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THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE

An optimist's guide to thriving in the age of accelerations.

by Thomas L. Friedman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

Required reading for a generation that’s “going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.”

The celebrated  New York Times  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 Revolution—and 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 planet’s natural system (climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, geochemical flows), we’ve entered an “age of accelerations” that promises to transform “almost every aspect of modern life.” The three-time Pulitzer winner puts his familiar methodology—extensive travel, thorough reporting, interviews with the high-placed movers and shakers, conversations with the lowly moved and shaken—to 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 won  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, he’s optimistic about our chances as he seeks out these strategies in action, ranging from how AT&T trains its workers to how Tunisia survived the Arab Spring to how chickens can alleviate African poverty.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-374-27353-8

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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BOOK REVIEW

by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

by Thomas L. Friedman

Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2015

Kirkus Prize winner

IndieBound Bestseller

National Book Award Winner

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

Notes on the first 150 years in america.

by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.

Atlantic senior writer Coates ( The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood , 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”

Pub Date: July 8, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | UNITED STATES | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE

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by Ta-Nehisi Coates

by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher

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BOOK TO SCREEN

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

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The Message of Thomas Friedman’s New Book: It’s Going to Be O.K.

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By John Micklethwait

• Nov. 22, 2016

Editor’s note: Books written by New York Times employees are always reviewed by individuals outside The Times.

THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations By Thomas L. Friedman 486 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28.

From Donald Trump to Brexit to Marine Le Pen, one thing that unites the unhappy West is a profound sense of mystification. Across Europe and North America, people have an acute feeling that their world is accelerating away from them — but they can’t quite understand why. There is no narrative. Hence the attraction of leaders who “tell it like it is” and identify convenient scapegoats, like immigrants or the European Union. But what most people really crave is an honest explanation. As with patients on a psychiatrist’s couch, the first step is to understand what is going wrong. Then you can decide on the medication.

Into this darkened room steps Dr. Tom Friedman.

While other journalists dream of being investigative reporters or news breakers, Thomas L. Friedman is a self-confessed “explanatory journalist” — whose goal is to be a “translator from English to English.” And he is extremely good at it. A talent for explanation has garnered him a column at The New York Times and a string of best-selling books on huge subjects like globalization and climate change. Snooty critics might grumble about his folksy style, but it is hard to think of any other journalist who has explained as many complicated subjects to so many people.

Now he has written his most ambitious book — part personal odyssey, part common-sense manifesto. “Thank You for Being Late” has two overt aims. First, Friedman wants to explain why the world is the way it is — why so many things seem to be spinning out of control, especially for the Minnesota white middle class he grew up in. And then he wants to reassure us that it is basically going to be O.K. In general the explanation is more convincing than the reassurance. But as a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat.

Friedman argues that man is actually a fairly adaptable creature. The problem is that our capacity to adapt is being outpaced by a “supernova,” built from three ever faster things: technology, the market and climate change. That sounds like a predictable list, but Friedman digs cleverly into each one. For instance, on technology he argues convincingly that 2007, which saw the arrival of the iPhone, Android and Kindle, was the year when software began, in the words of Netscape’s founder, “eating the world”; he introduces us to vital obscure bits, like GitHub and Hadoop; he points out that if Moore’s law (that the power of microchips would double about every two years) had applied to the capabilities of cars, not computer chips, then the modern descendant of the 1971 Volkswagen Beetle would travel at 300,000 miles per hour, cost 4 cents and use one tank of gasoline in a lifetime.

The chapters on climate change and the market are stuffed with similar nuggets. But Friedman also shows how all three forces interact, complicating and speeding up one another. In Niger, climate change is wrecking crops even as technology is helping more children survive, so a population of 19 million will reach 72 million hungry people by 2050. On trading floors, technology and markets create “spoofing,” so a 36-year-old geek, operating out of his parents’ flat by Heathrow, can make the Dow Jones index fall 9 percent in a “flash crash.” And everything, Friedman warns, will keep getting faster. There are already at least 10 billion things connected to the internet — but that is still less than 1 percent of the possible total as ever more cars, gadgets and bodies join “the internet of things.”

Man has sped up his own response times. It now takes us only 10-15 years to get used to the sort of technological changes that we used to absorb in a couple of generations; but what good is that when technology becomes obsolete every five to seven years? The supernova is making a joke of both patent law and education. Governments, companies and individuals are all struggling to keep up.

