Thomas Friedman is an op-ed journalist that works for The New York Times. He often writes about issues concerning the Middle East but has some focus on America and other foreign countries like China. He is Jewish, well educated, and sixty years old. His experiences as a teenager and the way he was raised influence how he writes and is the reason for his focus on foreign affairs for The New York Times. He has also more recently been focused on a green revolution that needs to happen soon. Thomas Friedman's passion for environmentalism started from his passion of the Middle East because he saw that the world is not on a stable path and a change needs to be made soon.
Thomas Friedman's past is key to understanding his writing topics and style. Thomas Friedman was born in Minnesota in 1953. He was raised in a Jewish family, and he went to Hebrew school five times a week before high school. He began his journalism passion by writing for his high school's newspaper, and he first became interested in the Middle East when he went on a trip to Israel over Christmas when he was fifteen years old, which ignited a passion in him that still drives him today. After high school, he was very successful in college, and he graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University with a degree in Mediterranean Studies. He then went on to get a Masters of Philosophy in Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony's College at Oxford. He then went on to pursue a career in journalism after he received his degrees(Biography).
The source for his passion about the Middle East is obvious, but how he also became passionate about environmentalism is less obvious. He wrote a New York Times bestseller book titled The World is Flat, which was about the rise of the middle ...
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... countries leads him to also be passionate about his own country. His travels, due to those passions and his job, are what allowed him to see the world and the state it is in. He sees the current trend that the world is heading towards and realizes that a revolution needs to happen. He also sees it as a way for the United States to benefit and grow. At the end of his book, he says "We need to redefine green and rediscover America and in so doing rediscover ourselves and what it means to be Americans … if we rise to the challenge [of a revolution] , and truly become the Re-generation- redefining green and rediscovering, reviving, and regenerating America- we, and the world, will not only survive but thrive in an age that is hot, flat, and crowded"(412). He believes that there is just enough time, if we start now, to save the world from the path it is heading towards.
As soon as the novel begins, we are introduced to the concept of saving the environment. The book begins with the narrator explaining his life-long dream of helping the world. He says that the cultural revolution of the 1960’s contributed to his ambition. However, as time went on he
He delves into the history of the word “environmental” as well as the history of environmental activism. He pinpoints the beginning of the movement to Rachel Carson. According to Quammen, she began the revolution by publishing her book Silent Spring. He says the negative connotations of the word began with her book, pairing “environment” and “the survival of humankind” as if they go hand in hand. This played a major role in the distortion of the word and the intentions of environmentalists.
Kotkin is also a very widely published journalist. He wrote the monthly “Grass roots” column in the NY Times for many years. He has also published articles in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The American etc.
... conservationism. He is inspiration for all of us to see the natural world as a community to which we belong.
Rather than Luce’s envision of the American Century, Wallace saw the near future as the century of the common man. Wallace says, “It will be America’s opportunity to suggest the freedoms and duties by which the common man must live.” He wants the everyday man to be able to support himself. The common man must learn to “build his own industries,” and increase his productivity so he can teach it to his children. He wants nations as strong as the US to lead the way to developing countries so they can become strong too. It will be the century for the people not just America. When countries such as India, China, and Latin America learn to read and write they will grow stronger like the US. “As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble,” Wallace argues. Wallace acknowledges that the US has an important role, but he wants the world to be equal and share the fruits of freedom. When everyone in the world has grown to the level the US is on, there will be peace and increased general welfare. There should not be and over privileged peoples according to Wallace. His idea of the century of the common man will work if the US uses its power to build economic peace. Similarly to Luce, Wallace sees American freedom as a good thing
Harrison, Robert Pogue. “America: The Struggle to Be Reborn.” The New York Review of Books. NYREV, 25 Oct. 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.
author of this book. He has also has written many other good books such as The Grapes
Upton Sinclair, reformer from the womb, was born on September 20, 1878. He became a peculiar rags-to-riches story. Beginning his life in Baltimore, Maryland, His father’s family had a drawn out history of naval involvement and alcoholism. Growing in the south with the destruction of the Civil War, Sinclair’s family was living in poverty for an extended time. His open mind probably came from both perspectives of poor and wealth, because he evolved with his wealthy grandparents in New York at age ten. Sinclair then began writing jokes of ethnics and fiction for a few magazines. Sinclair’s religious background made Jesus Christ his number one hero. At the right age, he was accepted to Columbia University. His first marriage inspired an unhappy novel, Springtime and Harvest. Then many novels came to life after he ended his life of hackery to live one for socialism. He avoided communism of people around him when he joined the Socialist Society in 1905, but only a year earlier Fred Warren, a socialist editor, convinced Sinclair to write about the immigrant hardships of working in the Chicago meat packing houses.
Children are the Future. There’s times where you just sometimes lose motivation for learning, am I right? We don’t realize how much our globalized world is changing and how this might affect us. According to, The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, our world has changed and it’s becoming flat. We are all competing for jobs and those jobs that were able to get without further education are now being sent to other countries.
wrote this autobiography to show his supporters, enemies, and the world exactly how he came to be.
"Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,We, the people, must redeemThe land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.The mountains and the endless plain—All, all the stretch of these great green states—And make America again!” The free America is actually not free, the words on the constitution are just words. The dream has fade away. All these hard working people, all of their bloods and tears had really make the 1 percent of the American’s American dream came true. The reality is such a chaos for the narrator. he has suffered so much from this reality, so he now wants to share his idea to all the readers and try to wake them up, this is not the America that want, this is not the society they want. The American dream does not exist.
After seeing the Eskimos way of life, he argued that there could be wisdom in opening ourselves to different viewpoints of the world. He gave a great example by mentioning
Capturing the Friedmans film is a interesting documentary that captured the lives of a middle class family that went through shame and embarrassment for child molestation. The family lifestyle depicts a middle class family that lived a certain way. Arnold Friedman, the father, the award winning teacher and his son, Jesse brought dysfunction into their family household. The fact that they lived in a well-known area in Jersey banned anyone from participating in certain things. Families around the area was in shock about the molestation charges cast upon Arnold. That situation was not considered to be a norm. Division arise quickly between the neighborhoods ,one side believed the Friedmans and on the other side believe they were guilty. In a sense,
John is unlike the rest of the characters in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Raised in a “savage reservation,” he has been separated from “normal” society his whole life. Although John’s life is more reflective to the readers, it is not to the rest of the world in the novel. When John is brought to society, he slowly starts to realize how suppressed the society truly is. His desire to introduce real emotions, truth, and literature in society fails, yet demonstrates that society overtakes the individual.
On December 7, 1928 Avram Noam Chomsky was born. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the oldest of the family. His parents were both born in Russia but fled to the United States to avoid the army draft in 1913. Chomsky began school at just two years old. He went to Oak Lane Country Day School until he was twelve (Barsky 15). Oak Lane Country Day School was run by Temple University, a very prestigious college. These ten years began to shape his thinking. Oak Lane believed in more focused on creativity rather than grades. The administration focused on competition of the self rather than with others. They believed in challenging the students to push themselves further. Chomsky said, “[This was] very different from what I notice with my own children, who as far back as the second grade knew who was ‘smart’ and who was ‘dumb’, and who was high-tracked and who was low-tracked. This was a big issue.” (Barsky 16). In high school, Chomsky began to realize...