Learning from Books
Although we acknowledge the awesome accomplishment of the internet, for this initiative, the influence of authors and books has been more powerful. Many of the books on our list of works consulted were written by experts in their fields, by big thinkers and superb storytellers, always (ALWAYS) with the guidance and assistance of professional editors, researchers, and publishers. In short, we believe that the book is the very best invention (so far) for the serious conveyance of contextual information, and, after movies (and some TV), the second best way to tell a good story that we’ve invented (so far). These books will remain on our collective bookshelf throughout the development and production process, and we hope you will add to our list via comments.
Knowledge & Contextual Understanding
MAPS OF TIME: An Introduction to Big History - David Christian (University of California Press, 2005)
Big History combines cosmology, astronomy, geology, biology, human history, and other disciplines into a single, sweeping story with origins before the universe began. This is a sensible way to understand history and science--as a connected series of ideas, events and developments. In fact, Bill Gates has been working with the author (an Australian professor) to develop a new high school curriculum based upon the ideas in this book. If you'd like to learn more, visit The Big History Project, an online course. They call it "a framework for all knowledge." That may be overstepping, but only to a small degree.
The Outer Limits Of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us - Noson S. Yanofsky (MIT Press, 2013)
Some books are best understood with an example. Try this one: the ship of Theseus, which won many battles and was therefore allowed to linger in the port for hundreds of years. Over time, it began to rot, so the good people began to replace rotten planks with new ones. That way, they figured, the ship would last longer. Reconstruction and restoration were, and remain, common practice, but the ship, and the practice, raise some questions. With each each new plank, a portion of the original ship, rotten though it may have been, disappears. In time, most of the ship is composed of new planks, so it’s reasonable to wonder how much of the old ship still exists. Eventually, the answer may be none at all. That's the spirit of the book: a consideration of what we know, what we believe, and the impact of reason and logic. As we think about learning, this is a book that stretches our sense of reason.
The Half Life Of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date - Samuel Arbesman (Current, 2012)
Contrary to popular thinking, facts are temporary, maleable, and exist for limited periods of time. Once again, this is a mind-bending way of looking at learning, contrary to the way that we learned in school (it's difficult to build a final exam on the basis of facts that don't remain facts for too long.) For example, consider "doubling time"--the amount of time required for the amount of current knowledge in any particular field to double (for mathematics, the doubling occurs in 63 years, in geology, 46). How long until half a chemistry textbook is out of date? How about precision? Consider how much more we know about the human brain as a result of radically improved imaging--every new bit of information changes the framework of knowledge. Therefore: knowledge based upon facts is always fluid.
Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandira to the Internet - Ian F. McNeely with Lisa Wolverton (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)
The head-spinning theory of the other books in this section gains some stability, or at least, some structure as this book looks at about 2,300 years of history, focusing on six key transformations (we are now in the seventh). The moments: the construction of the Library of Alexandria; the laboratory, the monastery, the university, the Republic of Letters, and the disciplines. To this list, we would certainly add the digital revolution, an update of the old concept of Alexander: to gather all of the world's knowledge (or, at least, the history and current lot of facts and statistics). We've done just that with the internet--but now, we're all faced with questions about reliability, relevance, accuracy, and other new issues that come about as knowledge becomes a participatory sport open to all.
Too Big To Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room - David Weinberger (Basic Books, 2011)
During the past decade, many professors have written books about the meaning of the digital revolution. Inevitably, the conversation presses on to questions about whether we are more enlightened than ever before, less well-informed than ever before, or suspended between the two. Weinberger suggests we open access to a broader range of facts; link everything in; dig deeply into institutions to make their knowledge available to everyone; and relentlessly teach so that we all gain a better understanding of how our world works, and how it might work in the future. We like the book because it is provocative--it encourages modern conversations about knowledge, understanding and learning.
A History Of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Karen Armstrong (Borzoi Books, 1993)
A classic. "This searching, profound comparative history of the three major monotheistic faiths fearlessly illuminates the sociopolitical ground in which religious ideas take root, blossom and mutate" (Publisher's Weekly). "From classical philsophy and medieval mysticism to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the modern age of skepticism, Karen Armstrong performs the near miracle of distilling the intellectual history of monotheism" (Washington Post World). For our purposes, few books offer this type of sweeping history and contextual presentation. To study transformative thought and beliefs (and the resulting actions) is to approach an understanding of faith and wisdom. Armstrong manages to do all of this without resorting to blind faith. She, like we, really wants to make sense of the whole idea of beliefs, faith, religion and God.
Legal & Political Theory (U.S.)
America's Constitution: A Biography - Akhil Reed Amar (Random House, 2005)
Written by a popular Yale Law professor, this "biography" is more like a tour of every key concept in the U.S. Constitution: how the concept came about, the negotitations that resulted in the particular words and connected ideas, the impact of those decisions (good, bad and otherwise). It's very much like studying one-on-one with a master teacher who will happily answer every specific question with context and, usually, a good story, too. Amar is also the author of an equally useful guide to The Bill Of Rights (1997).
