Here are 100 books that The Meaning of the 21st Century fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have read the future studies literature for decades. A few years ago an alumnus suggested that my university should create a course about the future. My dean encouraged me to look into it. On reading Bishop and Hines, Teaching About the Future, I was struck by the maturity of the field, the strength of their program that they describe, and the fact that they bemoan the lack of a book that could introduce newcomers to the field. I decided that I could write such a book, combining the latest research in the field with my own understandings of interdisciplinarity, world history, economics, and political activism.
I like the way that the author first provides a history of both the idea of the future and the field of future studies.
She shows how the field has come to appreciate that we cannot predict the future reliably, but can identify both plausible futures and desirable futures, and explore how to move from one to the other. She then explores key characteristics of plausible futures. There is a lot of information in a short book.
From the beginning of time, humans have been driven by both a fear of the unknown and a curiosity to know. We have always yearned to know what lies ahead, whether threat or safety, scarcity or abundance. Throughout human history, our forebears tried to create certainty in the unknown, by seeking to influence outcomes with sacrifices to gods, preparing for the unexpected with advice from oracles, and by reading the stars through astrology. As scientific methods improve and computer technology develops we become ever more confident of our capacity to predict and quantify the future by accumulating and interpreting patterns…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I have read the future studies literature for decades. A few years ago an alumnus suggested that my university should create a course about the future. My dean encouraged me to look into it. On reading Bishop and Hines, Teaching About the Future, I was struck by the maturity of the field, the strength of their program that they describe, and the fact that they bemoan the lack of a book that could introduce newcomers to the field. I decided that I could write such a book, combining the latest research in the field with my own understandings of interdisciplinarity, world history, economics, and political activism.
The book addresses a dozen key challenges in our collective future.
Though the chapters are uneven in quality, I found that the book had many good ideas on how to address these challenges. The editors encourage broad community consultations regarding our futures, systems analysis of how challenges interact, and policy experimentation.
We are running out of water, robots will take our jobs, we are eating ourselves to an early death, old age pension and health systems are bankrupting governments, and an immigration crisis is unravelling the European integration project. A growing number of nightmares, perfect storms, and global catastrophes create fear of the future. One response is technocratic optimism - we'll invent our way out of these impending crises. Or we'll simply ignore them as politically too hot to handle, too uncomfortable for experts - denied until crisis hits. History is littered with late lessons from early warnings. Cynicism is an…
I have read the future studies literature for decades. A few years ago an alumnus suggested that my university should create a course about the future. My dean encouraged me to look into it. On reading Bishop and Hines, Teaching About the Future, I was struck by the maturity of the field, the strength of their program that they describe, and the fact that they bemoan the lack of a book that could introduce newcomers to the field. I decided that I could write such a book, combining the latest research in the field with my own understandings of interdisciplinarity, world history, economics, and political activism.
This is a pleasure to read and full of good ideas.
Most of the book deals with errors in how people make future-oriented decisions, and how we can overcome these errors. Yet the author also has good advice about how we should go about predicting plausible futures. He notes that experts with a flexible worldview make better predictions than those who follow a narrow belief or ideology.
Plenty of books offer useful advice on how to get better at making quick-thinking, intuitive choices. But what about more consequential decisions, the ones that affect our lives for years, or centuries, to come? Our most powerful stories revolve around these kinds of decisions: where to live, whom to marry, what to believe, whether to start a company, how to end a war.
Full of the beautifully crafted storytelling and novel insights that Steven Johnson's fans know to expect, Farsighted draws lessons from cognitive science, social psychology, military strategy, environmental planning, and great works of literature. Everyone thinks we are…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have read the future studies literature for decades. A few years ago an alumnus suggested that my university should create a course about the future. My dean encouraged me to look into it. On reading Bishop and Hines, Teaching About the Future, I was struck by the maturity of the field, the strength of their program that they describe, and the fact that they bemoan the lack of a book that could introduce newcomers to the field. I decided that I could write such a book, combining the latest research in the field with my own understandings of interdisciplinarity, world history, economics, and political activism.
Our views of how the future will unfold affect how we behave in the present.
