Friedman, Thomas L (1953- )

US journalist and writer. Employed by The New York Times from 1981, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1983 (from Lebanon) and in 1988 (from Israel). His best-selling book From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989) won the National Book Award for Non-fiction.

For The New York Times he worked as Beirut bureau chief 1982-84 and Israel bureau chief 1984-88. He served as the chief White House correspondent 1992-94 and chief economic correspondent 1994-95 in Washington, DC, before becoming the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995. Other books include The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999) and Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), a collection of his New York Times columns from September 2001 to June 2002.