Future Politics

In his astonishing New York Times best seller, The Seven Daughters of Eve, Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes showed that nearly all Europeans are descended from seven women. Now Sykes tackles what may be the most provocative question geneticists have ever considered: Are we facing a future where men become extinct? Bold, controversial, and endlessly fascinating, Adam’s Curse is certain to spark discussion and provoke debate.

Aerospace journalist Joe Pappalardo has witnessed space rocket launches around the world, from the jungle of French Guiana to the coastline of California. In his comprehensive work Spaceport Earth, Pappalardo describes the rise of private companies in the United States and how they are reshaping the way the world is using space for industry and science. Spaceport Earth is a travelogue through modern space history as it is being made.

In The End of Life as We Know It, best-selling author Michael Guillen takes a penetrating look at how the scientific community is pushing the boundaries of morality. The End of Life as We Know It takes us into laboratories and boardrooms where these troubling advances are taking place and asks the question no scientists seem to be asking: What does this mean for the future of humanity?

At the heart of this groundbreaking book are two urgent questions: What do our young children need in the earliest years of school, and how do we ensure that they all get it? Cutting-edge research has proven that early childhood education is crucial for all children to gain the academic and emotional skills they need to succeed later in life. Children who attend quality pre-K programs have a host of positive outcomes including better language, literacy, problem solving, and math skills down the line.

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the 21st century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.

The COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly frequent climate disasters, a new war—events we might have called “unimaginable” or “unthinkable” in the past are now reality. Today it feels more challenging than ever to feel unafraid, hopeful, and equipped to face the future with optimism. How do we map out our lives when it seems impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year or next decade? What we need now are strategies to help us recover our confidence and creativity in facing uncertain futures.

Currently, 3.7 million Americans call themselves preppers. Millions more prep without knowing it. Bradley Garrett, who began writing this book years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, argues that prepping is a rational response to global, social, and political systems that are failing to produce credible narratives of continued stability. Left with a sense of foreboding fueled by disease outbreaks, increasing government dysfunctionality, eroding critical infrastructure, people all over the world are responding predictably - by hunkering down.

Hardship is now equated with victimhood. Outward displays of vulnerability in defeat are celebrated over winning unabashedly. The pursuit of excellence and exceptionalism are at the heart of American identity, and the disappearance of these ideals in our country leaves a deep moral and cultural vacuum in its wake. But the solution isn’t to simply complain about it. It’s to revive a new cultural movement in America that puts excellence first again.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people and infected millions while also devastating the world economy. The consequences of the pandemic, however, go much further: they threaten the fabric of national and international politics around the world. What will be the consequences of the pandemic, and what will a post-COVID world order look like? No institution is better suited to address these issues than Johns Hopkins University, which has convened experts from within and outside of the university to discuss world order after COVID-19.

In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montfort's approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning; instead, he reports on the work of making the future - the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book.

In this revelatory, unnerving, and ultimately hopeful book, Bremmer details how domestic and international conflicts leave us unprepared for a trio of looming crises—global health emergencies, transformative climate change, and the AI revolution. Today, Americans cannot reach consensus on any significant political issue, and US and Chinese leaders behave as if they’re locked in a new Cold War. We are squandering opportunities to meet the challenges that will soon confront us all.

According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.

For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth ruled over an institution and a family. During her lifetime she was constant in her desire to provide a steady presence and to be a trustworthy steward of the British people and the Commonwealth. But times change. Recent years have brought grief and turmoil to the House of Windsor. In The New Royals, journalist Katie Nicholl provides a nuanced look at Elizabeth’s remarkable and unrivalled reign, with new stories from Palace courtiers and aides, documentarians, and family members.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

In AI for Good: Applications in Sustainability, Humanitarian Action, and Health, a team of veteran Microsoft AI researchers delivers an insightful and fascinating discussion of how one of the world's most recognizable software companies is tackling intractable social problems with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). In the book, you'll see real in-the-field examples of researchers using AI with replicable methods and reusable AI code to inspire your own uses.

From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class.

Do you feel like we’re in a permacrisis? Chances are you feel some anxiety about the state of the world right now. Mohamed, Michael and Gordon certainly did. These three friends – who between them have almost a century of expertise in international economics, business and global government – began talking over zoom at the start of the pandemic. They wanted to discuss the challenges the world was facing: unanticipated shocks, poor policy responses, struggling coordination. But the more they talked, the more they realised there was nothing pre-ordained about the gloomy path we’re on now.

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

Si hay un futuro que imaginar es ancestral, pues ya está presente en el aquí y ahora y en lo que existe a nuestro alrededor, en los ríos, las montañas y los árboles que son nuestros parientes. Krenak propone una mirada que desafía y enfrenta los supuestos que sostienen la mentalidad occidental.

Spontaneous remission, the placebo effect, and energy healing — these phenomena have baffled the medical community for decades. What do all these marvels tell us? “Our current models of medicine fall short of understanding the depths of our human healing potential,” says Dr. Shamini Jain. “We are on the cusp of finally becoming awake to our human healing potential. A growing number of scientists are exploring a new path — a true expansion of science joined with understandings from ancient concepts of spirituality.”