Futurist Bookshelf

Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-in-One Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside the Cubicle by Joe Lamacchia and Bridget Samburg. HCI. 2009. 420 pages. $15.95.

We do our youth a disservice when we tell them they have to go to college to be successful, says landscaping-company director Lamacchia. As a successful entrepreneur who never went to college, he testifies that there are many gratifying and exciting career paths one can find without a four-year degree and the mountain of student-loan debt that goes with it. Moreover, these careers are necessities, he argues: Our society is facing shortages of skilled electricians, plumbers, construction workers, and other traders precisely because we have pushed all our young people into college and white-collar professions.

Lamacchia describes the many opportunities available for those who want to explore blue-collar professions and the resources available to them. “White-collar” readers are welcome, also—it’s never too late to change direction!

Bringing in the Future: Strategies for Farsightedness and Sustainability in Developing Countries by William Ascher. University of Chicago Press. 2009. 328 pages. Paperback. $27.50.

There are good ways to promote long-term thinking in society, and there are not-so-good ways, says economics and government professor Ascher. He identifies demonstrably effective approaches that government officials can take to encourage their citizens to save money and to refrain from high-risk behaviors, spur businesses to maximize productivity while refraining from pollution and resource waste, and prompt communities to undertake more “self-help.”

Ascher further describes the strategies that successful nongovernmental organizations employ to raise public interest in their causes, and the role they should play in encouraging reform of the economy and government. Not all “farsighted” actions are workable, however, according to Ascher. Leaders have to determine what will be most effective in given circumstances. He describes the psychology behind actual human decision making and some general guidelines that can help leaders plan accordingly.

Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence by Philip Kotler and John A. Caslione. AMACOM. 2009. 206 pages. $25.

Businesses need new approaches to dealing with uncertainty, argue marketing professor Kotler and business strategist Caslione. Traditionally, they say, a business would devise one strategy for prosperity and a Plan B—e.g., staff cuts, price slashes, and draw-downs in product development—for periods of recession. Not only will this old approach not work anymore, but it will also be hazardous to a business’s long-term viability. Companies will only prosper if they can manage both risk and opportunity simultaneously and continuously.

The authors present a comprehensive system for achieving this, with tools for making one’s business more responsive to change and more able to act decisively, react quickly, withstand stress, and rebound from setbacks. They demonstrate how companies such as Friendly’s, McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, and Royal Dutch Shell successfully applied their methods. And they show how others, including Starbucks, Citicorp, and Chrysler, suffered losses by adhering to the old playbook.

Climate Change: Simple Things You Can Do to Make a Difference by Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert. Chelsea Green Publishing. 2009. 91 pages. Paperback. $7.95.

Anyone can curb climate change, according to environmental consultant Clift and freelance writer Cuthbert. They present a comprehensive guide to decreasing the carbon footprint of everyday activities. In concisely written, illustrated chapters, they list suggestions for heating and insulating a house to reduce energy usage; ways to use less electricity while cooking, refrigerating food, or washing dishes; and overviews on new solar and wind generators that can be installed on household rooftops. Looking beyond the home, they show how readers can minimize the carbon impact of their shopping, transit, and vacation travel.

The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak. Pantheon. 2009. 337 pages. Hardcover. $27.95.

The universe may have begun with a big bang, but landmark scientific discoveries about the universe only come about after many little bangs, according to science writer Bartusiak. She tells the story of Edwin Hubble’s discovery that our universe is at least trillions of times bigger than the Milky Way, and the subsequent observation by Albert Einstein that the universe is actually expanding.

Neither man’s epiphany bolted out of the blue. Their epiphanies became apparent only after thousands of hours of toil by many lesser-known contemporaries: Vesto Slipher, Georges Lemaitre, and Milton Humason, and others who worked alongside Einstein and Hubble and helped make the two celebrities’ final, historic conclusions possible. Bartusiak recounts these researchers, their personalities, their theories, and the process of scientific discovery in which each one played a part.

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. Random House. 2008, reprint 2009. 252 pages. Paperback. $15.

Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time came about because of chance events. Some of Hollywood’s best-acclaimed screenwriters attribute their big breaks not to genius, but to luck. And stock markets boom and bust due to myriad, and seemingly unrelated, occurrences.

The world around us is abuzz with randomness, says physicist Mlodinow. This is disconcerting to us humans, because we’re innately wired to look for simple explanations and to craft mental models of how things work. Our minds have a hard time accepting chance, and we tend to panic and make poor decisions whenever chance confronts us.

