Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism

Overview
Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism gathers Thomas L. Friedman's New York Times columns written in the months before and after September 11, 2001. The collection traces how a confident, globalizing world suddenly confronted mass terrorism and how U.S. policy, regional politics and everyday perceptions shifted almost overnight. Columns range from on-the-ground dispatches in the Middle East and Central Asia to policy-minded analyses and personal reflections on fear, resilience and the responsibilities of power.
Friedman moves between reportage and prescription, treating headlines as entry points to broader patterns. He chronicles the immediate aftermath of the attacks while contextualizing them within longer trends: the spread of global markets and technologies, the fractures within failing states, and the rise of networks that could weaponize grievance. The pieces are chronological enough to reveal a narrative arc, pre-9/11 globalization optimism, the shock of the attacks, and the urgent debates about how to respond.

Main Themes
A central theme is the double-edged nature of globalization. Friedman insists that the same flows of people, goods and ideas that expanded opportunity also sped the transmission of conflict and radical ideologies. He frames economic integration and technological interconnectedness as unstoppable forces that alter political incentives, creating both winners and dispossessed populations whose grievances can be exploited by violent movements. That tension underpins many of his arguments about how to meld security with opportunity.
U.S. leadership and strategy form another recurring thread. Friedman argues for a robust response that combines pressure on terrorist networks with efforts to address the political vacuums that nurture extremism. He criticizes isolationism and simplistic slogans while urging realistic assessments of alliances, intelligence, and the limits of military power. At the same time he advocates for promoting political and economic reforms, democracy, market liberalization and stronger institutions, as a long-term antidote to extremism, while acknowledging that such changes are complex and sometimes slow.
The Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict receive sustained attention. Friedman uses travel reportage to describe everyday life, the fissures within societies, and the human consequences of prolonged occupation and statelessness. He links local grievances to global dynamics, suggesting that solving regional problems is not merely a matter of military force but requires political imagination, economic opportunity and credible diplomacy.

Structure and Style
The collection's structure emphasizes immediacy: short, punchy columns that retain the cadence of daily journalism. Friedman writes in a conversational, assertive voice that blends anecdote, metaphor and policy analysis. His eye for telling detail, street scenes, candid quotes, and travel observations, grounds abstract arguments in human terms, while frequent use of rhetorical devices keeps the pieces lively and accessible.
Stylistically, the book alternates between urgent polemic and reflective commentary. Post-9/11 pieces carry a sharpened moral tone and a sense of national introspection; pre-9/11 columns often display a buoyant confidence in market-driven change. That contrast, made explicit by the collection's chronology, underscores how quickly public discourse and policy priorities can shift.

Impact and Legacy
Longitudes and Attitudes captured a critical moment in early twenty-first-century debate about terrorism, globalization and American power. The collection influenced public conversation by translating complex foreign-policy choices into vivid, widely read essays that bridged elite discourse and popular readership. Supporters praised Friedman's clarity and moral urgency; critics faulted occasional simplifications and a tendency to favor technocratic fixes.
Beyond partisan reactions, the book remains a useful snapshot of the dilemmas facing democracies confronting transnational threats: how to reconcile liberty and security, how to wield power responsibly, and how to address the social and economic dislocations that can feed violence. As an archive of immediate responses to a world-altering event, it documents both the questions that dominated policy debates and the rhetorical moves used to answer them.