Customer Reviews

Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11

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Thomas Friedman breaks no new ground with this book. He doesn't have to. The bulk of "Longitudes & Attitudes" is a collection of his regular New York Times columns from December 2000 until July 2002. Friedman regulars will have read most or all of these columns, and even his occasional readers will be familiar with the handful of pieces that have gained fame for the clarity of their vision and their new insights into old problems. Friedman's message is simple. Anti-democratic Arab regimes conspire with radical Muslim clerics throughout the Middle East in an unholy alliance to maintain the illegitimate governments in power with the support of religious leaders spewing medieval backwardness and hatred. The U.S. props up many of these regimes in the name of an expedient short-term stability aimed at milking them of their oil reserves. Who suffers? Everyone. Arab societies are trapped in a backward-looking anti-modernist world of illiteracy, intolerance, repression of women, and censorship. A foreseeable by-product are hate-filled xenophobic young men who would rather kill themselves and thousands of innocents than search for creative solutions to this seemingly intractable impasse. Against this backdrop always looms the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which fuels the flames of anti-Western rhetoric while simultaneously distracting Arab societies from the pressing need to reform themselves. And this conflict can not be resolved until Israelis withdraw from their settlements in Palestinian areas and until Yasir Arafat is no longer a player.

Friedman sounds this drumbeat over and over, with anecdotes, insights, analysis, and ruminations. His language is as simple as his message and has won him three Pulitzer Prizes. He is an unabashed American patriot with excellent contacts throughout the region. He is not an academic, but someone who has a heart, passion, skill, and is gifted with the ability to make sense of chaos and to find threads of music in cacophony. Thomas Friedman is an excellent writer.

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!

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

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.

Longitudes & Attitudes: Exploring the World after September 11 by Thomas L. Friedman is worth reading, and probably even more so if you haven't followed his twice-weekly column in the Times for the past few years. The book is divided into three sections: columns before 9/11, columns after and a diary of Friedman's travels after September 11. It's interesting to read the columns all together, to feel the full force of Friedman's arguments at once, but I did think by the end of the diary, it was beginning to feel a little repetitive.

All the old gang of ideas from Friedman's theories are there: The globalization theme that walls are coming down, and as they do, those so far disenfranchised by global capitalism will work to defeat it, sometimes violently; that globalization itself is its own worst weakness by democratizing information, capital and technology even to those in societies in which there are no democratic hallmarks - a free press, equity for women and general civil rights - that the Arab world, particularly Saudi Arabia, is responsible for the lackluster future it offers its burgeoning younger generations and that this society's marriage to fundamentalist Islam as a justification for totalitarian regimes is a danger to everyone on the planet.

It's a good read and one that will probably change in resonance as we get further from 9/11/01 and find out how right or wrong Friedman's hypotheses are, or how correct his calls for specific actions may turn out to be.

If you only want to read one contemporary account of the aftermath of September 11, this is an excellent book. By including all of the editorials Friedman about the event and the people, cultures, and religions which were affected by the disaster, it allows him to show the changing current of thoughts and emotions around the world. Friedman of course writes very well and his articles are thought provoking, which I appreciate even though I don't always agree with him, but the bst parts of this book is he explores not only the American reaction to the terrorist attacks, but those in the Middle East and Europe. It provides a much broader picture of the events than I have found else where and adds a great deal to my knowledge of the current international situation. I liked this book a great deal and would highly recommend it to people interested in world affairs, history, religion, or just like good nonfiction.

This latest by Tom Friedman offers a more in-depth alternative to the electronic (T.V.) and mainstream print (newspaper) media. He compiled 2 years of his columns in chronological order. He also includes his diary revealing his insights and perceptions into the aftermath of the attacks in 2001. With "Longitudes and Attitudes," we can go over information he presents, investigate into these topics further, agree or refute with certain perspectives of his, then come to our own individualistic conclusions.

He included some very significant interviews from many influential people in the Middle East, in addition to traveling, note-taking, cultural observations, and discussions with every-day people. The opportunity to analyze information and engage in our own thought process is possible with this book and this is what's lacking from the mainstream press (which Friedman is apart of, being a columnist for the "New York Times.") Although a few perceive liberal bias from him, I perceive balance, albeit with some journalistic and personal eccentricity, which we all have within us.

When it comes to September 2001, and the Iraq situation 2002-3, the mainstream media have bombarded the American public with intellectually shallow sound-bites, histrionics, haute couture Iraq topics, irrelevant speculation, charades of patriotism, the perpetuation of myths, incorrect public statements, false reports, ivory tower "experts," and retired military pundits who co-habitate with a T.V. clicker and speculate on the many talk shows, "yelling programs," and "spin shows," ranging from left, middle, to right. With "Longitudes and attitudes" you can, on this rare occasion, think, rationalize, and decide for yourself

Friedman is a thinker and by reading this, an American can be provoked to think for themselves, instead of having the spin doctors from far left to right do that for them.

Friedman's classic book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" is worth taking a look at. It's relevant today.

This is a thought provoking, yet disturbing, work: concerning itself with the cause, effect and future implications surrounding 9/11.

Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and this book, Longitudes and Attitudes, is a compilation of his works written for this paper between Dec./00 and July /02.The subject matter is broken down into two time periods, before 9/11 and after. Also included is a diary he kept during his travels to Europe and the Middle East, also between Dec./00 and July 02.

