Thomas L. Friedman

In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, columnist Michael Hirschorn looks at the future of The New York Times and wonders, "[W]hat if the old media dies much more quickly? ... [W]hat if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?"

Mr. Hirschorn looks at the Times Company's difficult year—and its possibly even more difficult year ahead—before concluding that:

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist.  read more »

The New York Times Book Review released its 100 Notable Books of 2008.

Notably, there are a lot of New York Times writers on the list, among them:

- The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler.

- Condoleezza Rice: An American Life by Elisabeth Bumiller.

- The Forever War by Dexter Filkins.

- Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman.

- The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper.

- The Night of the Gun by David Carr.

Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America
By Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 438 pages, $27.95

There’s always been a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to Thomas Friedman’s work—one moment he’s smart and decent, the next smarmy, belligerent and glib. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner has one of the more irritating styles in American punditry, combining regular-guy banalities, endlessly repeated neologisms and subtle condescension (such as when he refers to Doha, Qatar, as a city "you may have never heard of"). He opines against the destructive insanity of Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank, then urges an even more destructive and insane American approach to the Arab world.  read more »