It can be bewildering even for the winners — like Friedman himself. In 1978, he was queuing up to phone his stories from British telephone boxes; now he can email a column from deep in Africa that appears almost instantaneously on the Times website and provokes a rapid reaction from China. In two and a half years researching this book, he had to interview all the main technologists at least twice, because things changed so quickly. Like everybody else, he has no time to think: The book’s title comes from an offhand comment to a friend whose tardiness allowed a few welcome minutes of contemplation.

For the most part, “Thank You for Being Late” is a master class in explaining. It canters along at a pace that is quick enough to permit learning without getting bogged down. Inevitably he sometimes gets the balance wrong, either allowing his informants to ramble on, or skating over a thorny detail: For instance, having admitted that productivity numbers have not leapt forward in the same way that technology has, he asks us, in effect, to trust him, they will. And, yes, the folksiness will still irk some critics: The starting point for the book is a chat with a Bethesda parking attendant, with another attendant from Minnesota waiting near the end.

But criticizing Friedman for humanizing and boiling down big topics is like complaining that Mick Jagger used sex to sell songs: It is what he does well. There is also a value in bringing things together — in putting foreign policy beside climate change. And don’t be fooled by the catchy slogans (“Build floors, not walls,” “Turning AI into IA” and so on). As usual with Friedman, it is all backed up by pages of serious reporting from around the world.

Indeed, this reviewer’s complaint is that the explaining is too convincing. Lying on the couch, listening to him in his guise as Dr. Tom Friedman, you understand, ever more clearly, the reasons the world is spinning so fast. It is not all gloom: Along the way we discover that the A.T.M. created more full-time teller jobs at banks (because it allowed banks to increase the number of branches). There are inspiring stories of communities rising to the challenge, and a memorable paean to the virtues of chickens from Bill Gates (they empower women, keep children healthy and jump-start entrepreneurialism). But respite from these accelerations? There is none, there is not going to be and Trumpian attempts to stop it all will do more damage than good.

This makes it harder to reassure us that it is all going to be fine. Friedman produces a common-sense list of 18 things that the American government should do, from setting up a single-payer health system to passing free-trade deals and building infrastructure. If the politicians in Washington accomplished even a quarter of his list, the United States would be better at coping with change. But Friedman is too honest a reporter to argue that will happen soon. Asked why some biological systems thrive, the environmentalist Amory Lovins replies, “They are all highly adaptive — and all the rest is detail.” It is hard to put Washington in the highly adaptive category.

Friedman’s main cause for optimism is based on a trip back to St. Louis Park, the Minneapolis suburb where he grew up. This is perhaps the most elegiac, memorable part of the book — a piece of sustained reportage that ranks alongside “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” Friedman’s masterly first book about the Middle East. He points out that the same communal virtues that made Minnesota work when he was young have survived — and are still useful. But somehow, the passages that lingered with this reader were the ones about the good old days that have disappeared — when baseball used to be a sport that everybody could afford to watch, when local boys like the young Friedman could caddy at the United States Open, when everybody in Friedman’s town went to public schools.

So you don’t finish this book thinking everything is going to be O.K. for the unhappy West — that “you can dance in a hurricane.” There is no easy pill to swallow, and most of the ones being proffered by the extremists are poison. But 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. You do have a coherent narrative — an honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats. And that is why everybody should hope this book does very well indeed.

John Micklethwait is the editor in chief of Bloomberg.

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The Earthbound Report

Good lives on our one planet

Book review: Thank you for being late, by Thomas L Friedman

Friedman, taking some time to reflect on the state of the world, argues that we are living through “one of the greatest inflection points in history”. That critical point is dominated by “the three largest forces on the planet – technology, globalization, and climate change – all accelerating at once.” We shouldn’t panic about this, he says. Instead, we should pause, try to understand it, and then engage productively. That’s what the book tries to do.

The first part looks at those three accelerations, beginning with technology. It explores Moore’s law and the boom in computer processing power, leading to new opportunities in big data, the internet of things, and cloud computing. We can all do more, as individuals, than any generation before us – and that’s true for both makers and ‘breakers’ – those who want to do good in the world, and those who want to wreck stuff. It weighs up the benefits and dangers of hyper-globalization, and sets the whole thing in the context of climate change.

