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What our customer's say!

"DICTATOR FOR A DAY ", While I agree with some of the renewable energy issue, as an American, I have little trust of an individual that sees taking our personal liberties away for a day, see China for a Day chapter. This in an effort to "protect us" from ourselves. The last thing I need is the government, who can't even balance their own check book, tell me how to live or take my freedoms away for a day so they can push some agenda. While I'm not comparing the two, facisim starts with such beliefs. I'd read this book with a helpful spoon full of concern. Interesting book but not worth the read.

"Hot, Flat and Crowded", I can't get as excited about global warming as Friedman has. First half of book paints worse-case scenarios in my opinion and is very tiresome reading - very repetetive and overdone with metaphors. Solutions in latter half of book are interesting, but are they all possible or necessary? Am usually a big fan of Friedman's recent op-eds, so a bit disappointed with the book.

"30% recycled content", Haven't read more than the synopsis yet, but are we to believe Friedman's call for a "green revolution" when it's published on 70% new paper, and only 30% recycled material?

That's a revolution?

When Friedman apologizes for his part in cheerleading for the waste of over a trillion dollars in Iraq, money which would be enough to make all the renewable fuel we would ever need, then he can say he's serious.

Sorry, Tom, some of your ideas are good, but they're coming from someone living in a credibility canyon. You showed us all what an ugly person you were when you endorsed the use of false pretense to attack a country which never threatened us:

"The ''real reason'' for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough."

[.................]

"Deeply Intriguing Ideas Buried by Breezy Style", Thomas Friedman's writing is new to me, and from the glowing reviews of this book I expected a little bit more. I'm a climate change professional and one of those "revolutionary bureaucrats" that he praises in his book for doing the real work in protecting human health and the environment (thank you, Mr. Friedman), and I agree with 95 percent of his ideas and solutions - especially placing the true price of dirty fuel back onto the consumer (only then will people choose clean energy over dirty fuels). I give the book three stars mostly because it feels like a review of things I've already read, and it could have been written a little better. However, the book earns four stars if it's one of your first three books on the impacts of global warming; and if this is your first serious book on global warming I'd give it a top five-star rating.

Although the book puts together important ideas, my primary disappointment with the book is that it reads like one especially long newspaper article, very light and breezy, and almost glib in tone at times. A much better book if you want more on climate change and its impacts upon human societies is "Hell and High Water - Global Warming, the Solution and the Politics - and What We Should Do" by Joseph Romm.

I've also read thousand-page compendiums on climate change, so to me, the science of global warming is incontrovertible. That part of his book didn't require convincing for me. I'm not an economist, so I could not evaluate his economical solutions to the degree I'd like, although I do agree that externalities should be included back into the price of everything, especially chemicals, fuels, or processes that are harmful to the environment. One of my main disagreements I have with Mr. Friedman is that growth in the third world is necessary or good. Even the author admits that the world can't sustain any more Americas.

At least Mr. Friedman is exactly spot on about how the "green revolution" is more of a "green party", where everybody gets to feel good without actually accomplishing anything. If we want to keep the world livable for us humans, I'm certain that big changes, painful changes will have to take place.

I am also fairly certain that voluntary behavior change will not be enough to limit carbon dioxide emissions into the air. Which do you think is easier?
1): Convince the average motorist that high-mileage hybrid vehicles are the best vehicle to buy (even though they cost more upfront); or
2): Mandate higher minimum fuel efficiency standards that all vehicles must meet.

Personally, I know fuel efficiency standards work, because they worked in the 1970s very well. As for voluntary behavior, what is the market penetration of hybrid vehicles? A lot less than 5 percent. I'm an environmentalist, but I will not buy a hybrid until the price of gas becomes very, very, expensive.

Stay tuned, I think climate change is the most important story of our times. In a few years, the economic downturn (in late 2008) will be in the past, gasoline will be at $7 to $8 per gallon, and we will still be trying to keep the planet from turning into a desert - only the later we start to make meaningful change, the more difficult it becomes.


"Interest and Thoughtful as usual but a tad over long", Thomas Friedman is one of the most insightful and thought provoking writers of the current era. Hot, Flat and Crowded does what each of Friedman's works do, they make you think and they provoke a discussion on the topic that he brings up. The nice thing about Friedman is that he isn't some gloom and doom prophet but more a cheerleader of change. I think that Friedman's greatest ability is that he gets people to discuss change without polarizing like so many other writers.

If there is one downside to any of his writing, it's that he can be too gushy, like someone with a new toy. While it's nice to see enthusiasm you cant help but wonder if that drives his thought process over detachment.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"A manifesto for our times", What a timely book! Following an election in which the future of the planet was hotly debated, the market is ripe for this accessible yet information-packed treatise on the perilous state of the environment, how we got here and how we must proceed if we are to avoid catastrophe.

