Here are 100 books that Tomorrow-Land fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve read more than a hundred biographies over the years, mostly because I want to know what makes great people great. In doing so, I have sifted through some real crap along the way. I don’t typically read many stories about losers. Sad to say, and most people don’t want to hear it, but losers are a dime a dozen and unmotivating downers. My book list gives others the benefits of my 40-plus years of work in identifying books about brilliant, accomplished people written by first-rate historians and narrated by the ”cream of the crop.”
I abhorred Robert Moses from the first time I opened this book 20 years ago.
This power-grabbing bureaucratic functionary made me ill on some level, mad as hell on another, and want to take a shower after each time I opened the book.
In the end, I still hated Moses for his gall and immoral audacity, but you could not deny his accomplishments, as he saw them. Nevertheless, I had to love a book that could take such a scoundrel whom I grew to loathe and make me glad I read it.
The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro is 'simply one of the best non-fiction books in English of the last forty years' (Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times): a riveting and timeless account of power, politics and the city of New York by 'the greatest political biographer of our times' (Sunday Times); chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time and by the Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Books of the Twentieth Century; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize; a Sunday Times Bestseller; 'An outright masterpiece' (Evening Standard)
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
There never was nor ever could be a better fair, and that is the memory I’ve carried since that family vacation brought us to the Queens fairgrounds in 1964. Though I do not remember much, what remains in my heart is a sense of wonder and happiness. Over the years, the memory faded until I took a class on Renaissance Sculpture for my master’s studies. It amazed me that Michelangelo’s Pietà could have ever been shipped to Queens–I began researching and was deeply moved by the story that unfolded.
After reading Lawrence Samuel’s book, I wish I could turn back the hands of time and walk the fairgrounds one more time. This is an excellent history of the fair from beginning to end.
I enjoyed Samuel’s beautiful writing style and in-depth coverage of this slice of Americana. His sense of humor made me laugh out loud. I admit, it’s a nostalgic trip, taking us back to a simpler time. Well, it really wasn’t so simple, but that’s how I remember it as a child visiting the best fair ever!
From April 1964 to October 1965, some 52 million people from around the world flocked to the New York World's Fair, an experience that lives on in the memory of many individuals and in America's collective consciousness. Taking a perceptive look back at ""the last of the great world's fairs,"" Samuel offers a vivid portrait of this seminal event and of the cultural climate that surrounded it. He also counters critics' assessments of the fair as the ""ugly duckling"" of global expositions. Opening five months after President Kennedy's assassination, the fair allowed millions to celebrate international fellowship while the conflict…
There never was nor ever could be a better fair, and that is the memory I’ve carried since that family vacation brought us to the Queens fairgrounds in 1964. Though I do not remember much, what remains in my heart is a sense of wonder and happiness. Over the years, the memory faded until I took a class on Renaissance Sculpture for my master’s studies. It amazed me that Michelangelo’s Pietà could have ever been shipped to Queens–I began researching and was deeply moved by the story that unfolded.
At first, I was a little miffed with this book since some contributors favored New York’s first World’s Fair in 1939 over the second in 1964. But the fact is, we’ll always prefer the fair we visited when we were children over the fair we visited as an adult, and this book backs this up.
Still, it was good for me to read about the previous fair to better understand the latter fair. I’m not a New Yorker, but I soaked it up.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
There never was nor ever could be a better fair, and that is the memory I’ve carried since that family vacation brought us to the Queens fairgrounds in 1964. Though I do not remember much, what remains in my heart is a sense of wonder and happiness. Over the years, the memory faded until I took a class on Renaissance Sculpture for my master’s studies. It amazed me that Michelangelo’s Pietà could have ever been shipped to Queens–I began researching and was deeply moved by the story that unfolded.
I didn’t realize that Walt Disney was so involved in the NY World’s Fair–he was everywhere. How I loved “It’s a Small World”–Disney! I’m from Illinois, and even though I don’t remember it, the animatronic of Abe Lincoln–Disney! General Electric’s Progressland–Disney! The Ford ride back to the future–Disney!
