Rating: 
Summary: could have been better.
Review: The book starts with the usual liberal diatribe that the 2000 elections were stolen. What this has to do with the geopolitical situation anywhere in the world but the USA is a mystery that goes unanswered. The second part of the book is more interesting as it details humorous incidents that happen during the author's travels but if I wanted a travel book I would have bought a travel book. Sorry but this one didn't do it for me. Your mileage may vary.
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Summary: nothing less then the best American analyst
Review: Saying that Tom Friedman is the smartest and most influential analyst of foreign policy writing for any American journal or newspaper is not hyperbole, but merely a fact. Politicians, academics, and those simply interested wait teice a week for his New York Times column to appear. What makes him so special? Friedman's examination of international relations is both lucid and nuanced without ever becoming didactic. Through the course of his career he has built an army of connections throughout the world and isn't afraid to say things how he sees them, no matter how uncomfortable it makes him or his readers. However, there is a deeper reason for his success that is not immediately obvious.Only Friedman's most devoted readers can recognize his real strength - his willingness to adjust, even renounce, strongly held views when circumstances change. With this collection, however, that flexibility and intellectual honest is evident. In a world where people stake out positions and then go in search of the facts. Friedman's candor is refreshing indeed. Moreover, no one will do a better job brining the reader up to speed on the complex world in which we live. For anyone interested, this book is a must. Even if you read all the columns in the NYT, the collection brings new insights that will give much food for thought.
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Summary: Clarity
Review: Thomas L. Friedman provides us with four basic gifts: (1) His long-term experience as an international journalist (He has spent time living in the Middle East and has written about this extensively in the New York Times); (2) his objectiveness; (3) ability to clarify conflicts and their origins; and (4) his insight into future trends and possible solutions to the current conflicts between the West, and parts of the Middle East...a true education!
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Summary: Friedman's new book
Review: I just finished this book today, September 11, 2002. I skipped over the republication of all of Friedman's columns since I read most of them before and they really aren't that provocative. The most interesting part was his diary of what he did after Sept. 11, 2001. He certainly has a lot of access in the Middle East and I give him credit for exposing the ridiculous idea that the Jews bombed the World Trade Center. At the end of the day, however, I don't think he has a lot of answers to the issues of the Middle East. That may not be his fault. I'm not sure anyone does.
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Summary: Global Observations Coupled with a Restaurant Tour
Review: This book contains columns Friedman published prior to the September 11th attack on Washington, DC and New York City as well as well as excerpts from his personal journal of experiences and reflections as he traveled from London, Israel, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. The book is "not meant to be," Friedman warns, "a comprehensive study of September 11 and all the factors that went into it. Rather, my hope is that it will constitute a 'word album' that captures and preserves the raw, unpolished emotional and analytical responses that illustrate how I, and others, felt as we tried to grapple with September 11 and its aftermath." The author deserves the three Pulitzer prizes he has won. He was early to recognize how the world was transitioning from a cold war system of division to a globalization of nations, markets and individuals stitched together by a single web: The World Wide Web. Yet as a columnist limited to fewer than 1500 words a week, I often feel deprived. As Friedman admits, his columns are only "the dots" of his encounters and travels. His journal provides the connection between the dots. Connected, widely-read and highly-respected, there is little doubt the author often influences the events on which he reports. In January, 2002, with the battle largely over, his journal relates how the author traveled to Afghanistan with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The day they were to leave, weather forced the cancellation of their UN relief flight. Friedman quickly used his satellite telephone to link Biden with Secretary of State Colin Powell who quickly arranged for Biden, his staff and Friedman to fly out on a US military C-130 transport jet. In an unconnected incident, the next month he emerged from an interview with the Saudi Royal Family with a peace proposal: recognition of Israel in return for withdrawal to May 1967 borders. As an indirect shareholder of The New York Times, I must admit I was troubled by two things. One, many of the meetings Friedman writes about occurred over dinner, a meal I am sure was ultimately paid for by The New York Times. Second, the author dust jacket picture reveals he is becoming a little flaccid in his face. If I can be so bold as to offer the author advice, it would be to skip the dessert tray at some of these dinners. When your waistline is as thin as the profit margins in our company's flagship product, your readers and fellow shareholders will rest assured we will have your and your cogent observations to read for years to come.
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Summary: Just the best!
Review: Friedman is one of the masters -- he says what he thinks in a way that makes it feel our own. This book contains some pre-9/11 and many post-9//11 columns from the New Yortk Times along with his previously unpublished diary post-9/11. Highly recommended! -- especially it you want to be moved in a powerful way by the words of a master.
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Summary: Longitudes and Attitudes
Review: Sharply pointed, finely delivered observations on world politics and the ongoing war on terrorism, by New York Times columnist Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1999). Yes, the US has angered the Arab world by siding with Israel over the last half century. No, we didn't have it coming. Yes, globalization does entail more than hamburgers and Coca-Cola. No, we're not innocent, but Americans are essentially good and a far sight better than those disaffected Islamists recruited out of European mosques to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and targets unknown. Expressing these points and others, albeit far more elegantly, Friedman gathers columns from the last two years that are eminently helpful in understanding the great divide yawning between the Western and Arab worlds. The author's roving beat with the New York Times permits him to travel wherever he finds a story, and in his journeys-reported in more depth in the second part of this book, which he calls an "analytical diary"-he turns up a few surprises. He notes, for instance, that in India, home to "the second-largest Muslim community in the world" (surpassed only by Indonesia), Muslims have for the most part been friendly to the US because, he explains, India is a representative democracy, not one of the barbarous, repressive states that rule most of the Islamic world. Though not shy of sword-rattling-he insists that we are now fighting WWIII, even if most of the country seems not to know it-Friedman is also highly critical of the Bush administration for its many failures in explaining American interests to the world and in freeing the nation from the need to do business with Saudi Arabia and company in the first place. Controversial, yes. Smart, yes. And essential reading for anyone keeping track on world events over the last year. Author tour
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Summary: Wow
Review: .
I thoroughly enjoyed Tom Friedman's Lexus and Olive Tree. And was waiting desperately for Longitudes and Attitudes. This book is a collection of Tom's columns in NYTimes so for those who are regular readers of NYTimes this book may not be a hot cake. But this book reveals a series of beautiful thoughts. I am sure you will have at least half a dozen Aha! moments. Worth Reading.
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Summary: Smart Collection for keepsake
Review: 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
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Summary: Likely to stand as the great work on post-9/11
Review: 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.
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