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The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Far from being a naive hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against...
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"Today, many believe that progress is a word to be avoided, a relic from a past, the dangerous product of an era of intellectual naivety that would be best forgotten. Yet, the idea of progress is rooted in a human impulse that is both profound and essential, a way of interpreting history without which our ability to plan the future, our very identity would be at stake. Written just before the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic-which is now putting...
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"William Elliot Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed the Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as Prohibition was repealed. He also details the story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the ideals of the World's Fair with her own rags-to-riches story and brought sex...
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Is civilization teetering on the edge of a cliff? Or are we just climbing higher than ever? Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more. Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better...
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Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water -- the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing...
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In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner's--want to change into a tourist spot.
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A wonderfully imaginative and surprising debut novel about the inexorable approach of modernity.
"Imagine the time of my grandfather's grandfather, when the darkness was newly separated from the light. Society was only a shadowy image of what it would soon become. This was Mandragora before my invention and all that it set in motion."-from The Testament of Yves Gundron
So begins Yves Gundron's account of the strange events to befall Mandragora....
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In his classic treatise Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner examines why great societies thrive and die. He argues that it is dynamism, not decay, that is dramatically altering the landscape of American society. The twentieth century has brought about change more rapidly than any previous era, and with that came advancements, challenges, and often destruction. Gardner cautions that "a society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen...
12) Do humankind's best days lie ahead?: Pinker and Ridley vs. De Botton and Gladwell : the munk debates
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Munk debates volume 0
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"Progress. It is one of the animating concepts of the modern era. From the Enlightenment onwards, the West has had an enduring belief that through the evolution of institutions, innovations, and ideas, the human condition is improving. This process is supposedly accelerating as new technologies, individual freedoms, and the spread of global norms empower individuals and societies around the world. But is progress inevitable? Its critics argue that...
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""The quality of [his] thinking and [his] writing is...second to none in the world of finance."--Jack Bogle, founder, Vanguard "That great explainer of everything to everybody." --Richard Flannery, CEO, The Investment Fund for Foundations Our world is burdened with disappearing economic growth, a deteriorating environment, limited natural resources, and not just too many people, but too many old people. Really? While such pessimism may mark you as...
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It has long been recognized that most standard of living increases are associated with advances in technology, not the accumulation of capital. Yet 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, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely determined by the pace at which they close that gap. Therefore, how countries learn...
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Technological advancement, economic development, population increase - are they signs of a thriving society, or too much of a good thing? Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, 'Surviving Progress' is a provocative documentary that explores the concept of progress in the modern world, guiding through the major 'progress traps' facing civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment.
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Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good for You, Steven Johnson's Future Perfect argues that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to drug research to arts funding and education. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview - influenced by the success of the Internet but not dependent on...
18) Broken Icarus: the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the golden age of aviation, and the rise of fascism
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"In Broken Icarus, author David Hanna tracks the inspiring trajectory of aviation leading up to and through the World's Fair of 1933, as well as the field of flight's more sinister ties to fascism domestic and abroad to present a unique history that is both riveting and revelatory"--
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In 2393, a historian of the Second People's Republic of China reviews the "Penumbral Age" (1988-2093), when politicians, corporations, and scientists ignored the statistical significance of climate disaster. Carbon dioxide warming the planet, deadly summer heat and fires, and the collapse of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet lead to a second Black Death and "the Great Collapse" of the Western world.
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When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, a staggering 13 million American workers were jobless and many millions more of their family members were equally in need. Desperation ruled the land. What people wanted were jobs, not handouts-the pride of earning a paycheck. And in 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs...
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