We can learn to cope with chance, says Mlodinow. He identifies the “principles” that govern chance and how it plays out in business, economics, leisure, medicine, politics, sports, and other areas of human life. He maps the thought processes that we tend to undergo when chance confronts us, and the ways we can improve them.

Future: A Recent History by Lawrence R. Samuel. University of Texas Press. 2009. 244 pages. $45.

No one knows what the future holds, but that’s never stopped Americans from guessing, says cultural historian Samuel. He concludes that American culture has historically been preoccupied with the future, in part because its people tend to assume the future will be better than the present: Human ingenuity and technology will create a tomorrow of abundance, leisure, unlimited progress, and urban utopias. From time to time, though, deep apprehensions of social, economic, and political turmoil have made manifest in the cultural psyche, too.

Samuel draws from each era’s popular movies, music, television, academic literature, high-school and college textbooks, and the hundreds of predictions from its leading futurists to show how perceptions of the future have evolved over time and been shaped by both watershed socio-political events and the advancement of information technology.

Globesity: A Planet Out of Control? by Francis Delpeuch, Bernard Maire, Emmanuel Monnier, and Michelle Holdsworth. Earthscan. 2009. 180 pages. Paperback. $34.95.

“Obesity epidemics” are sweeping industrialized and developing countries across the globe, according to science journalist Monnier and public-health nutrition researchers Delpeuch, Maire, and Holdsworth. They cite studies that indicate dramatic upswings in obesity in North America, Europe, Japan, and even many developing countries, such as India and the countries of Oceania. By 2030, the authors project, more than half the world’s population might have excessive bodyweight.

These alarming trends are not simply due to individual lifestyle choices, the authors argue: They have their roots in underlying socioeconomic causes within the world’s agricultural and food production-and-supply systems. The authors retrace the history of the obesity trend, the factors that are exacerbating it, and the actions that societies can take to reverse it.

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Harvard Business Press. 2009. 340 pages. Hardcover. $29.95.

If seven cardiac patients hear their doctors say that they must change their lifestyles or they will die, only one patient will actually change, according to professional-development professor Kegan and professional-services consultant Lahey. The authors assert that change is extremely difficult, be it on the personal or the organizational level, due to ingrained thought patterns that discourage us from abandoning the status quo.

But we can overcome the anti-change impulses with the right strategies and, in so doing, unlock our true potential. Kegan and Lahey describe ideas and practices for fostered meaningful discussion and effective group problem solving. These methods have worked for the leaders of a national railway in Europe, an international financial-services company, a leading American technology company, a U.S. labor union, and many other organizations.

Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen. Oxford University Press. 2009. 275 pages. $29.95.

Within the next few years, the world will suffer a catastrophe brought about by a computer system acting independently of human oversight. Thus predict bioethicist Wallach and cognitive-science professor Allen. They worry that as robots gain more thinking capacity, the likelihood increases that some of them might use it against us.

Robots administer the daily operations of electric grids and stock markets. Designs are under way for robots that will care for the elderly and disabled, or patrol military borders and fire at targets without instruction. Such tasks will inevitably require robots to make moral decisions. Can we trust that they will do what is right?

For our own safety, Wendell and Allen argue, we should begin work now on installing moral principles in these smart machines. They describe the frameworks of potential machine morality, its current limitations, and how we might overcome them to develop workable software.

The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times by Scott D. Anthony. Harvard Business Press. 2009. 210 pages. $25.

Just because a company has less revenue does not mean it should expect to have less growth or less product development. Innovation can flourish in even the toughest of economic climates, argues innovation expert Anthony. The downturn of the past year strikes him as a uniquely fertile environment for innovation as companies, consumers, and communities are all seeking new ways to live well with less.

Businesses can succeed in this environment, but only if they master the art of “disruptive innovation,”—learning to innovate more quickly, cheaply, and with less needless risk. Anthony presents guidelines for developing and practicing these needed skills day to day: determining which expenses to cut and which ones to maintain, pursuing smart and strategic experiments, motivating creative minds in the workplace, increasing innovation productivity, and segmenting markets to successfully reach value-seeking customers.

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics by Jonathan Aldred. Earthscan. 2009. 281 pages. $12.

Economics and ethics are inseparable, whether we acknowledge it or not, says economics professor Aldred. He criticizes orthodox economic theory for its presumption that economics is purely a measure of how things are, not how they should be.