America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By - Akhil Reed Amar (Basic Books, 2012)
This approach is consistent with our own: tell a story, then consider what else ought to be understood. Of course, there is no unwritten Constitution, but there are a great many common practices, laws, rules, treaties, agreements, and other formal and informal designs that guide our lives as individuals, municipalities, states and nations. For those who adhere to the Constitution as the be-all and end-all, this is disruptive stuff. For those who prefer a wide perspective, this book provides wonderful examples of thinking from multiple viewpoints.
The Second Amendment: A Biography - Michael Waldman (Simon & Schuster, 2014)
When we were preparing our own script about individual gun use and the role of the Second Amendment, we needed a good book to provide an overview of only that Amendment, not the whole Bill of Rights. We needed a book that covered the original language of the Amendment, the history of its construction, and the various U.S. Supreme Court cases (including the most recent DC v. Heller.) Waldman wrote the book we needed. We were so inspired by his clear thinking, we included some of his own concepts in a constructed interview--the first time we had considered the idea of one of our characters actually interviewing an expert. The connection between books, authors, and our own interest in shared understanding came into focus when we read this book.
Dream Of A Nation: Inspiring Ideas for a Better America - Tyson Miller (SEE Innovation, 2011)
A wonderfully optimistic book about what America could and should be, filled with graphs, graphics, and photos from people from every walk of life. It's all about resetting priorities so that democracy serves all of the people: terms like "post-partisan," "common purpose," "bold and innovative" and "open and transparent" lead to articles about citizen participation in budgeting and decision-making. Great material on living sustainably, control of waste, income equality, green jobs, carbon-free electricity-- important ideas, clearly explained. We want to work with the people who created this book (clearly, it was a community effort).
The New Deal: A Modern History - Michael Hiltzik (Free Press, 2011)
In the 1930s, FDR dramatically reengineered the role of the Federal government in the US. The result: for nearly a century, the American people have enjoyed Social Security, and a wide range of social services. This book frames the question effectively: just what is the role of a national government, and what are the limits of a government’s involvement in the public good? We believe this debate ought to be made more lively, in part because ineffective schools, prison, poverty, urban disasters, and income inequality are so central to what ought to be a major, ongoing national discussion. If we were to construct a new deal for the 21st century, this book offers a fine starting place for a basic plan.
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress - and a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig (Twelve, 2011)
Day-to-day politics ought to be the domain of news and journalism, not education. Professor Lawrence Lessig, known for his provocative work at the intersection of technology and intellectual property law, is asking serious questions about the future of The Republic. The fundamental problem: special interest groups, including big companies, big industries, unions, and others with vast money to spend now control the agenda, and the decisions, made by our legislators. This is accomplished by funding political campaigns that cost so much money, candidates are unable to raise the funds in any other way. This gift economy is spectacular in its size and influence. So: this is not a book about politics. Instead, it’s a book about economics, foolish decisions, and fundamental thinking about what a country ought to do, ought to be.
Visual Storytelling & Maps
The Atlas Of The Real World: Mapping the Way We Live - Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman & Anna Barford (Thames & Hudson, 2009)
Maps encourage visual learners by providing pathways from one place/idea to another, and also provide a global view that is difficult to achieve in other media. As we develop our concepts, “flat” maps and “interactive maps” are often more useful than video—especially when we must convey patterns of behavior over extended periods of time.
The Manga Guide To Calculus - Hiroyuki Kojima & Shin Togami (No Starch Press & Ohmsha, Ltd., 2009)
We love this book--and the whole series of Manga Guides that explain complicated ideas through the friendly storytelling that graphic novels provide. As with any good story, these are rich in characters and tricky situations. As the characters navigate their way through problems by using calculus, the reader gains a sense of how it works, why it works, and why calculus matters. This refreshing approach to mathematics education is consistent with our plans for a wide range of adult learning activities. Other books in the series include Molecular Biology, Statistics, Biochemistry and the Universe. Lots of fun--a cool way to learn.
The Atlas Of Global Inequalities - Ben Crow & Suresh K. Lodha (University of California Press, 2011)
As the cover art suggests, this is not a book about rights granted, but instead, it's about rights taken away, often through genocide, forced migration, threatened cultures, and other failures of human progress. Along with the books about global inequalities and human migration, this slender atlas makes this bleak adventure more clear, more comprehensible (and reprehensible). This is not material that makes it into the popular mainstream--it's too difficult to digest. But that doesn't mean it should be ignored or forgotten. Any version of our curriculum must bring this material to life--with appropriate respect paid, but with a sense that this, too, is part of how humans conduct themselves (ourselves) here on earth.
The Atlas Of Human Rights: Mapping Violations of Freedom Around the Globe - Andrew Fagan (University of California Press, 2010)
This is one of a series of small books filled with maps, charts, photographs and commentary--a far better way to understand trends than simply reading about them. A two-page spread that graphs each nation's life expectancy against average household income is compelling, moreso when the graph is shown on the same spread as a multi-colored map of nations displaying places where people live longer--and don't. Add: a chart of minimum wage, and another about land reform legislation or deforestation, and the picture comes into sharper focus. No surprises here, but strong encouragement to gather abundant information and then think holistically.
