Thank You for Being Late

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The new international bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The World is Flat - this is an essential and entertaining field guide to thriving in the twenty-first century.

'As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat . . . Thank You for Being Late is a master class in explaining ... After your session with Dr. Friedman, you have a much better idea of the forces that are upending your world, how they work together - and what people, companies and governments can do to prosper' John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review

'The globe-trotting New York Times columnist's most famous book was about the world being flat. This one is all about the world being fast ... His main piece of advice for individuals, corporations, and countries is clear: Take a deep breath and adapt. This world isn't going to wait for you' Fortune

We all sense it - something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your children. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are speeding up - and it is dizzying.

In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike any 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.

Friedman's thesis is that 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 all accelerating at once, transforming the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics and community. An extraordinary release of energy 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 perhaps to destroy it.

Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to 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. He shows us how we can anchor ourselves as individuals in the eye of this storm, and how communities can create a 'topsoil of trust' to do the same for their increasingly diverse and digital populations.

Written with his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, and with unequalled access to many of those at the forefront of the changes he is describing all over the world, Thank You for Being Late is Friedman's most ambitious book - and an essential guide to the present and the future.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Friedman (coauthor of That Used to Be Us), a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner for his work as a reporter with the New York Times, engages in an intelligent but overlong discussion of the faster paces of change in technology, globalization, and climate around the world. His core argument is that "simultaneous accelerations in the Market, Mother Nature and Moore's law" (the principle that the power of microchips doubles every two years) constitute an "Age of Accelerations," in which people who feel "fearful or unmoored" must "pause and reflect" rather than panic. Friedman opens with slow-paced, wordy, and at times highly technical discussions of each of his accelerations, with examples that include solar-powered waste compactors, pedometer-wearing cows, the Watson computer's wrong answer on Jeopardy!, and geopolitics. He then offers personal and policy recommendations for coping with accelerations, such as self-motivation, a single-payer health care system, lifelong learning, and encouraging more people to follow the Golden Rule. Unfortunately, Friedman's intriguing facts and ideas are all but buried under too many autobiographical anecdotes and lengthy recollections about the circumstances of interviews he conducted and research he completed, giving readers the recipe and history of all the ingredients along with the meal. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

This wonderful book is a balance of astute perception and creative introspection, the hallmark of the author's biweekly columns in the New York Times and his previous six books. He is a master of weaving the dynamics of technology, economics and finance, politics, and culture into a fabric that makes intuitive sense even for those who are more narrow and specialized, with bones to pick here and there. The narrative starts with a blogging Ethiopian parking attendant in Bethesda, MD, and ends with the author's roots in a Minnesota suburb, both reflected in the remarkable quality of Friedman's writing and the shaping of his opinions in the media. In-between stands the "Machine" (not Friedman's word), an unfixed but compelling model of how things work. Somehow it conjures up a Rube Goldberg-style contraption of gears and belts and levers and whistles but with cause-and-effect relationships that continually change. The key forces are globalization, technological change, and climate change. Friedman explores their interaction and its acceleration, which affects individuals and groups, cultures, and values. Acceleration of the pace of change turns out to be a key issue that doesn't necessarily bode well for the Machine, so there are good reasons for taking breathers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --Ingo Walter, New York University

Kirkus Book Review

The celebratednbsp;New York Timesnbsp;columnist diagnoses this unprecedented historical moment and suggests strategies for resilience and propulsion that will help us adapt.Are things just getting too damned fast? Friedman (Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolutionand How It Can Renew America, 2008, etc.) cites 2007 as the year we reached a technological inflection point. Combined with increasingly fast-paced globalization (financial goods and services, information, ideas, innovation) and the subsequent speedy shocks to our planets natural system (climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, geochemical flows), weve entered an age of accelerations that promises to transform almost every aspect of modern life. The three-time Pulitzer winner puts his familiar methodologyextensive travel, thorough reporting, interviews with the high-placed movers and shakers, conversations with the lowly moved and shakento especially good use here, beginning with a wonderfully Friedman-esque encounter with a parking attendant during which he explains the philosophy and technique underlying his columns and books. The author closes with a return to his Minnesota hometown to reconnect with and explore some effective habits of democratic citizenship. In between, he discusses topics as varied as how garbage cans got smart, how the exponential growth in computational power has resulted in a supernova of creative energy, how the computer Watson wonnbsp;Jeopardy, and how, without owning a single property, Airbnb rents out more rooms than all the major hotel chains combined. To meet these and other dizzying accelerations, Friedman advises developing a dynamic stability, and he prescribes nothing less than a redesign of our workplaces, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and communities. Drawing lessons from Mother Nature about adaptability, sustainability, and interdependence, he never underestimates the challenges ahead. However, hes optimistic about our chances as he seeks out these strategies in action, ranging from how ATT trains its workers to how Tunisia survived the Arab Spring to how chickens can alleviate African poverty. Required reading for a generation thats going to be asked to dance in a hurricane. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.