If you are going to read a book this year by someone whose last name is Friedman, you will probably narrow your list to two choices:

The World is Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman

or

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman

Thomas Friedman

I am normally a fan of Thomas Friedman, but I couldn’t even finish The World is Hot, Flat, and Crowded.  He is so sold down the river of Global Warming Alarmism, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to take him seriously anymore.  In his latest columns he has been trying his hardest to blame the current economic crisis on our inability to prevent climate change.  Friedman would do better to use his astute ability to analogize, to explore how the pending failure of the New York Times is related to global warming.

George Friedman, on the other hand, has written a brilliant book, that illustrates how America will be a dominant superpower for at least the next century.  Chapter by chapter he lays out how he thinks the next century will unfold.  Aside from the book being one of the best books I’ve read in a while, Friedman seems to be on the forefront of an entrepreneurial publishing movement that will probably replace dying publication businesses such as newspapers.

The New York Times commissions writers like Friedman to write books and attract readers (in the past these used to be subscribers) to the newspaper, so that they can sell advertising.  It has been pretty common knowledge that the internet, with its abundant free information, and armies of bloggers who realized that writing your opinion isn’t really that hard, is putting newspapers out of business.

George Friedman, on the other hand, wrote his book as a means to publicize his website, Stratfor.  This is a site that provides exellent geopolitical analysis of current events.  If you like what this site has to offer, they have a subscription service to exclusive articles and reports that costs $300 per year.  The quality of content on his site should humiliate publications like the New York Times.  I predict that Friedman and his site, are what we have to look forward to when the newspapers go out of business.  I am personally looking forward to this day.