Future World

In the style of The Tipping Point or Freakonomics, a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world. The fearless Tina Rosenberg has spent her career tackling some of the world's hardest problems. The Haunted Land, her searing work on how Eastern Europe faced the crimes of...

In The Euro, Nobel Prize-winning economist and best-selling author Joseph E. Stiglitz dismantles the prevailing consensus around what ails Europe, demolishing the champions of austerity while offering a series of plans that can rescue the continent - and the world - from further devastation. Hailed by its architects as a lever that would bring Europe together and promote prosperity, the euro has done the opposite. As Stiglitz persuasively argues, the crises revealed the shortcomings of the euro.

The past fifteen thousand years--the entire span of human civilization--have witnessed dramatic sea level changes, which began with rapid global warming at the end of the Ice Age, when sea levels were more than 700 feet below modern levels. Over the next eleven millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These rapid changes had little effect on those humans who experienced them, partly because there were so few people on earth, and also because they were able to adjust readily to new coastlines.

How will we live well in a super-networked, information-soaked, yet predictably irrational world? The only way to know is to understand how the way we think is changing. As economist Tyler Cowen boldly shows in Create Your Own Economy, the way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a very long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a man-made creation - in this case, the World Wide Web - so greatly influenced the way our minds work and our human potential.

The way we live, work, and consume will massively transform soon. Do you see it happening already? The COVID-19 pandemic was just the first of many disruptions to come. Before year 2030, ecological thresholds will be surpassed, humanity will be fully connected via the internet, social inequalities will reach critical mass, and exponential technologies will become truly “smart”. We have reached the inflection point in which all of humanity can pause to reexamine and to redefine our “normal” mode of operation in business, politics, community, and life!

Paul A. Pagnato has tapped into an incredible brain trust of world-renowned experts from a diverse set of challenging disciplines, each having encountered the intersection of exponential growth and transparency. Their honest assessment for turning challenges into opportunities is inspirational. Their work is changing the world, and now through the prism of transparency, the wave of the future is upon us.

In The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston argues that what is most startling about this coming epoch is not only how much impact humans have had but, more important, how much deliberate shaping they will start to do. Emerging technologies promise to give us the power to take over some of Nature's most basic operations. It is not just that we are exiting the Holocene and entering the Anthropocene; it is that we are leaving behind the time in which planetary change is just the unintended consequence of unbridled industrialism.

There are three types of people when it comes to the future: those who will watch what happens, those who will make it happen, and those who will wonder what happened. Which will you be? Our society has widespread and unprecedented access to information, but what do we do with it all? Who do we trust to accurately track our societal trends, interpret them, and see possibilities for the future - and how can we help to shape that future? The answers lie in Futurecast, an insider glimpse of today’s world - and tomorrow’s.

Award-winning author Navi Radjou delivers an incisive and engrossing treatment of how human beings facing climate change can reconcile our built-in drive to "do more" and "be better" with our planet's finite resources. You'll discover how we can thrive within planetary boundaries while achieving sustainable growth for generations to come.

We are about to enter a new era when the combination of human and artificial intelligence will bring about a paradigm with a potential unseen before. This book is an invitation to delve into the labyrinth of the mind, to challenge preconceived notions, and to embrace the mysticism of awareness in all of its forms.

Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political.

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

Because Israel has contributed so much to all of us, what was once just an Israelite culture has grown to become what is by and large an inherited world culture. As the scriptures promised to Abraham, "I will make your descendants countless as the dust of the earth; if anyone could count the dust upon the ground, then he could count your descendants." I believe that this scripture does hold true.

Set during WW2 in the Yorkshire valley of Dentdale, Secrets in the Dales is a heartfelt story of family, romance and one woman's determination in hard times. In the sleepy Yorkshire Dales, the peaceful existence of Sally’s family is shattered by the outbreak of the Second World War. With her...

Sensationalism about AI has reached new heights, and getting a useful understanding of it has never been more important. AI will extend and accelerate thinking, delivering unprecedented abundance. But it will also require us to navigate a path of challenges ranging from today’s issues of bias, privacy, and explainability, to job displacement through automation, and a future coexistence with superintelligent machines. This book is the roadmap to that path.

Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other.

What To Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on Artificial Intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete. Drawing upon real-world cases, data, and insight, the authors provide clear strategic guidance and actionable steps to help you and your organization move ahead in a world where exponentially developing new technologies are changing how value is created.

September 1939. Young friends Maggie Shaunessy and Lizzie Taylor are heartbroken to be evacuated from their Liverpool homes to rural Yorkshire. Lizzie is sent to live with a vicar in the village of Gargrave, while Maggie finds herself delivered by chauffeur to Hawith Hall and Lady and Lord...

We talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive? In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they map new global frontiers in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.

Dive into the most comprehensive projection of Russia’s population and ethnic landscape by the year 2070. This meticulous analysis goes far beyond national totals, providing granular, region-by-region estimates for every Oblast, Okrug, and Autonomous Region.