Thank You for Being Late

An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

By: Thomas L. Friedman

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

A field guide to the 21st century, written by one of its most celebrated observers

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.

©2016 Thomas L. Friedman (P)2016 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"[Narrator Oliver] Wyman keeps to a steady drive and an energetic projection that hold listeners' attention." ( AudioFile)

Wake up call

This is a good time to look in the mirror at your self and ask if you are keeping up educating your self and helping others around you to do the same as not to get left behind.

So Relevant!

This book is a witty, gracious, and informative look at our world today and the need for balance between the acceleration of technology coupled with our need for community. A great read for any aspiring Sociologist or Theologian seeking to remain grounded and informed in an ever-changing world.

Great book!

Highly recommended book for open minded people... very interesting analysis. I heard Friedman giving a lecture on this book and then I listened to it. Very impressive!

Required Reading

Puts everything that really matters in today's world into the proper perspective: technology, globalization, and climate change.

Lot of good ideas

Would you try another book from Thomas L. Friedman and/or Oliver Wyman?

yes

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Lots of good ideas and recommendations

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Dwelled too long in some areas

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No, narrative does not fit for a movie

55 plus years old... Wow!

I highly recommend this book! I have felt as if I was light years behind in understanding today's technology. I loved the concepts et al but I could not keep up and study it so what little I had learned became prehistoric in mere months. Having taken a few years off I thought I was going to always be lost. After listening to this book I can finally understand and I can see the (my) future.

Golden

A must-read for those engaged in current events. It could be used as a useful guide for the generation now entering adulthood. It becomes their role to amend and correct the excesses of the current generation.
Stick with the narrative at least through chapters 7 and. 9.

He was so close to 5 stars...

I am a "down-the-midwestern" Republican who did not vote for our current President.
I sent this book to my kids after chapter 7 because of the great job he did with synthesizing all of this dizzying change. Then he let his political ego hijack this great effort. For instance, Friedman must know that it is wrong to say that Republicans oppose immigration AND immigration reform...unless manipulation is part of his agenda. If it is not, he'd likely be the first. He was so close.

Many great ideas, but will they be heeded?

Any additional comments?

Very good but not exactly what I was expecting. The book is an astute mix of journalistic reporting (covering politics, world affairs, climate change, and the like), historical overview of technology, and cogent observations about what it takes to survive and thrive in a world undergoing accelerations (technology, climate, and markets/globalization). I found the mix to be enlightening and thought provoking. The author has looked far and wide and has a perspective that is not as Western-focused as some authors fall into. He clearly feels strongly about the topics and is willing to deliver up conclusions and advice that may be unpopular -- including a theoretical political party based on the strategies of Mother Nature, looking to maximize variety and sustainability, encouraging experimentation to find new solutions and willingness to let poorly performing ideas whither and die (which he ticks off in 18 strategies Mother Nature would endorse and which often include pairing strategies from both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle that are currently unpaired and thus ineffective). The book is timely and interesting. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of hope that its many good points and thoughtful ideas will be heeded.

Great read

Love Tom Friedman’s optimism. A great relief from today’s news. Gives us suggestions for action items.