One of the key points here is that these three trends are accelerating so fast that change “can outpace the capacity of the average human being and our societal structures to adapt and absorb them.” That leads to cultural angst, unrest, failing institutions, conflict and migration, scapegoating and extreme politics.

If we think we can slow the world down and catch up, we’re deluding ourselves, Friedman suggests. Technological advance won’t be curbed, and neither will globalization. Climate effects are only beginning. We urgently need to find ways to adapt faster. As individuals, nothing will help more than a commitment to lifelong learning, something I would agree with. As nations, we need faster and more responsive governments and workplaces.

One of Friedman’s big strengths is that as a well respected commentator, he can get an interview with anyone. And with decades of experience as a Middle East correspondent, he’s not afraid to go where the action is. So we get first-hand accounts from the front lines of change, conversations with Silicon Valley engineers, Syrian freedom fighters, Somali refugees, Chinese entrepreneurs, all sorts. It’s an interesting companion to the last book I read, Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger . Both tackle similar topics, Mishra from the history library and Friedman from the streets.  He even gets to Madagascar.

I am, I will admit, always looking for Madagascar. When any writer starts talking about global revolution, I think of Madagascar. Does it reach there? Would it work there? If not, let’s not use the word ‘global’ just yet, and Friedman’s previous books have annoyed me for that reason. There were a couple of points where I wanted to point out that only half the world has the internet, but it would be a little unfair. There’s a real effort here to include developing countries and marginalised voices, at least in the middle sections.

Towards the end, not so much. While I’m looking for Madagascar, Friedman is ‘always looking for Minnesota’, as the title of one chapter has it. It’s where he grew up, and the closing sections of the book are dedicated to dissecting 197os Minnesota for clues about how it integrated incomers and nurtured public spirit. It’s a personal case study that dips just a little too far into nostalgia for my liking, especially since it takes up the whole last 100 pages of the book.

What’s particularly unfortunate about this narrowing of the lens is the assumption of American leadership. That was assumed on climate change in  Hot, Flat and Crowded , and here is is again in the age of accelerations: “We are indeed present again at the creation of something new in the geopolitical arena, and much responsibility will fall to America to figure it out and offer policy innovations, and generosity, to manage it.” Maybe, but it’s clear the book was written in the first half of 2016. There’s a list of policy innovations in one chapter, all about global cooperation, openness to the world, tolerance and integration. The US has chosen the polar opposite position on almost every one of them.

That left me with a rather hollow feeling, especially given the subtitle, ‘an optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of accelerations’. If Friedman is right about what it takes to thrive in the 21st century, then the US is off into the deep weeds. Ironically enough for the title, the book feels a year too late in the writing.

Still, the central message of the book is one I agree with entirely, regardless of America’s choices. Friedman argues that we need to be able to innovate politically and socially, pay more attention to ethics. And while he clearly gets very excited about new technologies, he’s committed to old fashioned human relationships, building trust and community. He sees the potential of simple interventions as well as high tech ones, and the need to be open to new ideas wherever they come from. “We need an entrepreneurial mind-set, a willingness to approach politics and problem-solving with an utterly hybrid, heterodox, and nondogmatic mixing and matching of ideas, without regard to traditional left-right catechisms – letting all kinds of ideas coevolve, just as plants and animals coevolve in nature.”

Amen to that, and for all my own hesitations, I still found Thank You for Being Late a thoughtful, generous, and hopeful reflection on the state of our world.

• You can buy Thank You For Being Late from Earthbound Books UK or US .

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Thank You For Being Late

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016

Plot Summary

Thomas L. Friedman

Official site for Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Thank You for Being Late

A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers

One of the Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2016, Publishers Weekly

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.

Booklist (starred review)

“[Friedman’s] latest engrossingly descriptive analysis of epic trends and their consequences . . . Friedman offers tonic suggestions for fostering ‘moral innovation’ and a commitment to the common good in this detailed and clarion inquiry, which, like washing dirty windows, allows us to see far more clearly what we’ve been looking at all along . . . his latest must-read.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The three-time Pulitzer winner puts his familiar methodology―extensive travel, thorough reporting, interviews with the high-placed movers and shakers, conversations with the lowly moved and shaken―to especially good use here . . . He prescribes nothing less than a redesign of our workplaces, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and communities . . . Required reading for a generation that’s ‘going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.'”