Books by Edward R. Tufte (Graphic Press, 1983 - 2006)
Along with Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (below), the four key works by Yale professor Edward Tufte are among the most provocative books in our library because they explain, and challenge, the ways in which we perceive and understand the visual world and the stories it contains. Together, they provide a theoretical foundation for the presentation of quantitive (and in the latter volumes, qualitative) information on print, in physical environments, and to our purpose, on screens. What's covered? One good example from the most recent book (the green one) considers the ways that we visualize linked infomation and causality by employing circles, ovals, arrows, cartographic conventions (thin and thick lines, intersections, heirarchies.) Another: the effective combination of words, numbers and images to clearly convey trends or constructed environments. Yes, this is theoretical, and no, it's not a running how-to for infographic designers. Instead, it is material to browse every so often in order to get a better fix on the ways that we use visual tools to communicate important ideas.
Geography & Migration
The New Atlas Of World History: Global Events At a Glance - John Haywood (Princeton University Press, 2011)
When we want to know what happened when, and where it happened, we reach for this historical atlas. In 1530 (one of about sixty milestones), the world's largest city was Beijing, followed by Vijayanagara, Constantinople, Paris and Hangzhou. North America was dominated by tribes of hunter-gatherers, and a portion of what we now call China was held by the Ming Empire. The accompanying timeline expels the Jews from Portugal, originates the Japanese Tea Ceremony, and sees the completion of Michelangelo's David and DaVinci's Mona Lisa. By 1650, the power had shifted toward Europe: Constantinople was the world's largest city; Paris was third and London was fourth. (We could go on...)
People On The Move: An Atlas of Migration - Russell King, and others (University of California Press, 2010)
Written by five geography professors, this colorful book of maps and explanations provides a “grant narrative” of migration through the ages: why humans left one area to settle another; motivations from climate change and economic opportunity to widespread acts of violence and a wish for peace. Map-based history provides a fine example of alternative forms of storytelling, and encourages our team to think in terms of graphic explanations and the potential of on-screen interactivity (beyond the limitations of a book).
The Revenge Of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate - Robert D. Kaplan (Random House, 2013)
Lots of interesting ideas here. One could make a case for geography as a primary determinant for less developed cultures. Is New York City's location the key to its 21st or 22nd century success--as it may have been when the its harbor and location between Boston and Philadelphia mattered? What to make of Sweden's cool location just near enough to Europe and just far enough away from its center? History is woven into the geography: "The suffix 'istan' is Persian for 'place,' meaning that the 'stans' of Central Asia — Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the rest — reflect a map drawn in Tehran." Consider, too, Poland, which, for a time during the 20th century, disappeared from the map completely, one in a series of aggressions from either Russia (on one side) or the Germans (on the other)--a reminder of the equally complicated interaction of political and physical geography. Maps reveal so much--and with digital technology now capable of mapping people and their habits (electricity use, for example), our understanding expands.
Changing the World, Owning the Future
World Changing: A User's Guide For the 21st Century - Alex Steffan & Carissa Bluestone (Abrams, 2011)
A handy paperback guide to the future, amply illustrated and provocative. This is a mind-expanding book that shows just how far into the future we have already progressed. Many of the ideas were new to us, or, at least, expansions beyond what we knew to be possible or practical. For example, why not reinvent the public bus for high-speed commuting? Lots of items for further exploration here: empowering women, micro-finance, holistic problem solving, ending violence, sustainable timber, nanotechnology. There are enough ideas in this book to keep most curious adults busy for a lifetime. An amazing piece of work!
Who Owns The Future? - Jaron Lanier (Simon & Schuster, 2013)
The future is ours to lose. In exchange for free internet searches, discounts on books and other merchandise, posting pictures of family and friends, and playing games, we’re giving it away: giving away our means to earn a living, giving away our privacy and most personal information, giving away copyright protection, our health care data, our time. We're making large companies and internet entrepreneurs wealthy. From the book cover's blurbs: "Lanier asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class… In this ambitious and deeply humane book, Lanier charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow. It is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the web.” This is type of divergent thinking that adds weight and illumination to our discussions. We wish there were more books that presented alternative views to important social issues.
Problema: Who Are We In The 21st Century (film) - Ralf Schmerberg (Mindpirates, 2010)
This is not a book. It's an extraordinary film that can be hard to find. We learned about it from the always-inspiring Jonathan Granoff, who is trying to eliminate nuclear weapons from planet Earth. Jonathan was was one of 112 very smart people sitting around a table, speaking their mind, about the world's issues, with every word recorded (on 100 small video cameras). The people came from around the world with extraordinary resumes and extraordinary ideas about our future. Among the many questions about religion and technology, poverty & wealth, war & peace: "How do we perceive our environment? What relationship does the individual have to the group? What it means to be a human in the 21st century? The thoughts of the intellectuals participating in this are juxtaposed with a montage archival footage that puts into context our current and historical crises." BTW: This is a gorgeous film with extensive mind-lifting imagery (the conversation propels the film, but does not dominate.)
