Thank You for Being Late - by Thomas L Friedman (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

#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.

Review Quotes

"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