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Review by Gillian Tett

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A couple of years ago, something extraordinary happened to cows in upstate New York. In decades past, milking cattle was a job that involved the human skills of farm workers.

But then digitisation disrupted the dairies. As Thomas Friedman, The New York Times foreign affairs columnist, recounts in his engaging new book Thank You For Being Late, computers increasingly control and monitor udders, supply chains and milk flow.

Out goes the image of a farmer sloshing around in dung; instead, “in the future a successful cow milker may need to be an astute data reader and analyst”, Friedman writes.

In some senses, this sounds cheering: digitised milking means fresher milk. In other senses, though, it is depressing as a cyber dairy is a place where “mid-tier” jobs are vanishing, replaced by a few software programs and lowly manual labourers, with nothing in-between.

Either way, Friedman is convinced that what is happening in the dairies is a tiny indication of a bigger revolution. And the impact of this revolution is gaining a new sense of urgency after the election of Donald Trump as US president. For if you want to understand why there is so much malaise in society and politics — never mind the dairy farms — you don’t necessarily need to look to China; the crucial issue is that this radical, rapid technology shift is leaving many people feeling profoundly dislocated.

And unless society finds new ways to respond to this dislocation, the sense of malaise and anger is likely to get worse, not least because technological change is speeding up, not slowing down. “Disruption is what happens when someone does something clever that makes you or your company look obsolete,” as Friedman notes.

This point has already been made extensively in recent years — including by Friedman himself. His earlier tomes shot on to the bestseller lists by explaining how the rise of the internet and globalisation have changed our global economy — or made the world “flat”, to borrow the title of one of those earlier works, The World is Flat.

And in some senses Thank You For Being Late is an extension of these previous works, woven in with wonderful personal stories (including admirably honest discussions about the nature of being a columnist).

What gives Friedman’s book a new twist is his belief that upheaval in 2016 is actually far more dramatic than earlier phases. That is partly because of accelerating technological change, or the impact of “Moore’s Law”. But it is also because market forces are linking the world more powerfully than ever, occurring alongside dangerous climate change.

“We have no choice but to learn to adapt to this new pace of change,” he declares. “It will be harder and require more self motivation — and that reality is surely one of the things roiling politics all over America and Europe.”

Are there any solutions? Unlike Mr Trump, Friedman does not offer easy, slogan-friendly ideas. He suggests 18 steps for sustainable growth that “Mother Nature” might recommend, ranging from corporate tax cuts to a sugar ban to the expansion of adult learning programmes and tighter border controls.

So far, so sensible. But Friedman also argues that Americans need to discover their sense of “community”, and uses his home town of Minneapolis to demonstrate this. In two of the most engaging chapters, the author returns to the town and explains how it has created a relatively inclusive, harmonious and pragmatic style of government in recent decades. It left him convinced that “decency” and “community” can be cultivated anywhere — and is the key to surviving dystopian dislocation, even (or especially) in a Trumpian world.

It is a wonderful sentiment. And it injects a badly needed dose of optimism into the modern debate. But, as Friedman admits, it is a tough job to convince voters to keep believing in the idea of “Minnesota nice”, given that dislocation is turning the workforce — and dairies — upside down. “When I graduated college I got to find a job,” Friedman admits. “My girls have to invent theirs.” Therein lies the angst that propelled Mr Trump to power; it is also a challenge that no single president will ever be able to resolve.

The writer is the FT’s US managing editor

Thank You For Being Late : An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerationsd by Thomas L Friedman; Allen Lane £25/Farrar, Straus and Giroux $28

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“Thank You For Being Late” Book Review

Posted by Kristin Arnold on May 26, 2020

A while ago, someone recommended Thomas Friedman’s Thank You for Being Late as a “wide-ranging study of the changing world and the opportunities to respond to potential threats by harnessing community, collaboration, and technology.” I liked his book, The World is Flat , so I put it in my Amazon shopping cart – a virtual bookshelf just waiting for the right moment to pluck it from “saved for later” into my hot little hands.