This book summarizes the interdisciplinary research into how people anticipate the future and how this influences decisions. With the exception of one highly technical chapter (whose results are reprised in plain language), the book is very accessible.
This book presents the theory of anticipation, and establishes anticipation of the future as a legitimate topic of research. It examines anticipatory behavior, i.e. a behavior that 'uses' the future in its actual decisional process. The book shows that anticipation violates neither the ontological order of time nor causation. It explores the question of how different kinds of systems anticipate, and examines the risks and uses of such anticipatory practices. The book first summarizes the research on anticipation conducted within a range of different disciplines, and describes the connection between the anticipatory point of view and futures studies. Following that,…
I am a professor of International Studies and a former museum curator. This combination provides me with a unique perspective not only on the inner workings of the art world, but the way that those practices map on to broader social, political, and economic transformations that occur as a result of globalization. This leads me, for example, to an assessment of how free-trade zones affect the art market. In past research, I have focused on colonialism and French art in the nineteenth century, so I am attuned to power imbalances between the center and the periphery and I am fascinated to see how these are shifting in the present.
Adam is one of the foremost reporters to cover the art market and has worked for the Financial Times and the Art Newspaper. In her second book on the art market, she dives into the unsightly domain of the global art world, including speculation, forgery, art as an asset class, and freeports, the secret offshore warehouses where the rich stash their treasures tax-free. Her unique approach, focusing on classic categories such as supply, demand, and price among others brings a refreshing approach to the changing nature of the art market.
This book scrutinizes the excesses and extravagances that the 21st-century explosion of the contemporary art market brought in its wake. The buying of art as an investment, temptations to forgery and fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and pressure to produce more and more art all form part of this story, as do the upheavals in auction houses and the impact of the enhanced use of financial instruments on art transactions. Drawing on a series of tenaciously wrought interviews with artists, collectors, lawyers, bankers and convicted artist forgers, the author charts the voracious commodification of artists and art objects, and art's…
I am a professor of International Studies and a former museum curator. This combination provides me with a unique perspective not only on the inner workings of the art world, but the way that those practices map on to broader social, political, and economic transformations that occur as a result of globalization. This leads me, for example, to an assessment of how free-trade zones affect the art market. In past research, I have focused on colonialism and French art in the nineteenth century, so I am attuned to power imbalances between the center and the periphery and I am fascinated to see how these are shifting in the present.
This book was the first to bring together a group of international artists, curators, and scholars to discuss and engage the changing nature of the art world, as a result of globalization.
The project was launched at the Center for Media and Art (ZKM) in Karlsrühe, Germany in 2006 with a series of conferences that turned into a series of books over time and an exhibition in 2013.
No other book considers so many new manifestations of the museum in the twenty-first century, illuminating new opportunities for the reader to explore distant lands vicariously and also to discover how many different ways institutions are being developed in cities around the world.
This is the second publication from the ongoing research series, Global Art and the Museum (GAM), which was initiated in 2001 by German art historian Hans Belting and artist, writer and curator Peter Weibel at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. The last 20 years have seen a rapid globalization of the art world, resulting in geographic decentralization and a shift away from a primarily Western perspective. GAM's aim is to analyze the effect of these changes on the art market, museums and art criticism. This volume comprises a collection of essays by experts--such as Claude…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have worked on the problems of poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, for much of my professional life. I worked at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, which is part of the Department of Economics at Oxford University, from 1991 until my retirement in 2012. I continue to work both with the Centre and the Department as a Managing Editor of Oxford Economic Papers and Chief Editor of the Journal of African Economies. My recent book The Poor and the Plutocrats grew out of this background where I wanted to understand the links between very poor countries and those of much richer ones.
The approach of Milanovic is very different from that of Hickel in that it is intensive in the use of data which, he would argue, shows a much more nuanced picture of the success of the global economy in reducing poverty than argued by Hickel.
He begins by reproducing the ‘Elephant Chart’ from his earlier work. This is a chart showing the relative gain in real per capita income by global income level. The name ‘Elephant’ comes from the shape of the chart which shows the largest income gains to have occurred for those in the middle of the distribution and the lowest in the range of 70 to 80 in the percentile distribution and the highest for those at the very top. Those in the middle being the hump of the elephant those at the top being its trunk.