The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time - Jeffrey D. Sachs (Penguin Books, 2005)
From the author’s website: “Ultimately, The End of Poverty leaves readers with an understanding, not just of how grave the problem of poverty is, but how solvable it is—and why making the necessary effort is a matter of both moral obligation and strategic self-interest of the rich countries. a work of astounding intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous world for us all.” What we like best: Dr. Sachs stands up and shouts, “this is a problem that we can solve!” Along the way, he has endured frustration, but fundamentally, he’s on a track that ought to be pursued by other big thinkers. How about more books about the eradication of illiteracy, for example, or personal violence? Or drug-related crimes... Really big ideas deserve the spotlight!
Economics, Philosophy, Psychology
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (Third Edition) - Thomas Sowell (Basic Books, 2007)
A standout among the many (thick) economics books that have been available for so long, Sowell’s work breaks it down so that every concept becomes clear. This is not rarefied material; Sowell just happens to be a good writer who explains economics in a way that most people can understand.
The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - DK Publishing (DK Adult, 2012)
An elegant chronology of economic ideas, thought leaders, practical applications, and more—told with pictures, call-out quotes, and concise-but-comprehensive text that never runs too long. An extremely useful reference, and, happily, one in a series: the books about psychology, religion, and philosophy are equally good. Ultimately, the separated concepts of micro- and macro-economics, supply, demand, and behavior are interesting to view on their own, but, of course, they never exist in isolation: supply makes sense only when it is paired with demand, and the combination of the two only make sense within the context of lives that include real people making real decisions for survival and personal gain: the small view and the large one, the magnifying glass and the telescope, the idea and its opposite. That's what makes all of this endlessly fascinating--and such powerful grist for those whose mill wheels are constantly turning.
A People's Guide to the Federal Budget - Mattea Kramer (Interlink Books, 2012)
The National Priorities Project is a nonprofit organization that helps Americans to understand how our government earns and spends money. The budget is worth over $3 trillion--46% from personal income tax, 32% from payroll taxes, and 13% from corporate income tax (the rest, about 10%, is sales ("excise") tax, customs duties and miscellaneous). Where does the money go? (This is something that every American ought to know, but most people don't.) In fact, the answer is somewhat complicated, but several large pie slices simplify the answer. The biggest single slice is "unemployment, Social Security and Labor" at 33%, followed by Medicare and Health at 27%, and Military at 16%--that's 3/4 of the pie. After we pay 6% for debt service, everything else is under 5%: education, housing, government operations, energy and environment, food and agriculture, transportation and foreign affairs. The good people at the NPP have a sense of mission and a sense of humor--the book is fun to read. They would be an interesting creative and editorial partner for future projects.
The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - Nigel Benson, Joannah Ginsburg, Voula Grand, Merrin Lazyan, Marcus Weeks, & Catherine Collin (DK Publishing, 2012)
One of the more exciting aspects of our new initiatives is the combination of disciplines. The Economics book sits beside the one about psychology, and another about politics and another about religion. All of these domains are closely related, overlapping in their own peculiar ways, time and time again. That's the way the world works, and it's the way adults learn, too. While it's helpful for our creative staff to be able to reach for individual volumes about individual topics, their process results in a coherent mash-up of all of these topics, and more that may not be so elegantly described because they are new, or forgotten, or discarded domains.
Working With Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman (Bantam Books, 1998)
Daniel Goleman was writing about science and psychology for The New York Times when he began focusing on an exciting concept that he called Emotional Intelligence. That's a book in itself, one of the better 1980s explorations into popular psychology. In some ways, this book is even better than the first because it focuses on the intersection of emotional intelligence and the transactions associated with workplace behavior and exchange. Those roots run deep--as far back as the most ancient markets, when buyer and seller would attempt to understand one another so that a trade could be concluded with goods, not violence. The human interaction is the part that's relevant to our explorations--how do humans get what they want, get along, serve their greater needs, and manage to make progress as a society, too?
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley (Harper, 2010)
Overall, the trajectory is positive, so there is good reason (that is, solid, reasoned thinking) for optimism; on average, people live nearly 20 years longer than we did a half century ago. We’re smarter, less likely to kill one another, more virtuous, and far less likely to starve. Many cities are thriving. Those are the most obvious indicators. Dig deeper and trade may be the determinant that separates humans from, for example, the unsuccessful neanderthals, or other smart animals (whales, dolphins, etc.). Ridley's optimism is based, largely, upon the remarkable success of human exchange--and the ways that exchange promotes literacy, discourages violence, encourages innovation, and generates long-term prosperity.
The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained - Will Buckingham, Douglas Burnham, Peter J. King, Clive Hill, Marcus Weeks & John Marenbon (DK Publishing, 2011)
We love this "Big Ideas Simply Explained" book series because large domains (Philosophy, Psychology, etc.) are set up in small pieces that can be easily understood--without dumbing down the material. More or less, the ideas are arranged as a series of chronological articles, some biographical. Here, each idea is set up in a kind of flow chart so it's easy to see and understand the origin of each idea, and its relationship to other philosophical constructs. It's a global survey, so Siddhartha Guatama (c.563-483BCE) is followed by Confucius (551-479BCE), then by Heraclitus (c.535-475BCE) and Socrates (469-399BCE). The result: an interesting montage that takes us from "Happy is he who has overcome his ego" to "The life which is unexamined is not worth living" in a span of less than a century.