Enter the coronavirus, and I’m thinking this might be an interesting book to read to put this new event in perspective while providing context and flavor for how we got to this point. Keep in mind, it was written in 2016, so there is no direct discussion of the COVID, SARS, or other pathogens.

The premise of the book is that the modern world is experiencing a host of “accelerations” (computing power, economic globalization, and climate change are the primary drivers, but there are others). These things are changing at an ever-faster pace, and those things are now interacting with each other to cause further acceleration.

The first part of the book details the acceleration in technology, globalization, and climate change that has not only caused disruption (when a new method makes an old method obsolete) but also dislocation (when things change so quickly society is unable to adapt). He dissects many of the changes and trends that have occurred in the last decade or two as it has shaped our workplace, politics, ethics, geopolitics, community, and environment.

I found it interesting to read as you can feel the pace of change accelerating (exploding into a supernova of knowledge that is feeding off itself!) and can extrapolate future possibilities and opportunities!

The back half of the book isn’t as cogent as the first half. BUT I did find it interesting that he says on page 342:

“We have never before stood at this moral fork in the road – where one of us could kill all of us and all of us could fix everything if we really decided to do so.”

How true in this coronavirus age.

He opines that we need trust and collaboration to help meet these challenges. He then details how the needed collaborative behaviors are non-existent, having started to break down during Reagan’s presidency up to the “Trump revolution” (circa 2016). Wonder what Friedman would say to our current political climate where everything is politicized?

At the end, he shares an unbridled optimistic view of the world, based on his hometown reminiscing of St. Louis Park, Minnesota where evidently they did trust and collaborate. In the age of COVID, I see outposts of this collaboration, and perhaps this will be a turning point for us all.

KRISTIN ARNOLD, MBA, CPF | Master, CSP is a high-stakes meeting facilitator and professional panel moderator.  She’s been facilitating teams of executives and managers in making better decisions and achieving greater results for over 20 years.  She is the author of the award-winning book, Boring to Bravo : Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve and Inspire Audiences to Action.

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A blog about books and all things bookish, thank you for being late by thomas friedman | book review.

“Thank You For Being Late” by Thomas Friedman may not reveal much with its title, but the subtitle, “ An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations ,” hints at its focus. This book explores the pace of technological change and its impact on society. It is an intriguing book for a generation that has lived through these technological changes, well, we saw the meteoric rise from black and white television to handheld devices that today doubles up for any fancy device dreamt in the 90s and to top it all, we have the AI enter our lives!

The book begins on a philosophical note with a rant on modern society and how it has changed some basic principles of living, where one of the core precepts is to feign being busy and show up late to gain a sense of importance. Being busy is a self-imposed tenet that makes us value our lives more but isn’t it tragic that we’ve lost our appreciation for the small moments that once brought us joy?

Friedman identifies the year 2007 as a pivotal moment when technological innovation began accelerating at an unprecedented rate. He chronicles key developments, such as the rise of Facebook and the proliferation of smartphones, illustrating how these interconnected advancements have transformed our present. The “Age of Acceleration,” as he terms it, is driven by Moore’s Law, which explains the accelerated speed at which we see technological growth at an unexpected speed. 

The book is divided into several parts, each addressing a different aspect of this accelerated age. The first half includes subchapters on notable inventors and their contributions in defining present-day communication technology. Friedman also references a 2015 McKinsey study on digitization gaps, highlighting the opportunities available to today’s innovators.

“If you want to be a maker, a starter-upper, an inventor, or an innovator, this is your time. By leveraging the supernova, you can do so much more now with so little.”

However, the chapter on Mother Nature stands out particularly where Friedman addresses the pressing issue of climate change. He uses the quote, “ God always forgives. Man often forgives. Nature never forgives ,” to underscore the urgency of environmental conservation. As he discusses rising global temperatures and their effects, he introduces the concept of heat index, which combines temperature and humidity to convey what the temperature actually feels like. Something that we lived through this year! As temperatures continue to rise, Friedman emphasizes that people in regions more vulnerable to extreme climate conditions are the most affected. And we refuse to address the problem as the ‘ Black Elephant ’ in the room.

Despite the book’s emphasis on technological progress, Friedman doesn’t overlook the importance of family and social stability. He presents case studies from various countries, including Madagascar, Syria, Senegal, and Niger, to illustrate the real-world implications of these changes. These narratives provide a human context to the broader trends he examines.

