Day Fourteen: Hot, Flat & Crowded

It's Day Fourteen in The 24 Days of Books, and today we're talking about a book just released in paperback and that seems particularly appropriate to talk about right now, given the Copenhagen Climate Conference: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman

A little over a year ago, Hot, Flat and Crowded was published in hardback. The book was an argument for why America's taking the lead in the green revolution was the ideal way to reinvigorate our economy and innovation engines, restore America's global leadership, and help the planet at the same time. In the new paperback edition, Friedman has rewritten much of the front of the book to underscore the parallels between the financial crisis and the environmental crisis, arguing that both were based on the same faulty accounting and suggesting that an ethic of sustainability is, at least in part, the answer for healing both.

Thomas L. Friedman, a world-renowned author and journalist, joined The New York Times in 1981 as a financial reporter specializing in OPEC- and oil-related news and later served as chief diplomatic, chief White House, and international economics correspondent. A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles reporting on the Middle East conflict, the end of the cold war, U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, international economics, and the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. One of his earlier books, From Beirut to Jerusalem, won both the National Book Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in 1989 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly twelve months.

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