Human Achievement, Communities, Cities
World Peace And Other 4th Grade Achievements - John Hunter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013)
This is so much more than a book. It’s what school ought to be—a collaborative exercise in conflict resolution, collaborative problem-solving, and skills acquired through exciting large-scale activities. Why? Because learning this way is thrilling, because education in this particular fourth grade class is largely self-motivated, and because learning is fun! (A cornerstone of our entire world view, learning is one of the most interesting ways to spend time.) This is a project whose story is told in book form and as a film (watch the trailer). You can also watch a TED talk, and visit the World Peace Game Foundation to contribute to the cause. This is an inspiring example of how much independent media can contribute to learning—and precisely the kind of project that we plan to embrace.
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books - Aaron Lansky (Algonquin Books, 2005)
"How much can one person do?" is optimistically answered by Aaron Lansky who found himself drawn to a mission: saving the literature of a once-great culture, much diminished by modern times. Heroically battling against time--the last great generation of Yiddish readers is dying, and their books are disappearing--Lansky spends decades pursuing a wild scavenger hunt for piles, boxes, shelves, libaries, personal collections of old books. Of course, the books are only part of the story--the people who own the books want to make a deeper connection, to see the legacy of their culture continue, and their means to that end is Lansky, the Yiddish book collector. And so, on each visit, he fills his handtruck with boxes of bound volumes, and his tummy with rugelach, tea, chicken soup, and a sampling of the Yiddish foods and love that are not so easy to store away in a museum.
The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways - Earl Swift (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)
Given our interest in contextual storytelling, Swift’s book caught our attention because it’s such a good example of a massive, transformative story. He sets a high standard for history and progress, international comparisons, economic and social impact, and the pop culture fascination with cars, highways, even road signs. Swift also addresses the big question of a system designed for a fifty year span, now overdue for replacement without a plan in sight.
A Country Of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America - Vishaan Chakarabarti (Metropolis Books, 2013)
The key concept is “density”—the number of dwelling units per acre. A nice American home is situated on about 1/4 or 1/3 of an acre, even nicer homes are part of acre lots. With that level of density, the only economically viable means of transportation is the car. (Lots of expense, pollution, etc.) To rationalize a bus, we need to up the game to 10-20 dwellings per acre: low-slung apartment buildings. Rail transportation begins to make sense at around 30-40 dwellings per acre, but it really sings when there are 100 or more. How do we find enough space for 100 dwellings on a single acre? Don’t think in terms of ground area; instead, think up. A book of provocative ideas about American cities may shift your perception--it's another of those books that frames clear thinking by offering alternative perspectives.
Triumph Of The City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier - Edward Glaeser (Penguin Books, 2011)
The economic viability of urban centers has been widely discussed, but within the past few years, we've learned that cities tend to be environmentally superior to suburbs or rural centers, filled with people who are more economically productive than those who live elsewhere. “Cities magnify humanity’s strengths…”—that’s the core premise, and he supports it with examples from sources far and wide (Boston, Bangalore, Vancouver, Kinshasa, etc.). He rails against crummy public policy decisions: spending a fortune on federal highways and subsidized gas prices that encourage behavior contrary to the public good. Once again, it’s the big ideas that we find most attractive—because the question is not whether Glaeser is ultimately “right” or “wrong” but why were aren’t all learning, thinking, discussing and developing core wisdom about the places in which we live and work.
The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration - Isabel Wilkerson (Vintage, 2011)
Beginning around 1915, six million people left their native land hoping for a better life. Nearly all of them were Americans, but they were poor, without prospects. For the next half century, they left the South, many for northern cities where they knew a relative or felt they could find work, some for the west, where they hoped Jim Crow would not be a factor in their lives. They left in faith, and without much information. Three of them were fortunate because their stories were told, in considerable detail, by a compassionate, literate, well-informed journalist named Isabel Wilkerson. History is not often told with this sort of personal insight--or so skillfully. Two lessons learned: first and foremost, some storytellers are extraordinary. If a story needs to be told, the person who tells the story is no less important than the story itself. Second, too often forgotten in these times: wisdom is passed from one generation to the next.
A History Of Warfare - John Keegan (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)
As you might surmise, we’re big fans of peace, and we perceive war/violence as a failure of human imagination. But that shouldn’t limit our willingness to explore and rationalize a world we may not understand. War is part of human life on earth, and nobody digs into the details with the intensity of historian John Keegan. Mostly, Keegan focused on the past 4,000 years— he moves from primitive means and motivations into the age of atomic bombs. PW: “He characterizes warriors as the protectors of civilization rather than as its enemy and maintains that war is ‘entirely a masculine activity.’” Lots of grist for our mill.