It made sense to me then that Disney World was basically an extension of the New York Fair, but I didn’t understand it until I read Kiste’s book.
For the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, the Disney company designed four paviliions, which later they reimagined for Disneyland. In this first volume of a definitive series, historian Andrew Kiste presents the story of the first of these pavilions: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.
Two score and fifteen years ago, Walt Disney took an opportunity to bring his unique style of entertainment to the 1964-65 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadow. Initially using the fair as an opportunity to determine the level of interest in his theme-park attractions with the "more sophisticated tastes" of those east…
I developed a strong interest in current events, especially politics, in high school. What the government does, or does not do, struck me as a vital piece of the puzzle in trying to explain why things are the way they are. That soon led, however, to seeing how the past continues to influence the present. No decade is more important than the 1960s for understanding our current political climate.
Historians rightly stress that social movements and broad forces, often decades in the making, shape history, but Weisbrot and Mackenzie note that many of the monumental reforms of the 1960s that continue to define our society today resulted primarily from decisions made by liberal presidents, members of Congress, and the Supreme Court.
They vividly convey the confidence in government as a force for good that lay at the core of liberal thinking. They are sympathetic to much of the liberals’ efforts, yet they also acknowledge their shortcomings.
An engaging be hind-the-scenes look at the lesser-known forces that fueled the profound social reforms of the 1960s
Provocative and incisive , The Liberal Hour reveals how Washington, so often portrayed as a target of reform in the 1960s, was in fact the era's most effective engine of change. The movements of the 1960s have always drawn the most attention from the decade's chroniclers, but it was in the halls of government-so often the target of protesters' wrath-that the enduring reforms of the era were produced. With nuance and panache, Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot present the real-life characters-from giants…
I’ve worked in and around the tech, science and startup world for the past 10 years, and hype has played various roles in my work and life. From working in advertising where my job was to build narratives around ideas and products, then in journalism where I was tasked with sorting hype from reality when deciding who and what to write about, to now being a researcher who looks into the very nature and power of narratives, ideologies, political economies and cultures around science and technology – hype has been a recurring topic which is so important in understanding and navigating the tech industry. I hope you find these books as enlightening as I have!
This is one of my favourite tech criticism books. I love how each of the book’s chapters takes a word commonly used in Silicon Valley (and the associated international startup communities) - such as "failure," "disruption," "drop-out," and "content" and dives into the "intellectual bedrock" at the heart of the discourse which surrounds them.
Daub is a Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford - so his critical eye and vast knowledge of intellectual history swiftly pull apart the pseudo-intellectualism so many in the startup community use to justify their success and problematic behaviour.
I particularly valued the fact that it’s short, punchy, and acts as a brilliant thought-starter to go deeper into the crucial ideologies which are hugely impacting our world today.
Adrian Daub's What Tech Calls Thinking is a lively dismantling of the ideas that form the intellectual bedrock of Silicon Valley. Equally important to Silicon Valley's world-altering innovation are the language and ideas it uses to explain and justify itself. And often, those fancy new ideas are simply old motifs playing dress-up in a hoodie. From the myth of dropping out to the war cry of "disruption," Daub locates the Valley's supposedly original, radical thinking in the ideas of Heidegger and Ayn Rand, the New Age Esalen Foundation in Big Sur, and American traditions from the tent revival to predestination.…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
Author/journalist Harold Goldberg has written about video games since the 1990s. He is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture) and The League of Legends Experience. He is the founder of the non-profit New York Videogame Critics Circle and The New York Game Awards, both of which raise funds for essential classes and scholarships in New York City's underserved communities. As editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment, he worked on Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair,Wired, and elsewhere. Goldberg also co-wrote My Life Among The Serial Killers with Dr. Helen Morrison.
Of the small subgenre books that deal with the way games aid education, Toppo's shows how games can make a difference in the way students learn by looking at first at a Washington, D.C. school's success with improving math scores through game playing. From there, he visits professors and visionaries, all of whom have helped kids learn through games. One thing becomes clear: if there were a games class in every school, especially in underserved communities, student grades would go up.