The columns themselves, can be divided into three general categories 1.) The Palestine/ Israel conflict 2.) Arab/Muslim concerns, especially with regards to government and education, and 3.) American foreign affairs policies (management and mismanagement). Whether you agree or not with Mr. Friedman's thoughts is a personal matter, but the issues he raises are certainly not only thought provoking (because they have such far reaching, world wide implications) but yet, at the same time, disturbing, because the problems seem to be increasing exponentially (instead of receding) and any attempt at a solution seems to be light years away. I don't think I've read anyone who has been able to describe and dissect the events that lead up to and have occurred since 9/11 as well as Mr. Friedman. The author also puts forward some of his own ideas as to some potential solutions (or a least places to start) for some of these most troubling of issues.

The only quibble I would have with regards to this book is that some of the material is repetitious. This is not so apparent if you read his column in the newspaper on a twice-weekly basis but becomes more obvious when you read a collection of these vignettes in a sitting.

Finally, I must compliment Mr. Friedman's abilities as a writer: I was concerned when I considered purchasing this book, knowing it was basically a collection of his columns, that the articles would be hindered by the "pressure of deadline" and the "pressure of length". Writing columns twice a week must be a tremendous burden; to do this week after week must be extremely difficult on those occasions when you are fatigued, come up "dry" or have an episode of writer's block. Similarly writing a column 740 words long must also be hard: sometimes having to condense a long article and other times adding "fill" to make up the required length. However, I had little reason for concern, as most compositions seem to flow naturally and fit perfectly into an easy reading cadence that seemed of appropriate length.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the events surrounding 9/11, Middle East politics or U.S. foreign affair in this area of the world.

I've long suspected that what most people like about Tom Friedman is his ability to express ideas and feelings they themselves have been struggling to articulate. He boasts of this skill in the introduction to Longitudes and Attitudes (xi). I've also suspected that people often find themselves in agreement with Friedman because he changes his mind so often that within a few pages he's managed to take every possible side of any given question.

In his September 13, 2001 entry Friedman repeats the oft-heard critique that the Arab world is woefully lacking in democratically-elected governments, and is instead populated by leaders who tolerate no dissent. He is, of course, correct in this observation. But his very next entry (Sept. 14) paints the Muslim world as fighting a "civil war" in which "we need to strengthen the good guys" in Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan. Who are these good guys he wants to strengthen, how, and to what end? Does Friedman want Arab democracy or not? The answer seems to come in his next entry (Sept. 18), in which he calls Jordan's King `Abd'allah "one of America's real friends," and adds that "Jordan is a country with a decent government... [and] is becoming a good Arab model for how to do things right." It appears that Friedman's desire for democratically-elected Arab governments has lasted all of four days. He seems now to prefer a near-bankrupt hereditary monarchy that has thrice squashed its own parliament when they proved too "democratic" (i.e., anti-Israel) for the king's foreign-policy requirements. Ah, but by June 19, 2002, he's changed his mind yet again, and praises the Iranian experiment in democracy, `Axis of Evil' notwithstanding.

What are the main reasons that Jordan wins his praise? Friedman points out that Amman is "drawing US investors," and is "the first Arab country to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States..." He is equally garish in his suggestion (Oct. 16, 2001) that the Saudi Prince al-Walid "do something useful with [his] $10 million... endow American Studies departments in all Saudi universities." In his next essay he rattles off a list of what "we need" to make America safer: Muslim allies, cooperative Arab leaders, cooperative Muslim spiritual leaders, and "to begin taking seriously the task of improving governance in these failing states."His November 13 essay on the Pakistani "street" concludes with a plea for Americans to "return armed with modern books and schools..." to create, "a generation as hospitable to our policies as to our burgers."

This, then, is Friedman's one recurring and (mostly) consistent mantra: the United States is not doing enough to make the Muslim world more useful to and compliant with American interests.

It is, however, marvelously Friedmanesque that he can hold this world-view and simultaneously criticize the Bush administration for its America-First unilateralism. That, in turn is no more of a contradiction than Friedman's opposition to the erosion of personal liberties in the fight against terrorism, while simultaneously mocking Silicon Valley executives for being paranoid about the government's desire for the "Clipper Chip" that would give "the government a back-door key to all US encrypted data." (May 26, 2002).

If reviewing a book of newspaper editorials is difficult, then offering a critique of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author is nothing short of futile. Friedman's book was a best-seller from the moment it was unloaded from the delivery trucks. I cannot offer any insight into whether it makes for satisfying reading for those with a modicum of knowledge about the Middle East. It is not, however, a scholarly work, nor of value to scholars, other than perhaps as a time capsule of an articulate and well-traveled man's day-by-day impressions in the year following September 11th.

Seeking advice on preparation for the Foreign Service Exam, someone told me, "Read the New York Times everyday, beginning when you are six years old." Friedman's book will not quite suffice as decades of CliffsNotes. But it does offer accessible, engaging reading on America in the World, particularly regarding the Middle East.

Strengths as an undergraduate text include its accessibility to marginally-informed students combined with challenging insights for more sophisticated readers. The quality of the writing by this Pulitzer Prize winner is widely acknowledged. Of particular interest is that the number of key themes encourages students to move beyond simple linear explanations and to integrate developments from various fields. These themes include Huntington's clash of civilizations, the love-America-hate-the-U.S. dichotomy, the importance of new technology in shaping global politics, Islam's struggle with modernity, and the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian question. And since Friedman's columns continue in the New York Times twice a week, "updated editions" of the book appear throughout the semester.

Caveats include that the book is not designed as a classroom text. There is repetitiveness rooted in the columns' original stand-alone quality. It is not designed to - and does not - serve as an introductory text to the Middle East or American foreign policy. But as a thoughtful reflection by someone passionate and knowledgeable about globalization and the Middle East, my students considered it a fun and useful read.