Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist--the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of five 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, will be published in September 2011. Thomas L. Friedman lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family.
Look around: this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist claims that the most significant events of the 21st century are happening now. The globe is "flattening," with technology binding more and more countries together. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Before 9/11, New York Times columnist Friedman was best known as the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the major popular accounts of globalization and its discontents. Having devoted most of the last four years of his column to the latter as embodied by the Middle East, Friedman picks up where he left off, saving al-Qaeda et al. for the close. For Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning "flat world" is a jungle pitting "lions" and "gazelles," where "economic stability is not going to be a feature" and "the weak will fall farther behind." Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. As anyone who reads his column knows, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to "create value through leadership" and "sell personality." This is all familiar stuff by now, but the last 100 pages on the economic and political roots of global Islamism are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman's winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes. (Apr. 5) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Adult/High School-This brilliantly paced, articulate, and accessible explanation of today's world is an ideal title for tech-savvy teens. Friedman's thesis is that connectedness by computer is leveling the playing field, giving individuals the ability to collaborate and compete in real time on a global scale. While the author is optimistic about the future, seeing progress in every field from architecture to zoology, he is aware that terrorists are also using computers to attack the very trends that make progress plausible and reasonable. This is a smart and essential read for those who will be expected to live and work in this new global environment.-Alan Gropman, National Defense University, Washington, DC Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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