Cognitive Science, How the Mind Works
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Era of Information Overload - Daniel J. Levitin (Dutton, 2014)
A 2014 NY Times best-seller about the intersection of cognitive science and daily life, this is one of our favorite books about the brain and the mind. Thankfully, the book is well-organized in ways that are extremely useful to our own pursuits. It begins with a clear scientific explanation of attention and memory--the two key components in any learning entertprise. Then, Levitin organizes our homes, our relationships, our time, and our business, stopping for an important side trip through decision-making (with an emphasis on really tough decisions about personal health). Ultimately, his path leads to the same place that we're probably heading: what do we teach our children?
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are - Sebastian Seung (Mariner Books, 2013)
What a great book! After reading it, the book dominated our conversations for months. A connectome is, in the words of the brilliantly clear writer and MIT scientist Sebastian Seung: “the totality of connections between the neurons in [your] nervous system.” Of course, “unlike your genome, which is fixed from the moment of conception, your connectome changes throughout your life. Neurons adjust…their connections (to one another) by strengthening or weakening them. Neurons reconnect by creating and eliminating synapses, and they rewire by growing and retracting branches. Finally, entirely new neurons are created and existing ones are eliminated, through regeneration.” In other words, the key to who we are is not located in the genome, but instead, in the connections between our brain cells–and those connections are changing all the time.
How To Create A Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed - Ray Kurzweil (Viking, 2012)
All of Ray Kurzweil’s books are provocative, but this one is especially useful as we consider how humans learn, think, process information, and conceive the future. Kurzweil first deconstructs the operation of the human brain, then considers the processing and storage resources required to replicate at least some of those operations with digital devices available today or likely to be available in the future. At first, this seems like wildly ridiculous thinking. A hundred pages later, it’s just an elaborate math exercise built on a surprisingly rational foundation. Kurzweil: “Our intelligence has enabled us to overcome the restrictions of our biological heritage and to change ourselves in the process. We are the only species that does this.” Is the mind a computer? The tricky question is defining consciousness, and, by extension, defining just what is meant by a human mind. That’s a discussion that we will pursue with gusto.
Teach Your Children Well - Madeline Levine Ph.D. (Harper, 2012)
Dr. Levine is a California psychologist who understands child development with refreshing clarity. Her candor may upset parents and children whose focus is abundant personal accomplishment. Her priorities reside elsewhere. For example, she addresses the vitality of self-esteem as the positive result of a child’s own decisions and accomplishments. In opposition, she expresses grave concern about the distortion of self-esteem as narcissism, self-indulgence and materialism, which results in a higher level of distortion related to entitlement, grade inflation, and sad misconceptions about self-worth. She explains the core idea of her book- “Here’s the reality: kids who are pressured, sleep-deprived, and overly focused on by parents convinced that without significant oversight and intervention, their children are not likely to be successful, [and] are at high risk for emotional, psychological and academic problems.” Madeline, you will be hearing from us—and not just to talk about children.
Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life - Todd B. Kashdan (Harper Perennial, 2010)
”By being curious, we explore. By exploring, we discover. When this is satisfying, we are more likely to repeat it. By repeating it, we develop competence and mastery. By developing competence and mastery, our knowledge and skills grow. As our knowledge and skills grow, we stretch who we are and what our life is about. That’s the starting place. When Professor Kashdan offers curiosity as the opposite of certainty, he broadens the argument to society’s need for closure, specific answers, one way of looking at the world. Curiosity creates possibilities. The need for certainty narrows them. Curiosity creates energy; the need for certainty depletes it. Curiosity results in exploration; the need for certainty creates closure. Curiosity creates movement; the need for certainty is about replaying events. Curiosity creates relationships; the need for certainty creates defensiveness. Creativity is about discovery; the need for certainty is about being right.
Sesame Street
"G" Is For Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street - edited by Shalom Fisch and Rosemarie T. Truglio (Children's Television Workshop) (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001)
Written by Sesame Street researchers, this book provides a wonderful overview of the use of research in the development and mission of Sesame Street with details about formative and summative research, the CTW model, curriculum development, and collaboration between academics and creative professionals. An extremely useful guidebook, written by true believers.
Sesame Street And The Reform Of Children's Television - Robert W. Morrow (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)
Just as we are working with the context of our times—media and learning were just beginning to intersect for children (young learners) in the 1960s. The powerful trio of Street Gang, “G” is for Growing and this book provide a great deal of context and practical information for the next generations of learning media—and not just for children.
Education and School
Digital Schools: How Technology Can Transform Education - Darrell M. West (Brookings Institution, 2013)
Conventional public schools are “arranged to make things easy for the teacher who wishes quick and tangible results.” Furthermore, “the ordinary school impress[es] the little one into a narrow area, into a melancholy silence, into a forced attitude of mind and body….if we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” As forward-thinking educators fill their office shelves with books praising the merits of each new wave of reform, and praise the likes of Institute for Play, few initiatives take hold with the broad and deep impact that is beginning to define a digital education. West makes his case for the full integration of media and digital technology for the current generation of school students, and recognizes the powerful status quo as traditional thinkers go no farther than mapping digital tools onto existing curriculum. The big step–too large for most contemporary U.S. classrooms–is toward personalized learning and personalized assessment, and a new role for schools, teachers and students. A useful survey.