Thomas L. Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs journalist for the New York Times, is known for his ability to synthesize information from diverse sources. He uses the first half of the book to thoroughly convince us that we do indeed have a problem, and a very grave one. In his past books, Friedman has argued that globalization is "flattening" the world, making competition between countries more possible and more fair. China and India's booming economies are giving millions more people opportunities to move up to the middle class. These millions feel they deserve a better life --- better being defined as more comfortable, consuming more resources like their American brothers and sisters.

The problem is that we are quickly running out of the cheap, dirty fuel that allowed the first world countries to develop. But increasing carbon dioxide emissions from dirty fuels like oil and coal are contributing to what Friedman terms "global weirding." Add to this mix burgeoning population growth, and you get a world that is hot, flat and crowded. Friedman provides plenty of scientific support to back up his claims that life as we know it (cheap gas, cheap energy, a human-friendly climate) is endangered, one way or another. As he puts it, "if we don't make the hard choices, nature will make them for us."

The second half of the book is a guided tour through what some of those "hard choices" may be. "Green" must be more than a fad, he argues, and every magazine article that touts "easy" ways to save the planet does a disservice by trivializing what may in fact be deadly serious. Yet Friedman believes we are up to the task and that America must lead the way in both innovation and conservation. He describes a new Energy-Climate era in which information technology meets energy technology. In his vision, our washer, dryer and refrigerator become smart appliances that communicate with a revolutionized energy grid to buy electrons when they are cheapest. No matter whether our cars are plugged in at home or in a parking lot, they can both buy and sell electricity, depending on whether they need it or have it.

But to get to this sustainable utopia, our government and culture need to make investments now. We have to engineer our economy so that alternative energy innovations are made because industry knows they will be competitive. If that means keeping gasoline prices above $4/gallon in order to do so, so be it. If we doubt that will work, we need only look to Europe, where gas prices are astronomical and small, energy-efficient cars are the norm.

America must lead, Friedman argues, or we'll be forced to play catch-up with China and India. He introduces us to some American companies and universities already innovating toward a clean, sustainable future and examines what other countries are doing as well. We need a course correction, and with HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED, Friedman has provided a manifesto for our times.

--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol

"Long, Repetitive and Wordy", There should be a law that mandates warning labels on sequels. In my experience, they cost more but just do not measure up to the original. It was true for Brokaw's "Boom," and Nesbitt's "Mind Set," and so it is with Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded."

Admittedly, Friedman's "The World Is Flat" was a masterpiece - the written equivalent of watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for the first time. And, like the original, Friedman formulaically weaves in countless stories and interviews from his extensive global travels. However, unlike "The World is Flat," which dealt with so many diverse things that had changed/were changing the world, this is a mono treatise on Code Green.

Page after painstaking page, chapter after repetitive chapter about going green. OK - got it! Green is good, but even Al Gore must have zoned out after a while.

Still, there is a lot in "Hot, Flat and Crowded" that helps you understand the magnitude of the environmental issues and the urgency to act now. But yet, you still have to wonder why none of these issues emerged/were debated - or even seriously presented - in any depth during the past election. There was a lot of chanting about "Drill baby drill," but not nearly enough specific thought or planned action - even lay-level discussion about the competitive advantage surrounding environmental opportunities, or even the urgency for the United States to lead in this area.

So, how influential is "Hot, Flat and Crowded", especially when compared to its predecessor? This has to be seen as a disappointment, but says far more about the simplistic nature of today's red and blue state political scene than the author.

Mr. Friedman is smart and talented. However, despite his experience and considerable gifts, my sense is that a only small percentage of very determined readers will ever slog their way through to the end of the book, which is a pity. I wish he had used his skills to produce in under 200 pages what took over 400 pages to too ponderously propound.

"Why does Friedman ignore population?", This book has many good ideas for making America stronger by making us a leader in renewal energy technologies. But why does Friedman ignore the third part of his title: crowded? He has no suggestions for curbing pupulation growth, which is the cause of the "hot" part of the title. If, as Ted Tunner so succinctly puts it, "We're too many people -- that's why we have global warming. . . . Too many people are using too much stuff," then why doesn't Friedman address this problem with as much space and energy as he does the "hot" and "flat" parts? Why has it become politically incorrect for liberals to talk about population control? We talked about it ten years ago, when organizations like Zero Population Growth were popular. Why not now? It isn't enough to say that we must have a new energy economy to accommodate our overpopulation. We need to address the overpopulation itself with meaningful technologies and education to reverse it.

