Ocean County College’s Blauvelt Speaker Series, in collaboration with the Visiting Writers’ Reading Series, presents “New York Times” foreign affairs columnist and best-selling author Thomas L. Friedman at the Jay and Linda Grunin Center for the Arts at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 6.

Friedman, whom “Vanity Fair” called “the country’s best newspaper columnist,” is renowned for his direct reporting and accessible analysis of complex issues shaping the world. According to Foreign Policy magazine, “Friedman doesn’t just report on events; he helps shape them.” Friedman has covered monumental stories from around the globe for “The New York Times” since 1981, and is the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes. He is also the bestselling author of “The World is Flat.”

With clear and compelling language, Friedman discusses the opportunities and challenges that profound “accelerations,” including technology and connectivity, pose for society as well as for individuals, businesses, and governments. He also explores solutions — on a local and global level — to ensure the future of work, skills, income, and prosperity.

In his latest bestseller, “Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations,” Friedman offers a blueprint for overcoming the stresses and challenges of a world being transformed by technology, globalization, and climate change.

His previous “New York Times” bestseller, co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was “That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back.” According to The Christian Science Monitor, “Anyone who cares about America’s future ought to read this book and hear the authors’ compelling case.”

“The World is Flat” has sold four-and-a-half million copies and won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In 2012 Friedman updated his National Book Award-winner, “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” adding a fresh discussion of the Arab Awakenings and Arab/Israeli relations in a new preface and afterword.

Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America,” was a #1 New York Times bestseller. His other bestsellers include “Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism,” and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” which “Kirkus Reviews” called “simply the best book written on globalization.”

Ranked #2 on “The Wall Street Journal’s” list of “influential business thinkers” and named to the 2011 Thinkers50 and the 2013 list of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, Friedman is considered one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report. He is a frequent guest on programs such as “Meet the Press” and “Morning Joe,” and his TV documentaries, “Searching for the Roots of 9/11,” “The Other Side of Outsourcing” and “Addicted to Oil,” have aired on the Discovery Channel. Friedman was featured in Showtime’s climate change documentary series “Years of Living Dangerously,” executive produced by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In awarding Friedman his third Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer Board cited his “clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.”

An ASL Interpreter will be provided at this lecture. 

Tickets$32 Adults / $27 Seniors & Students

Student Ticket Sponsors: Arlene and Frank Dupignac, Jr.; Helen Earles, Ph.D.; New Jersey Natural Gas; Novins, York & Jacobus, P.A.; and Suez 

For more information, or to purchase tickets, contact the Grunin Center at 732-255-0500 or visit grunincenter.org.