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns - Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, Curtis W. Johnson (McGraw-Hill, 2008)
This is innovation expert Christensen's book about education. Bear in mind that Christensen is very specific about the ways of innovation; disruptive innovation is vastly different from incremental innovation. New forms of education do not compete with contemporary norms. Instead, they focus on unserved or undesireable markets, or create their own where none existed before. Then, they bypass organizations and institutions too large or cumbersome to change before they implode. For example, the multitude of online courses don't compete with the colleges; they offer a far wider range of curriculum than any brick-and-mortar college could possibly offer. They get the job done with no classrooms, no full-time teachers, and no physical contact. That's just one example, outlined way back in '08, that is now commonplace.
College: What It Is and What It Should Be - Andrew Delbanco (Princeton University Press, 2012)
It’s actually fun to read, not stuffy at all, rather like a good lecture about the dubious history, purpose, and results of a college education. And, a celebration of the remarkable. Early in the book, Abigail Adams complains about the current state of students, professors and education in general–that’s in 1776, but the complaints and criticisms date back to Greek and Roman times. From Ohio State economics professor Richard Vedder: “with the possible exception of prostitution, teaching is the only profession that has had absolutely no productivity advance in the 2400 years since Socrates.” With regard to a well-educated citizenry—what Professor Delbanco calls “the incubation of citizenship”—he recognizes its inadequacy among legislators, and the irony in that; they tend toward the more practical, and, in the long run, perhaps less significant concern about the need for a population that understands ideas and makes wise decisions. Bravo!
What Videogames Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy - James Paul Gee (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Gee is an influential professor at Arizona State University who has been studying videogames in learning longer than most in his field. Among those who promote videogame use in learning, his theories are well-known. Many are intutitive, a natural expression of learning: putting players in control of the learning experience: committment to learning, achieving goals, employing meta-level thinking during and after the game, the importance of design, the importance of gaining competence. Many of these principles apply to our endeavors, and not only to our anticipated use of games as part of a varied learning experience. In essence, this is a helpful, holistic approach to design thinking.
Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education - David Perkins (Jossey-Bass, 2009)
With Howard Gardner (whose list of influential books is too long to list here), Perkins co-founded Project Zero, a free-thinking extension of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This book is one of his best. He begins with a clever comparison with the game of baseball: we teach the necessary skills, but rarely allow the student to understand the whole game. As a result, the educational experience is lackluster when it ought to be spectacular. In other words, we think about this whole idea of school, grades, subjects, testing--all of it--in an upside-down way. And so: (1) play the whole game; (2) make the game worth playing; (3) work on the hard parts; (4) play out of town [transfer knowledge from one student to the next]; (5) play the hidden game [understand the nuances and their connections]; (6) learn from the whole team; and (7) give students control of the game, of their whole education--otherwise, they just watch it go by.
Human Condition, Equality
Material World: A Global Family Portrait - Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, Paul Kennedy (Counterpoint, 1995)
Simple concept: famiies in dozens of ountries drag everything they own into the area in front of their home so that the author can take several pictures. The pictures help to explain how people live in different parts of the world. The concept is presented with elegance and compassion, with differences between economic opportunities and different conceptions of wealth and thrift sharply drawn. That's the important side of the work; the delightful side of the book is the opportunity to visit with so many people in (or at least near) their homes in Bhutan, Iceland, Cuba, Kuwait and Mali. In fact, you can visit right now via the web--and that makes us wonder how much more could be done, with Menzel, with a concept grown from these roots, with people contributing their own images and commentary, with our own world travelers helping to make sense of the people and how they live their lives.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander (The New Press, 2012)
It’s one thing to understand the problem as a social issue. It’s another when you “Imagine you are Erma Faye Stewart, a thirty-one year old, single African American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne, Texas. All but one of the people arrested were African American. After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home. Your court-appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence. Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation order ordered to pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs. You are now also branded a drug felon. You are now ineligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care.”
Inequality In America: Facts, Trends, and International Perspectives - Uri Dadush, Kemal Dervis, Sarah Puritz Milsom, and Bennett Stancil (Brookings Institution Press, 2012)
From Brookings: Inequality in America provides a snapshot of the issues posed by the growing concentrations of income, focusing on the United States but drawing on international comparisons to help set the context. The authors examine the economic, technological, and political drivers of inequality and identify worrying trends associated with its rise. They demonstrate how specific factors have exacerbated income inequality, including technological change, international trade, changes in labor market participation, and the increasing role of the financial sector. Their clear and concise exposition makes the issues surrounding income distribution accessible to a wider public.
Media, Storytelling and Information Theory
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone On the Media - Brooke Gladstone (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012)
Ms. Gladstone co-hosts a popular NPR media analysis series, so she knows a lot about how media conveys information and stories. She teaches a valuable lesson in the use of techniques well-established in graphic novels to tell stories of media history, influence, politics, ethics, attention, and journalism with a proper balance of pictures, comic style, and bursts of text. The combination works so well, the book now takes its place beside Scott McCloud’s extraordinary “Understanding Comics” as essential reading about visual storytelling (and that’s saying quite a lot).