"Cool Head for a Hot, Flat Crowded World", Friedman is a talented writer and astute world observer. He manages to see the larger trends and patterns in the world and brings them together in a way that sheds light on our future.

In his latest book, he takes off from his last book, 'The World is Flat' talking about the trends of globabilization and technology (FLAT), and extends it to include the current situation with the middle class population boom (CROWDED) and their thirst for energy and it's causal link to climate change (HOT) and petropolitics. Unlike other green revolutionaries, Friedman is well versed in free-markets and has a strong belief in innovation. He is the first of the 'green' crowd, I have read, to explain you can't just 'save' your way out of the crisis and lays out ideas for innovating solutions that make 'clean electrons', 'conserve' the planet, develop a smart grid and find new energy sources.

The challenge is large and needs a 'real' green revolution as opposed to the ra-ra 'green' party platitudes. The energy crisis and climate change are complex interdependent issues that are at the convergence of global politics, religion, commerce, poverty, science and technology. We need more writers like Friedman that can objectively see the entire complex web and articulate them in a way that everyone can understand. This is not your typical 'reactionary', watered-down book on climate change and energy. Instead we get an even-handed, cool-headed and intelligent explanation that doesn't gloss over the complexities.

Don't get me wrong, this is a complex issue and no one person can understand all it's interrelated disciplines, but I admire Friedman for not shying away from challenging subjects.

Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube

"Underthought, Overexcited and Silly: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How Friedman Comes up With a Bad Plan to do it", There is always a conflict in Thomas Friedman. He showed this conflict on The Daily Show Tuesday where he could jump from laughing or pretend laughing at Stewart directly into serious faced journalist in seconds, no in between mode. On one side there is Thomas Friedman, seen as the columnist for the New York Times; and, then there is Thomas Friedman the clueless guy who jumps headfirst into pools of ideas when he knows neither the temperature nor the depth of the pool.

Friedman's books always lead to the latter. It's like he's a turkey and just sees the next shiny thing. His 2005 book, the World is Flat, opened with something like, "while we were all paying attention to terrorism globalization continued right under our noses." He appeared to miss the entire debate on "outsourcing and off shoring" of American jobs. John Kerry made a point in the 2004 election of talking about "Benedict Arnold CEOs." Yet, a major contributor to the paper of record didn't hear about that.

So, in 2008, the shiny thing that has distracted his attention is energy and climate. You might not realize this but there is something of a problem with Global Warming and clean energy. The political, intellectual and popular culture has been "greening" for years, but today Friedman has realized there may be a problem with the way we do business.

The first issue Friedman points to is "too many Americans" - meaning that there are too many countries now seeking to copy the American standard of living with its consumerism and use of energy. (Friedman cleverly calls them "carbon copies.") Hmmm . . . is this not the "golden straightjacket" of neo-liberalism Friedman told everybody to put on in the Lexus and the Olive Tree? So maybe we should think about what we're doing before blindly putting on the golden straightjacket?

The second issue is that the US is giving too much money to petroldictators. For some reason the price of oil has skyrocketed since 2002. Most of this money goes to multi-national corporations who run an oligopoly in the oil industry and dictators who run oil-rich countries. Why would this price of shot up, do you think? It couldn't have anything to do with the war that Thomas Friedman and others on the Center-Left press supported, could it? Hmmm.

Friedman envisions a new world. Chapter 10 is set in the year 20 ECE (Energy-Climate Era). In it he shows us how our world will be like with energy saving products that are "smart machines" determining how much power to use at one time and how much to use at a little. Add flying cars to his scenario and you get Bruce Willis' apartment in the Fifth Element.

But don't worry, Thomas Friedman has a plan to change the way we produce energy and create his utopian Fifth Element apartment that will a) give us the cheap energy we need, b) be clean and c) help America get on the right track. And fortunately it's as well thought out as his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, his answer to Iraqis who don't want American troops there ("Suck. On. This." he told Charlie Rose should be our response in 2003), and his Triple Convergence theory of leveling the playing field for all actors.

His energy plan is "revolutionary." It basically boils down to tax-incentives and fiscal spending. Why hasn't anybody else thought of something so simple? Give tax-breaks to solar and wind companies and then use government spending to promote research and development. Great, Tom, that's as revolutionary as ice.

But, what is really revolutionary is Friedman's proposed method of achieving these goals. While I'm all for changes in the way we produce energy, his means do not balance with the ends. Friedman feels that the leadership to produce these changes should be done in a dictatorial mode. It's always those sniping interests who get in the way of achieving green energy goals. Yeah, get rid of the democratic process, Tom, then we won't make any bad decisions.

This will hopefully be Friedman's last work of strained clever self-indulgence. But, I'm sure he'll see a shiny thing in one year and determine we have to do something about it, or else...

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