What if schools, from the wealthiest suburban nursery school to the grittiest urban high school, thrummed with the sounds of deep immersion? More and more people believe that can happen - with the aid of video games. From Greg Toppo, USA Today's national K-12 education and demographics reporter, The Game Believes in You presents the story of a small group of visionaries who, for the past 40 years, have been pushing to get game controllers into the hands of learners. Among the game revolutionaries you'll meet in this book:
*A game designer at the University of Southern California leading a…
I was a business school professor for 38 years, always fascinated by how organizations could (or couldn’t) adapt to their changing environments. Over the course of my career, I observed and studied how organizations sought to adapt to major disrupting forces such as new information-processing technologies, internationalization, downsizing, new organizational forms, digitization, and artificial intelligence. Today’s global business environment is complex, dynamic, and highly interconnected. The only way to adapt is through collaboration–organizations must be able to quickly respond to any environmental change by identifying appropriate resources wherever they may exist and efficiently marshaling them into a desired response and eventual solution. In competitive terms, this is called a “relational advantage.”
In his breakthrough book, Henry Chesbrough described how companies are increasingly looking outside their boundaries for ideas and technologies they can bring in, as well as license their underutilized intellectual property to other organizations.
What I love about it is that Chesbrough applies the open innovation philosophy to actual business settings and explains how to create value in an open innovation landscape. The book includes a diagnostic instrument that helps a company assess its existing business model and explains how to overcome common barriers to creating a more open model.
The overall message for companies moving forward is that they can create and capture value from ideas and technologies wherever they may be found. Open innovation as a concept has spread widely, and companies today are advised to search far and wide for the resources they need and partners to work with.
In his landmark book Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough demonstrated that because useful knowledge is no longer concentrated in a few large organizations, business leaders must adopt a new, "open" model of innovation. Using this model, companies look outside their boundaries for ideas and intellectual property (IP) they can bring in, as well as license their unutilized home-grown IP to other organizations. In Open Business Models, Chesbrough takes readers to the next step--explaining how to make money in an open innovation landscape. He provides a diagnostic instrument enabling you to assess your company's current business model, and explains how to overcome…
I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.
This was the first (and still the best) book I ever read on how scientists collect and use the data for forecasting the weather and predicting climate change. I am particularly impressed with its scope–it starts with early attempts by 17th and 18th-century scientists to agree on how to measure things like wind and rainfall and ends with today’s world of satellites and computer models.
The book really brings alive the work of a massive network of scientists around the world collecting and analyzing observations about planet Earth.
The science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future.
Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
As a boomer and working-class kid, I experienced living conditions improving rapidly. This sparked my interest in studying international and development economics to explore how we can create a better and more equitable world. As professor of international economics, I have been researching and teaching for many years about what is now known as “globalization”. This taught me two things that inspired me to write my latest book: First, to understand the process and consequences of (de-)globalization, in-depth study is essential to avoid popular misconceptions about the global economy; and, second, globalization needs to be carefully managed to make it work for all people.
I learned a lot from Baldwin’s insightful book, which posits a fast and dramatic rise of digital service trade between high- and low-wage countries.
Such services could range from well-known digital back-office services, such as airline ticketing in India, to more speculative “global robotics”, dubbed “globotics”, such as cross-border controlling of robots via virtual reality devices.
Baldwin points to new opportunities emerging to developing economies that hitherto were unable to gain from the globalization of manufacturing value chains. But he also warns of potentially dramatic social consequences in high-wage countries.
Whether you agree or disagree with his diagnosis, this is essential reading to be prepared for the next wave of globalization and its potential social disruptions.
'A manifesto for future-proofing our jobs and prosperity' THE SUNDAY TIMES
We stand on the edge of a new era that will bring change to our world on a par with the Industrial Revolution. Automation, artificial intelligence and robotics are changing our lives quickly - but digital disruption goes much further than we realize. Richard Baldwin, one of the world's leading globalization experts, argues that the inhuman speed of this transformation threatens to overwhelm our capacity to adapt. But while the changes are now inevitable, there are strategies that humanity can use to adapt to this new world, employing the…