Milanovic argues that in many respects the years before the…
Winner of the Bruno Kreisky Prize, Karl Renner Institut A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Livemint Best Book of the Year
One of the world's leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what…
I am a retired professor of History and International Political Economy. Unraveling knotted masses of string was a relaxing, enjoyable activity for me while growing up. As a historian, I continue to pick apart entangled matters, particularly about capitalism as a complex system. Networks give structure to complex systems, and I find networked merchants in the modern era (ca. 1500- 1945) especially fascinating to study. Who were they? How did they create opportunities and work across borders and cultures? How did they work around adversities? How did they both perpetuate and diversify their networks? How did they link to and collaborate with one another? How do networks evolve?
I appreciate this book because its twelve chapters—each by a different author—is a tour de force of the many different parts of the world that have constituted the Dutch empire these past four centuries, all conveniently curated into one volume. (By the way, never overlook the Dutch: small country, huge commercial impact.)
Most importantly, each chapter, in its own way, provides insights into questions I have about networks, such as how they transcend political borders, how linkages are formed, and how cultural boundaries are bridged.
In 1602, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the first commercial company, the Dutch East India Company, and, in so doing, initiated a new wave of globalization. Even though Dutch engagement in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans dates back to the 16th century, it was the dawn of the 17th century that brought the Dutch into the fold of the general movement of European expansion overseas and concomitant globalization.
This volume surveys the Dutch participation in, and contribution to, the process of globalization. At the same time, it reassesses the various ways Dutchmen fashioned themselves…
I am a professor at Georgetown University, and I have long been interested in the promise and peril of global markets and the fundamental question of why some countries are rich and others poor. I've always loved looking at globalization at ground level: My travels to Chinese factories, Washington trade negotiations, and African cocoa farms have been great adventures of both mind and spirit, and I always leave with a new friend who has illuminated my understanding of this complex world. But in a late-life shift (that is not as random as it sounds) my current work revolves around criminal justice in the US. I currently direct the Pivot Program at Georgetown.
Zingales is a brilliant academic economist, but this book leads the reader with both head and heart. Zingales is concerned that the US is on a path to similarities with his native Italy, where markets and politics are both corrupted by cronyism and nepotism. The book’s appeal is that Zingales's compelling argument cannot be put in a left or right box. He lays out evidence to suggest that more open competition will address both the inequality concerns of liberals, as well as the free market priorities of conservatives. Today, Zingales seems to suggest, we have the worst of both worlds.
Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment--paired with rampant nepotism and cronyism--on a country's economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better. In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My interest in global issues developed when I was a student. What was my conviction already then became more obvious every year since then. In order to solve our most urgent problems, we need to have a strong and legitimate global governance system. Global governance, therefore, became the core of my research. I am Michael Zürn, the Director of the Research Unit Global Governance at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and a Professor of International Relations at Free University of Berlin. I have also been the co-spokesperson for the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS) since 2019.
This anthology is highly recommended if you are looking for profound and multidimensional analyses of authoritative rule-making systems beyond the nation-state that emerged within the dynamics of globalization.
Readers will find general investigations on the structure and development of the institutional framework of “global governance” next to case studies focusing on how specific issues, e.g., the HIV/AIDS epidemic or transnational finance hazards, are governed within these frameworks. Furthermore, this volume is of great value as it depicts the controversial academic debates on how practices of “global governance” should be interpreted on a theoretical level. One can learn from both: “realist” and “Marxist” critiques on the concept of global governance and its proponents from “liberal institutionalist” and “functionalist” perspectives.
Alongside the explanatory level, the book is rounded off by some normative investigations on how global governance should look in the future in order to overcome patterns of global injustice.
Since the UN's creation in 1945 a vast nexus of global and regional institutions has evolved, surrounded by a proliferation of non-governmental agencies and advocacy networks seeking to influence the agenda and direction of international public policy. Although world government remains a fanciful idea, there does exist an evolving global governance complex - embracing states, international institutions, transnational networks and agencies (both public and private) - which functions, with variable effect, to promote, regulate or intervene in the common affairs of humanity.
This book provides an accessible introduction to the current debate about the changing form and political significance of…