Friedman also reflects on his journalism career, noting the dramatic changes in the profession from the 1980s to the digital age. The book arcs from personal to the collective inaction on climate change, the population growth’s strain on Earth’s resources, and the shift from a “ Small World, Big Earth ” to a “ Big World, Small Earth “.

I think Friedman’s earlier work ‘ The World is Flat ’ (2005) laid the foundation for this book. However, ‘ Thank You for Being Late ’ is at best, a chronology of technological developments centered around 2007 with personal insights and experiences. But in the end, Friedman’s ability to connect the dots between technology, environment, and society is what makes this book a valuable read for anyone seeking to understand the forces shaping our future.

“This post is part of the Bookish League blog hop hosted by  Bohemian Bibliophile ”

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25 thoughts on “ thank you for being late by thomas friedman | book review ”.

This book seems to quite informative and insightful on the impact of human wrongdoings or devastating the nature on the universe. Yeah nature never forgives and its strong proof is the raise in temperatures. We humans are increasing population and cutting or exploiting trees for our benefit and thereby paving a way for our devastation.

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I am glad you liked the review. Indeed it is a relevant book for our times.

Thank you for stopping by!

Your review has me intrigued. More so the fact the authors has connected technology, climate change, and society to make it well rounded. I have located an audiobook and already added it to my library. Thanks for sharing about it, Ninu.

I am glad you found the book interesting. Thank you for stopping by!

The focus on the pivotal year 2007 and the exploration of key technological advancements, along with the pressing issue of climate change, are well-highlighted. Your commentary on Friedman’s ability to blend personal reflections with broader trends adds depth to the review. It’s clear why this book offers valuable perspectives on navigating the rapid changes in our world.

I am glad you liked the review and found the book interesting. Thank you for stopping by!

Your review beautifully captures the essence of Thank You for Being Late. You’ve highlighted the book’s exploration of technological acceleration and its broader societal impacts with clarity and depth. I appreciate how you tied in personal insights and reflections on climate change, making this review both engaging and insightful. Great work!

I am so glad you liked the review, thank you so much!

I think your concluding line in the review makes the book valuable to all seeking to understand the forces shaping our future, and what has shaped us since the start of the technological revolution in 2007 and the present.

Exactly…and thank you so much for stopping by!

The title made me curious and the subject matter might be informative but the narration seems so drab that this could be something I will read only when I am pretty motivated.

Surely…I was purely motivated by Thomas Friedman’s name. ‘The World is Flat’ was such a sensation that I had to read this one but picking a non-fiction that too pertaining to technology is quite an ask for me!

“connect the dots between technology, environment, and society ” this line caught my eye. It is not easy to find the common denominator and find the correlation between the three disparate things. The fact that the author has managed to do is a measure of his ability. Based on your review, the book sounds really interesting. Will add it to my TBR

Sure, Harshita and I hope you would like reading it! Thanks for stopping by!

I’m not much into non-fiction. However this seems to be a philosophical, insightful and necessary read. Your review and what you mentioned about 2007 being a pivotal year in terms of technological advancement made me go back in time and think my own life before and after that year, which just might work as a motivation for me to pick up the book. Thanks for this review which, if it happens, will lead me to read something I rarely read

Non-fiction isn’t my favourite either…it was Thomas Friedman’s name that led me to this book. I would say its worth a read! And, thanks for stopping by!

Sounds interesting, but seems dated – the book.

Yes, it is but content about the major technological changes that happened in 2007 and the consequences on climate change is what keeps the book relevant.

It’s good to read this book to know where the world is moving at an increasingly rapid pace, outlining the dangers this trend can bring as well as what we stand to gain from it.

This book sounds a perfect choice for nature lovers and for those who seriously working climate protection. Its a book which is slightly on the heavier side for me and I will prefer to give it a skip for now, but adding it to my TBR.

Though the climate change section is rather small compared to Friedman’s focus on the technological innovations driving us to this point, I am sure you would like reading the book whenever you prefer to.

Bookmarked this post. I have to read this book to know the innovators and the climate change perspective in this. I think these books are the need of the hour.

I hope you would like reading it! Thank you for stopping by!

