CREATING A LEARNING SOCIETY It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact,

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from

In The Overflowing Brain, cognitive scientist Torkel Klingberg takes us on a journey into the limits and possibilities of the brain. He suggests that we should acknowledge and embrace our desire for information and mental challenges, but try to find a balance between demand and capacity. Klingberg explores the cognitive demands, or “complexity,” of everyday life

“It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty, will be the most important economics book of the year―and maybe of the decade. Piketty, arguably the world’s leading expert on income and wealth inequality, does more than document the growing concentration of income in the hands

In this expanded and updated edition Hurst unpacks critical new research and tools for individuals and organizations to find purpose and thrive in this new era. Based on interviews with hundreds of entrepreneurs, a new survey of over 100,000 people and refined societal trends, Hurst shows that this new era is fueling demand for purpose-centered

The premise of this book is that the internal inconsistencies between economic theories – the apparently unresolvable debates between leading economists and the incoherent policies of our governments – are symptomatic of economics being in a crisis. Specifically, in a scientific crisis. The good news is that, thanks to the work of scientist and philosopher

Thanks to the rise of smartphones, GPS devices, and the internet, Pentland and his teams can study patterns of information exchange in a social network, without any knowledge of the content of the information. Using this data, they can tell with stunning accuracy how effective that network is, whether it’s a business or an entire

The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. It postulates that animals, people, even well designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or “effort”. This is perhaps best known or at least documented among researchers in the field of library and

One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and create

Today, an ever greater number of industrial economies are competing in the global market, locked in a struggle that revolves around technological ingenuity. The Lever of Riches, with its keen analysis derived from a sweeping survey of creativity throughout history, offers telling insights into the question of how Western economies can maintain, and developing nations can