To the contrary, Aldred argues, all economic theories and polices draw on a view about how we ought to live and what we should value. But most economists go too far, in his opinion, by trying to measure the value of life purely in monetary terms—a policy is “right” because it “maximizes profits” or “wrong” because it is “anticompetitive.”

Aldred sets forth a new economics backed by an ethical framework that affirms quality of life, not just efficiency and output. His framework overturns many classic economics assumptions, such as the belief that more economic productivity equates with more happiness, that taxes are always wrong, and that people will always opt for that which is most profitable to them.

Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. Viking. 374 pages. $26.95.

What would our prehistoric ancestors say if they saw our frenetic buying and spending habits? Evolutionary psychologist Miller ponders this question, and concludes that they might think we are crazy.

We have much in common with them because we are not a “materialistic” society; we make purchases to impress other people, not to own things, Miller notes. This is a carryover from our cave-dweller days, when we lived in small groups in which status and image determined whether or not one might survive, impress friends, attract mates, and raise a family.

But the marketplace of our world is a far cry from the simple subsistence that cave dwellers knew. We are hypersocial beings, not semi-social beings like they were. Our consumer pressures to keep amassing the socially accepted items contrasts sharply with their slow-paced foraging for life’s necessities. Miller examines contemporary advertising, consumer spending trends, and the top-selling products, and he deciphers what they all say about us and our evolutionary development as Homo sapiens.

Threats in the Age of Obama edited by Michael Tanji. Nimble Books LLC. 2009. 212 pages. Paperback. $20.51.

The Obama administration will need to muster as much independent and diverse thinking as possible to confront new threats to U.S. national security very unlike those that his predecessors faced. In a series of essays edited by retired Defense Intelligence Agency officer Tanji, authors call for a reevaluation of how analysts and scholars today study and approach terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and transnational organized crime.

The essays explore the particular issues in which the updated thinking will be useful: missile defense systems; the spread of infectious diseases; the prospects for Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan, each of which has or is developing the capacity for a nuclear weapons arsenal; and dangers posed by the rapid expansion of the “infosphere.”

Urban Design: Health and the Therapeutic Environment by Cliff Moughtin, Kate McMahon Moughtin, and Paola Signoretta. Elsevier. 2009. 262 pages. Paperback. $53.95.

Humans have aspired for millennia to create cities that afford their residents “therapeutic environments” in which residents enjoy health and well-being, according to planning professor Moughtin, psychotherapist McMahon Moughtin, and human-geographer Signoretta. But therapeutic environments will require much more planning and upkeep in the future, they argue, due to shifting demographics and strained ecosystems.

The text explores theories of health and well-being, and the ways that cities throughout history strove to realize them. The authors discuss present-day urban blight; and contemporary understandings of the relationship among mind, body, and nature. They encourage planners to consider the organic relationship between a city and its bioregion, the relationship of a home to its neighborhood, and the needs of individual families. They conclude with examples of communities in which therapeutic environments are a successful reality.

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles. Ten Speed Press. 407 pages. Paperback. $18.95.

Every year since 1975, career coach Bolles has been producing updated versions of his comprehensive guide for finding jobs. This 2009 edition takes stock of the shake-up in the worldwide job market in 2008 and the ways it has radically changed job hunting.

Millions more adults are now out of work, Bolles notes, and the competition for new jobs is historically fierce. But he cautions against giving up. With a proactive attitude and some up-to-date strategies, he says, job seekers can become gainfully employed.

Bolles identifies the kinds of jobs that are available now, the five best ways to hunt for a job, how long you should expect your job search to take, the first thing you should do if your job search is taking longer than expected, what to do if you cannot find any jobs in your field, and how you can stand out above the vast sea of other applicants.

With Purpose: Going from Success to Significance in Work and Life by Ken Dychtwald and Daniel Kadlec. William Morrow. 2009. 288 pages. $25.99.

Can we find meaning in our senior years? Is it possible to experience personal growth and revitalization in a time of life that most people associate with decline? Gerontologist Dychtwald and reporter Kadlec enthusiastically answer “yes” to both questions and encourage readers to make the most of the longer lives that medicine and health practices have given them.

Speaking autobiographically and philosophically, they explain the role that your talents can play in making your post-retirement life fulfilling, satisfying, and meaningful. By using your time to help others, deepen your own relationships, and make a difference in the world, you can construct your own vision of purposeful aging as you make your “Golden Years” into years of examination, self-discovery, and achievement.