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Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations Kindle Edition

#1 New York Times Bestseller • Los Angeles Times Bestseller One of The Wall Street Journal 's 10 Books to Read Now • One of Kirkus Reviews 's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • One of Publishers Weekly 's Most Anticipated Books of the Year Shortlisted for the OWL Business Book Award and Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Version 2.0, Updated and Expanded, with a New Afterword We 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 , version 2.0, with a new afterword, 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. 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. The year 2007 was the major inflection point: the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, created a new technology platform that is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is providing vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world—or to destroy it. 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 an essential guide to the present and the future.

• Print length 497 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date November 22, 2016
• File size 6130 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

One of The Wall Street Journal 's 10 Books to Read Now One of Kirkus Reviews 's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly 's Most Anticipated Books of the Year Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "Thomas L. Friedman is a self-­confessed 'explanatory journalist'―whose goal is to be a 'translator from English to English.' And he is extremely good at it . . . it is hard to think of any other journalist who has explained as many complicated subjects to so many people . . . Now he has written his most ambitious book―part personal odyssey, part commonsense manifesto . . . As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat." ―John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review "[An] ambitious book . . . In a country torn by a divisive election, technological change and globalization, reconstructing social ties so that people feel respected and welcomed is more important than ever . . . Rather than build walls, [healthy communities] face their problems and solve them. In [Friedman's] telling, this is the way to make America great." ―Laura Vanderkam, The Wall Street Journal "Engaging . . . in some senses Thank You For Being Late is an extension of [Friedman's] previous works, woven in with wonderful personal stories (including admirably honest discussions about the nature of being a columnist). What gives Friedman’s book a new twist is his belief that upheaval in 2016 is actually far more dramatic than earlier phases . . . Friedman also argues that Americans need to discover their sense of 'community,' and uses his home town of Minneapolis to demonstrate this." ―Gillian Tett, Financial Times "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 "[A] humane and empathetic book." ―David Henkin, The Washington Post "[Friedman's] latest engrossingly descriptive analysis of epic trends and their consequences . . . Friedman offers tonic suggestions for fostering 'moral innovation' and a commitment to the common good in this detailed and clarion inquiry, which, like washing dirty windows, allows us to see far more clearly what we’ve been looking at all along . . . his latest must-read." ― Booklist (starred review) "The three-time Pulitzer winner puts his familiar methodology―extensive travel, thorough reporting, interviews with the high-placed movers and shakers, conversations with the lowly moved and shaken―to especially good use here . . . He prescribes nothing less than a redesign of our workplaces, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and communities . . . Required reading for a generation that's 'going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.'" ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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 From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat . He was born in Minneapolis in 1953, and grew up in the middle-class Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies, attended St. Antony's College, Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship, and received an M.Phil. degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. After three years with United Press International, he joined The New York Times , where he has worked ever since as a reporter, correspondent, bureau chief, and columnist. At the Times , he has won three Pulitzer Prizes: in 1983 for international reporting (from Lebanon), in 1988 for international reporting (from Israel), and in 2002 for his columns after the September 11th attacks. Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem , won the National Book Award in 1989. His second book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999), won the Overseas Press Club Award for best book on foreign policy in 2000. In 2002 FSG published a collection of his Pulitzer Prize-winning columns, along with a diary he kept after 9/11, as Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 . His fourth book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2005) became a #1 New York Times bestseller and received the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in November 2005. A revised and expanded edition was published in hardcover in 2006 and in 2007. The World Is Flat has sold more than 4 million copies in thirty-seven languages. In 2008 he brought out Hot, Flat, and Crowded , which was published in a revised edition a year later. His sixth book, That Used to Be Us: How American Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back , co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was published in 2011. Thomas L. Friedman lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01F1Z0QHA
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 22, 2016)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 22, 2016
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 6130 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 497 pages
• #27 in Capitalism
• #65 in Globalization (Kindle Store)
• #177 in Economic Conditions (Kindle Store)

About the author

Thomas l. friedman.

Thomas L. Friedman has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work with The New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. Read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama, Hot, Flat, and Crowded was an international bestseller in hardcover. Friedman is also the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), and The World is Flat (2005). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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A New York Times Bestseller A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers We 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, 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 to reflect 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.

