Product Description

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times columnist and bestselling author of From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree comes this smart, penetrating, brilliantly informed book that is indispensable for understanding today’s radically new world and America’s complex place in it.

Thomas L. Freidman received his third Pulitzer Prize in 2002 “for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.” In Longitudes and Attitudes he gives us all of the columns he has published about the most momentous news story of our time, as well as a diary of his private experiences and reflections during his post–September 11 travels. Updated for this new paperback edition, with over two years’ worth of Friedman’s columns and an expanded version of his diary, Longitudes and Attitudes is a broadly influential work from our most trusted observer of the international scene.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37701 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-12
• Released on: 2003-08-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 399 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400031252
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
"History just took a right turn into a blind alley," comments the New York Times columnist in his latest book, "and something very dear has just been taken away from us." Tackling this observation from many different angles, this lucid book, consisting of Friedman's exceptionally frank and convincing columns and an insightful post-September 11 diary, prods at the questions surrounding that day and offers an invaluable reporter's perspective on the world from outside U.S. borders. The columns, which are the bulk of the book, represent a comprehensive album of the past two years ranging from the usefulness of building a missile shield to analyzing the structure of Arab societies yet they rarely stray from the central theme of promoting thoughtful and measured consideration of the U.S.' role in the world. However, the previously unpublished diary offers the most insight to the state of the world after September 11. Stranded in Israel during the attacks, Friedman ended up traveling throughout the Middle East, discovering how the terrorist attacks affected the region and uncovering many of the roots of anti-American sentiment, which he aptly describes alongside his reflections on watching his daughter's multicultural middle-school chorus sing "God Bless America." Unapologetically pro-American, Friedman's deliberation on what changed on September 11 outside of the U.S. ultimately centers on the strength of American society and our place in the world.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, Friedman gathers pieces for what he calls a "word album" of recent events.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This is a repackaging of Friedman's New York Times columns from September 2001 through June 2002, with a lengthy postscript describing Friedman's travels and interviews throughout this period. The one article in this batch likely to draw the most attention is his February 17, 2002, column in which the heir to the Saudi Arabian throne proposed a land-for-peace resolution, premised on Israel's 1967 borders. Whatever its merits--and it predictably foundered in the real world's storm of Islamic terrorists and certain governments vowing the utter destruction of Israel and Jews--Friedman learned significant things in conversation with the Saudi ruler, educated Saudis, and others in the Muslim world. He recounts their doubts that the September 11 terrorists were Saudi grown, their proclivity for bizarre conspiracy-thinking (anti-Semitic, of course) to explain or even justify the atrocity, and numberless complaints about America. With these disquieting attitudes discussed from the lectern, Friedman's 16-city promotional tour will undoubtedly be an animated and heated one. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Smart Collection for keepsake
I hadn't read any of Mr. Friedmans columns as they came out, after reading this I will be sure to make it a habit. This collection is something you may want as a keepsake for this era. This is not just 911, this is momentous world events and directional changes world wide for and in part concerning this new world we live in due to the September events. When these commentaries are assembled here in book form, you can clearly see a new direction we are headed by world actions, thus the title is born, Longitudes and Attitudes. This can be frightening to some, real world sentiment is explored. Our direction has been permanately changed, I am convinced of that after reading the book, but was not beforehand, I was one to think, "This will vanish". Very informative and causes real awareness. I wish to recommend a book that carries on from here and did predict the terrorism to include real world attitude, SB: 1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox

Read Tom Friedman, then read him all over again!
This is a superb collection of Tom Friedman's New York Times columns, plus personal commentaries on the circumstances behind those columns since 9/11. What an extraordinarily insightful book. I couldn't put it down, even though I'd read virtually all of Friedman's columns when they first appeared in The Times. His prose is wonderfully lucid and colloquial; it helps us understand the increasingly bewildering world around us--and within us. Friedman shares his interesting and intriguing experiences with his readers, and we are all wiser and humbler for it. Read Tom Friedman, then read him all over again!

Likely to stand as the great work on post-9/11
This is a collection of the Pulitzer Prize winning columns that Friedman wrote for the New York Times reflecting both on the factors that went into the events of September 11 and the world that it created. Like all of his work, these essays are marked by phenomenal insight and enormous intelligence. Most of these are available on Friedman's own website, but they are definitely worth owning in a bound volume. Over the years, I have found myself going back to his FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM over and over to understand the situation in the Middle East, and many will find the same kind of insight and understanding in this volume.

The way that the essays in this book differ from his other work in FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM and THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE is the intensely personal tone of many of the essays. Friedman often writes not from an objective point of view, but of how he is feeling, what he is thinking as he reflects on the fallen Towers, and of his own very specific reactions. In this way, these essays contain strong elements of memoir. A hundred years from now, they will be read as one very intelligent and perceptive journalist's reactions to one of the most traumatic disasters in American history. They are valuable as much for emotional reflections as for his objective analyses. The genius of these essays derives from the fact that he in no way attempts to minimize the tragedy and horror of 9/11, while in no way ignoring his own grief and perplexity or, and this is the tough part, losing his remarkable perspective as a journalist or resorting to trite generalizations to explain and analyze the greater global situation.

For fans of Friedman's columns and previous books, this will be an immensely satisfying book. For those unfamiliar with his other work, they will find here a work of great insight and emotional honesty on perhaps the great horror in American history since Vietnam and perhaps Pearl Harbor. I recommend this book in the strongest possible terms.