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

One should have a lot of respect for Friedman considering the undertaking that it was to properly write this book. Thank You for Being Late tackles the topic that so many are writing about today — broadly, he seeks to provide the reader with an engaging look under the hood of why our world is changing, and why this rate of change is faster and different than that of previous generations. The project that this work represents is ambitious: Friedman touches on quite the breadth of topics: climate change, middle eastern policy and geopolitics, business trends, and much much more.

But he executes this mission well. Yes, there are some weaker elements of the book; I thought Friedman’s over-reliance on content derived from his talks with field-specific leaders led to some argumentation that was less Friedman’s and more a review of the respective agendas of the interviewees. Yet in most other areas, Friedman displays a remarkable ability to weave the insights of others into a legitimately proprietary argument that didn’t fall victim to the platitudes of many other authors when taking on a topic this broad in nature. The book was a pleasure to read, and I would absolutely recommend it.