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    Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
    Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
    Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
    Ebook692 pages14 hours

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

    By Thomas L. Friedman

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    #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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 22, 2016
    ISBN9780374715144
    Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
    Author

    Thomas L. Friedman

    Thomas L. Friedman was UPI's Beirut correspondent from 1979 to 1981. In 1982, he became the New York Times Beirut bureau chief, winning a 1983 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In 1984, he moved to Jerusalem as the Times bureau chief, and in 1988 won a second Pulitzer Prize for reporting. He is also the author of the national bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on this book. He lives in Washington with his family.

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    Reviews for Thank You for Being Late

    3.5/5

    107 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Overall, I enjoyed Thank You for Being Late (TYFBL) and appreciated the author's research and insights. However, given that the book was published prior to the inauguration of the current president, the narrative was significantly dated -- a bit of a time capsule -- because it didn't speak to the host of more recently-emerged social and public policy challenges faced by our nation and its allies. I admired the author's ability to wrap his hands and head around some extremely gnarly technology issues and to elucidate them in comprehensible layman's terms. Overall, Friedman's prose was OK, if inelegant -- but you're not reading a book like this for well-turned sentences. Originally, I was afraid that boiling down the primary forces of the current acceleration of change to an alliterative trio (Mother Earth, Market, Moore's Law) was overly precious and wouldn't work...but I warmed to the framing as the book proceeded. At other times, however, Friedman seemed overly cutesy, e.g. labeling the cloud as "the supernova."I enjoyed the final few sections of TYFBL most of all, because they described a set of conditions at the local level in which social progress was not just possible but also tangible. I felt inspired by Friedman's examples, and am motivated to figure out how I might plug into contributing to the kind of social change he describes. Especially at this moment in our nation's history, heaven knows we all need to help.
    • 4/5
      Friedman describes the rapid expansion of technology and its impact on the economy and environment locally and worldwide. He uses personal stories to support how the changes can both level the playing field and leave others behind. At times, he wanders off topic in an attempt to booster proposed action plans. While the author mentions some source materials, there are no footnotes or endnotes. My favorite sentence in the book is regarding Minnesota nice mad me giving a point for humor. Describing how she felt when a driver cut her off on the freeway, Rene told her husband, “Jay, I was so mad. I almost honked.”
    • 5/5
      Thomas Friedman's books should be must reading for two groups: those in public office, and those who are not in public office.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book—Friedman seems to capture my attention. However, it feels like it is all ready dated. After having read the “sample” I didn’t feel ready to pay to read the second half. I may take a trip to my public library...
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed Tom Friedman's articles in the New York Times and his observations and comments in various other media including the new shows. It took me a while to read the book ( 460 pages) but it was well worth my time and effort. What this book was about mostly was "change." Changes in technology, culture, climate change, politics and globalization have been overwhelming, particularly in the last 10 years. Friedman uses 2007 as a jumping off point for his review and observations regarding change. 2007 was the release of the iPhone and various other technology changes occurred during that year.

      I particularly enjoyed Friedman's thoughts on careers and jobs. Young people must prove themselves to be very adaptable to change, market themselves effectively and pursue lifelong learning. A college or high school degree will not get you very far in today's business world or in the future.

      In some ways I am envious. I have retired so I have no way of testing how well I would or will do in this type of accelerated change. This is a great book for young business oriented people and college graduates to read.

      Regrettably I think that the election of 2016 proves that too many Americans are not adapting to change or the realities affecting their careers and life.
    • 4/5
      The book caught my eye because of the word “optimist” in the subtitle—I do like books that give me a sense of possibility. He spends the first half of the book talking about acceleration—of technology, of globalization, of climate change—beyond what we have experienced before and not slowing. And there was really nothing optimistic there; convincing, worrisome, but not optimistic. His metaphor of living in the eye of the storm—moving, but in balance and in control-- was helpful and calming. But the best chapter by far is “Mother Nature as Political Mentor”—where he outlines his out-of-the-box thinking giving you the sense that things really could change. Big picture, beyond political party ideology, and broad ranging ideas for change—these are the sorts of ideas that we all should be coming up with and then doing the hard work to see which of them might actually be possible.
    • 4/5
      Very good! I really enjoyed his analysis of this fast-paced, stress filled world we live in. His analysis of why this is I found compelling. For all that feel the world is going "to hell in a hand-basket", this book offers optimism as well as an informed analysis as to why. I found this to be a great read.
    • 3/5
      Interesting examples but.this book could probably been successful as a long magazine article. It was a bit repetitive in part! Overall a faily good effort andoli would always read his stuff!
    • 3/5
      I couldn't finish the book. It is basically about the history of advances in technology. I found the book annoying. Things like the fact that the author calls "The Cloud" the cloud/supernova.
    • 2/5
      Really disappointing. Much inferior to The World is Flat.
      I was expecting his usual leftist and globalist diatribes, but do we need a book with a McKinsey consultant telling us that people are using Facebook?
    • 4/5
      I like Thomas Friedman; I have a lot of respect for him. But I have a real problem with Friedman books. "Thank You for Being Late" is my third, at least, and I've had the same issue time and again. But before getting into that, let me recap this book broadly along with my reactions to some of its piece parts. It'll help make my point a bit clearer, and perhaps some of you will recall a similar experience.The early chapters deal with all the changes, mostly technological, that have occurred in recent years, with an emphasis on the last decade or two. There are a lot of examples dealing with computer related advances in hardware, software, and networks, mostly from the early days of personal computers to the present. He gives a lot of emphasis to 2007 because of the huge infrastructure and capacities that had recently erupted, with a lot of focus on big name companies of today which had origins that year. It's an incredible and very exciting history, one that I have encouraged my techie grandson to read, and one that I will probably re-read over the years.Friedman also describes three large forces at work in the dawn of our new century - Technology, Globalization, and Mother Nature - that will be shaping our workplace, politics, ethics, geopolitics and community, i.e. environment. And opportunities. He also covers work place skills, and how they are changing, and how young people can best be prepared to deal with the future. There is also the very big issue of the pace of change. It seems so many things these days are obsolete before we get to take them out of the box. (Two months after I bought my iPhone 7 all I have been hearing is how great 8 will be.) Throughout the book, Friedman carefully builds links to help the reader understand we are coming from, where we are, and where we seem to be headed. Until the last chapters.Then he does a nostalgia/community thing that for me derailed before pulling into the station. I am about the same age as Friedman, I too look back at my early Midwest days with a lot of good memories and strong emotions. I know that I often look at the past with rose tinted glasses. I suspect he has done the same. For example, I feel that (sadly) many of his concerns regarding the assimilation of new immigrants are out of touch in the current environment. And I never saw the fit with the preceding pages. Whatever, these last ninety-five pages just didn't work for me. So 5 stars for the first 350 or so and 1 star for the last 95. Oddly enough I recall loving only the first half of "From Beirut...." and most but not all of "The World is Flat.....". For some reason, he just doesn't seem to bring it home for me; maybe next time....

    Book preview

    Thank You for Being Late - Thomas L. Friedman

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