• Print length 496 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date 22 November 2016
• Dimensions 16.23 x 3.81 x 23.29 cm
• ISBN-10 9780374273538
• ISBN-13 978-0374273538
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One of The Wall Street Journal 's 10 Books to Read Now One of Kirkus Reviews 's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly 's Most Anticipated Books of the Year Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award "Thomas L. Friedman is a self-­confessed 'explanatory journalist'―whose goal is to be a 'translator from English to English.' And he is extremely good at it . . . it is hard to think of any other journalist who has explained as many complicated subjects to so many people . . . Now he has written his most ambitious book―part personal odyssey, part commonsense manifesto . . . As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat." ―John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review "[An] ambitious book . . . In a country torn by a divisive election, technological change and globalization, reconstructing social ties so that people feel respected and welcomed is more important than ever . . . Rather than build walls, [healthy communities] face their problems and solve them. In [Friedman's] telling, this is the way to make America great." ―Laura Vanderkam, The Wall Street Journal "Engaging . . . in some senses Thank You For Being Late is an extension of [Friedman's] previous works, woven in with wonderful personal stories (including admirably honest discussions about the nature of being a columnist). What gives Friedman’s book a new twist is his belief that upheaval in 2016 is actually far more dramatic than earlier phases . . . Friedman also argues that Americans need to discover their sense of 'community,' and uses his home town of Minneapolis to demonstrate this." ―Gillian Tett, Financial Times "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 "[A] humane and empathetic book." ―David Henkin, The Washington Post "[Friedman's] latest engrossingly descriptive analysis of epic trends and their consequences . . . Friedman offers tonic suggestions for fostering 'moral innovation' and a commitment to the common good in this detailed and clarion inquiry, which, like washing dirty windows, allows us to see far more clearly what we’ve been looking at all along . . . his latest must-read." ― Booklist (starred review) "The three-time Pulitzer winner puts his familiar methodology―extensive travel, thorough reporting, interviews with the high-placed movers and shakers, conversations with the lowly moved and shaken―to especially good use here . . . He prescribes nothing less than a redesign of our workplaces, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and communities . . . Required reading for a generation that's 'going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.'" ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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 From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat . He was born in Minneapolis in 1953, and grew up in the middle-class Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies, attended St. Antony's College, Oxford, on a Marshall Scholarship, and received an M.Phil. degree in modern Middle East studies from Oxford. After three years with United Press International, he joined The New York Times , where he has worked ever since as a reporter, correspondent, bureau chief, and columnist. At the Times , he has won three Pulitzer Prizes: in 1983 for international reporting (from Lebanon), in 1988 for international reporting (from Israel), and in 2002 for his columns after the September 11th attacks. Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem , won the National Book Award in 1989. His second book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999), won the Overseas Press Club Award for best book on foreign policy in 2000. In 2002 FSG published a collection of his Pulitzer Prize-winning columns, along with a diary he kept after 9/11, as Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 . His fourth book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2005) became a #1 New York Times bestseller and received the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in November 2005. A revised and expanded edition was published in hardcover in 2006 and in 2007. The World Is Flat has sold more than 4 million copies in thirty-seven languages. In 2008 he brought out Hot, Flat, and Crowded , which was published in a revised edition a year later. His sixth book, That Used to Be Us: How American Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back , co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was published in 2011. Thomas L. Friedman lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0374273537
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition (22 November 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780374273538
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374273538
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 748 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.23 x 3.81 x 23.29 cm
• Net Quantity ‏ : ‎ 741.00 Grams
• #466 in Economic Conditions (Books)
• #1,348 in International Relations & Globalization

About the author

Thomas l. friedman.

Thomas L. Friedman has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work with The New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. Read by everyone from small-business owners to President Obama, Hot, Flat, and Crowded was an international bestseller in hardcover. Friedman is also the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989), The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), and The World is Flat (2005). He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Customers find the book good, awesome, and informative. They say it's well-researched and eye-opening. Readers also mention the book touches on relevant topics.

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Customers find the book good and awesome.

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Customers find the book informative, well-researched, and eye-opening. They say it touches on relevant topics and is contemporary. Readers also appreciate the excellent writing and in-depth research of Thomas Friedman.

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"...A fabulous read; you can trust Friedman to create magic with his meticulous research , great insights and futuristic concepts." Read more

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"An education. I am humbled after reading this book. Fact based , agile, and ever challenging the reader's beliefs and values. This book is a diamond." Read more

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