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

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Ralph Alswang (author photograph). [10], 486 pages. Autographed sticker on front of DJ. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Illustrations. Acknowledgments. Index. Also includes Part 1: Reflecting; Part 2: Accelerating; Part 3: Innovating; and Part 4: Anchoring. Also includes Acknowledgments and Index. Thomas Loren Friedman (born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for The New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues. In this work, Friedman begins by sharing a conversation with a fellow blogger, who also happened to be working as a parking attendant. The unlikely pair ended up spending time together as Friedman helped the blogger refine his process. This led to his own deeper reflection on defining his conceptual framework that underpinned his writing. He took a year's sabbatical to research and produce this book encapsulating what he discovered. Reviews
John Micklethwait CBE, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, who reviewed Thank you for Being Late for The New York Times, wrote that this is Friedman's "most ambitious book — part personal odyssey, part common-sense manifesto". Friedman is a "self-confessed 'explanatory journalist' — whose goal is to be a 'translator from English to English' and this book is "a master class in explaining." This book is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to write and think about this era of accelerations. It is also an argument for "being late"--for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we are passing though 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. This is Friedman's most ambitious book--and an essential guide to the present and the future. Derived from a Kirkus review: 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 cites 2007 as the year we reached a technological inflection point. Combined with increasingly fast-paced globalization and the subsequent speedy shocks to our planet's natural system, we've entered an "age of accelerations" that promises to transform "almost every aspect of modern life." The 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. Required reading for a generation that's "going to be asked to dance in a hurricane.".