Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know

I would say that learning this material ... has lifted some of the existential weight from me. Things aren't as bad as they are trumpeted to be. In fact, they're quite a bit better, and they're getting better, and so we're doing a better job than we thought. There's more to us than we thought. We're adopting our responsibilities as stewards of the planet rapidly. We are moving towards improving everyone's life. I lived under an apocalyptic shadow my whole life. I don't want to complain about that too much, because I lived in a very rich place and I had all sorts of advantages. But the apocalyptic narrative was still extraordinarily powerful and demoralizing, and it looks to me that there are reasons to doubt its validity on all sorts of dimensions, and I'm not sure what that will do to people. Hopefully it'll make us more optimistic and positive, and less paranoid and afraid -- [and] happier with who we are, but still willing to participate in improving the future. [That will] lift some of the weight off young people who are constantly being told that the planet is going to burn to a cinder in the next 20 years. --Jordan B. Peterson, author of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life If you learn about the world through daily news and social media you have probably missed the greatest stories of our time. But don't worry, you'll quickly catch up with this tour de force. It will make you smarter--and happier. I am a card-carrying optimist, but Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy manage to make even me more hopeful about humanity.--Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of In Defence of Global Capitalism, author of Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, named by the Economist as one of the best books of 2016 In these dark times, it is good to remember just how far mankind has come, and how many seemingly impossible problems have been overcome. Keep this book to hand, open it at random, and it will fill you with hope for the future.--Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize-winning economist and Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University Read this book and find out why, if you are not an optimist, you should be.--Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Prize-winning economist and George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics, Chapman University This is an astonishing collection of positive trends. I want every young person to see it and begin to escape the indoctrination in pessimism they have been subjected to by the media and the education system. Making the world a much better place is clearly possible.--Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom There are two ways to understand the world: a constant drip of anecdotes about the worst things that have happened anywhere on the planet in the previous hour, or a bird's-eye view of the grand developments that are transforming the human condition. The first is called the news, and for your wisdom and mental health I recommend balancing it with the second. Ten Global Trends is a pleasure: gorgeous, self-contained vignettes on human progress, which you can sample at your leisure or devour in a sitting. --Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress