Talks & Entertainment

We all sense it―something big is going on. 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: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, the three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and “Foreign Affairs” columnist for the New York Times 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.

Friedman asserts that 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.

Thank You for Being Late serves as a field manual for how to think about and live in this era of accelerations. It’s also an argument for “being late”―for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we’re passing through and to reflect on its possibilities and dangers.

In this blueprint for how to think about our times, 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. Book signing to follow.