Few of us would question that the infrastructures of our globalized world are proof of the flat, Friedmanesque world in which we live. We manufacture our goods wherever we can get the best price and ship them anywhere the market demands efficiently. We can connect with any of hundreds of millions of people from pretty […]
Endless economic growth rests on a belief in the limitless abundance of the natural world. But when did people begin to believe that societies should—even that they must—expand in wealth indefinitely? In The Great Delusion, the historian and storyteller Steven Stoll weaves past and present together through the life of a strange and brooding nineteenth-century German […]
The “First Lady of Show Business” and the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker was a star in vaudeville, radio, film, and television. A gutsy, song-belting stage performer, she entertained audiences for sixty years and inspired a host of younger women, including Judy Garland, Carol Channing, and Bette Midler. Tucker was a woman […]
In a complex business climate, people need to make informed decisions and learn how to think flexibly. A leader’s most important asset is the ability to sense changes in the environment and adapt to them quickly. The Prepared Mind of a Leader presents an original and effective way to think more flexibly about innovation, strategy, change, and […]
Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Ph.D. is chairperson and professor of English, Salem State University, Salem, Massachusetts.. In addition to her numerous published articles and reviews, she is the editor of Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture, a historical survey of fear and paranoia in American culture. She also wrote the introduction for Veil […]
Jonathan S. Adams is a conservation biologist, writer, and former program director of the Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Knowledge and Communities Program. His latest book, Nature’s Fortune, written in collaboration with Mark R. Tercek, was published by Basic Books and was the winner of the 2014 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature Award in the category of […]
Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. He is the author of Digital […]
Eric Hinderaker is Professor of History at the University of Utah, and the author of Boston’s Massacre, published by Harvard University Press. Praised by the Wall Street Journal as “fascinating,” Boston’s Massacre explores the larger significance of the Boston Massacre — from the era of the American Revolution to our own time. Eric is also the author of […]
Like the Greeks who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the new Argonauts—foreign-born, technically skilled entrepreneurs who travel back and forth between Silicon Valley and their home countries—seek their fortune in distant lands by launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. Their story illuminates profound transformations in the global […]
Almost everyone feels the pangs of loneliness in certain moments. It can be brief and superficial—being the last one chosen for a team on the playground—or acute and severe—suffering the death of a spouse or dear friend. Transient loneliness is so common, in fact, that we simply accept it as a fact of life. Humans […]
Cosmologists are discovering, thanks to breakthroughs in the science and the technology of astrophysics, that the very first seconds, even milliseconds, after the Big Bang hold answers to many of the questions about the origins of the universe. We now know a great deal about the formation of stars and galaxies, and there is very […]
Left at the Altar is a call for the Democrats to accept a helping hand from Catholics in order to reclaim their rightful place in American politics. While Democrats are tagged with not knowing what they believe, Catholics are distinguished among the voting public for knowing exactly what they believe. It is time that the Donkey […]
William Thorndike, a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Housatonic Partners, a private equity firm with $1 billion in assets under management and offices in Boston and San Francisco. Since its founding in 1994, Housatonic has made over 60 investments in private […]
Andreas Wagner is a professor in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Zurich and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute for the study of complex systems. He is the author of Arrival of the Fittest: How Life Invents Itself, which Kirkus (in a starred review) called “A book of startling congruencies, insightful flashes and an artful enthusiasm…’ His next book, Landscapes of Evolution: Mapping the Origins of Creativity, will be published by Basic Books.
Fred Adams is professor of physics at the University of Michigan. He works in the general area of theoretical astrophysics with a focus on the study of star formation and cosmology. His first book, The Five Ages of the Universe, co-authored with Greg Laughlin, was published by the Free Press and has been translated into eight languages. Origins of Existence: How Life Emerged in the Universe was also published by the Free Press and has been translated into German, Finnish, and Russian.
Andrei Hagiu is a Visiting Associate Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was previously an Associate Professor in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on multi-sided platforms and their unique strategic challenges. His work has been published in the RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, […]