Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America

By: Thomas L. Friedman

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

Length: 20 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Thomas L. Friedman's number-one best seller The World Is Flat has helped millions of listeners to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy - both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy - which he calls "Geo-Greenism" - is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era - the Energy-Climate era - through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought three billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun.

With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive, and he explains why America must lead this revolution - with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman - fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

©2008, 2009 Thomas L. Friedman (P)2008 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"An exhaustive, impressive, and convincing argument about the need for the United States to transition to more sustainable systems of energy soon or else risk any possible chance of maintaining hegemony. [Friedman's] ability to identify and summarize succinctly the issues and controversies over resistance to a green revolution is matched by his clear and definitive solutions to these forthcoming problems. Oliver Wyman provides a congenial and gentle voice that works well with the text." ( Publishers Weekly)

Hot flat and out of date!!

I liked the author and his book; The World is Flat. The author is a great business writer but here he has become a Chicken Little The Sky is Falling ( Al Gore) in this book. The book is based on $140.00 a barrel of oil and that the temperature of the earth is raising. Of coarse oil is now $50.00 a barrel and the planets temperature has been rising since the last ice age. Except 2008 when it dropped. The only thing this guy has not bought into is alcohol fuel for that I will give him some credit. The book reads well but he should have waited six months and then revised or thrown the thing is the trash.

Terrible Narration

I was stoked to listen to this book, but could not get past the narration. He sounds like he's reading bad fiction, and mispronounces proper nouns. Save your $$ and check out the hard copy from the library.