has two older sisters, Shelley and Jane. In January 1995, Friedman took over the Affairs column. "It was the job I had always aspired to," he recalled. "I had loved reading columns and op-ed articles ever since I was in high school, when I used to wait around for the afternoon paper, the Minneapolis Star, to be delivered. It carried Peter Lisagor. He was a favorite columnist of mine. I used to grab the paper from the front step and read it on the living room floor. "Friedman has been the 's Foreign Affairs columnist since 1995, traveling extensively in an effort to anchor his opinions in reporting on the ground. "I am a big believer in the saying 'If you don't go, you don't know. ' I tried to do two things with the column when I took it over. First was to broaden the definition of foreign affairs and explore the impacts on international relations of finance, globalization, environmentalism, biodiversity, and technology, as well as covering conventional issues like conflict, traditional diplomacy, and arms control. Second, I tried to write in a way that would be accessible to the general reader and bring a broader audience into the foreign policy conversation - beyond the usual State Department policy wonks. It was somewhat controversial at the time. So, I eventually decided to write a book that would explain the framework through which I was looking at the world. It was a framework that basically said if you want to understand the world today, you have to see it as a constant tension between what was very old in shaping international relations (the passions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture) and what was very new (technology, the Internet, and the globalization of markets and finance) . If you try to see the world from just one of those angles, it won't make sense. It is all about the intersection of the two."