The Power Of Myth - Joseph Cambell (Anchor, 1991)
The book is based upon a six-hour PBS series--among its finest of all time--in which Bill Moyers satisfied his curiousity by exploring the world's mythology with one of its greatest scholars, Joseph Campbell. (Sample videos.) For our purposes, their work is both an overview of the whole world of myths and a reminder to detect patterns by thinking globally. More or less, an essential book for anyone thinking about the importance of stories to the human soul.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces - Joseph Cambell (Princeton University Press, 1973)
Given our desire for characters with deeply held points of view, we turned to mythology and archetypes, and to Campbell’s classic description of the hero’s journey. This is profound thinking with immediate resonance: during our darkest days of development, when we were lost in our own digital forest, it was Campbell (and Vogler, below) who provided the necessary compass and the possibility of emerging victorious.
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers - Christopher Volger (Michael Wiese Productions, 2007)
No doubt, you are familiar with the structure of the mythical hero’s journey. You’ve seen it in countless movies. The hero of the story does not begin as a hero. Instead, he or she (more often, he) is an ordinary guy doing ordinary things every day. Then, something happens, and suddenly, he is thrust into an uncomfortable role, reluctant to proceed in anything resembling a heroic journey. Inevitably, the wizened old mentor or the playful talking dog shows up, and the ordinary guy begins to understand that he has no choice, that he must pursue the journey whether or not he wants to do so. It’s Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, Sister Act, Big, Raiders of the Lost Ark… you know the routine, but it’s still a story we love to experience, a story we love to tell. It’s the human experience, each time presented anew. One of our most useful reference books.
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood - James Gleick (Pantheon, 2011)
After half a book's history from African drums to Alan Turing, Gleick's interweaving connects DNA and memes (and, inevitably, memetics, the study of memes), cybernetics and randomness, quantification of information, and Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 conception of an ultimate library with “all books, in all languages, books of apology and prophecy, the gospel and commentary on that gospel, and commentary upon the commentary upon the gospel…”
Eventually we obsolete CD-ROMs (too much information, too little space), and create Wikipedia and the whole of the Internet. In the global googleplex, the term “information overload” becomes inadequate. And yet, Gleick promises, it is not the quantity that matters but the meaning that matters. And the meaning is the difficult part--another way of saying what we are trying to say: a flood of information is interesting, but only on the way to true understanding, and wisdom.
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human - Jonathan Gottschall (Mariner Books, 2012)
Although we're not completely sure that humans are the only creatures who tell stories, we've certainly built a society around characters and their wide range of adventures. Is each of us a natural storyteller? Yes, in the sense that each of us in part of our own unique story; no, in the sense that only some people are especially gifted in shaping a story that others want to hear or so. Our connection to stories seems to grow and grow--imagine reading a biography of a (really clever) Twitterer's punchy comments, or a decade's (or a lifetime's) Facebook timeline. Our stories intersect; as you read this, your story and my story are, at least momentarilly, one. With the digital age, stories are more easily fabricated for interaction by large numbers of people--think World of Warcraft, for example. What does all of this mean? It will be fun to find out, and to integrate this kind of thinking into our own participatory adventures in learning, complete with characters we create and others move beyond our expectations.
A History Of Reading - Alberto Manguel (Penguin Books, 1996)
Writing about reading is a bit like dancing about architecture (credit: Laurie Anderson) or scrutinizing a joke. The experience of reading doesn't lend itself to study, not in a proper chronological way. Instead, Manguel approaches the material in what seems to be a reasonable way: by activity. And so, we have a chapter about learning to read, for example. Mostly, though, this book is a collage of anecdotes: reading aloud to Cuban workers as they roll cigars, for example. While this may not be an ideal treatment for scholars, it is instructive for us, for several reasons. First, not every topic can be organized in a way that's both logical and interesting. Second, the anecdotes are illustrations of people learning from one another, most often by using a printed document. Third, the book is instructive simply because it is a book and not so other tool for conveying knowledge. And that's not altogether different from Kramer's concept of a coffee table book that is also a coffee table. (We think about Borges and imagine the possibilities of metathinking in our new medium.)
Technology & Change
Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together - Clay Shirky (Penguin Books, 2009)
A highly influential book for us, and for many others. According to Shirky, the book is about "what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures." There are so many examples, some newer than the book itself: Uber, Airbnb, Flickr, Tumblr, eBay, Wikipedia... The theory: social tools dramatically reduce transaction cost and organize overehad, and require far less managerial oversight than traditiional companies. Interesting insights on the role of modern tools as a social promises, and the unruly interaction between revolutionary ideas, learning and daily life.
The Lost Art Of Finding Our Way - John Edward Huth (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013)
Technology dulls our senses and disconnects us from the natural world. In theoretical and physical ways, we are lost, unable to read the wind or the stars to regain our place in the world. In a technology-rich world, why does natural skill matter? That's a big question that gets to the philosophy of progress and the future. The more manageable smaller questions get to the heart of who we are as human beings, how we function, what we should be capable of doing for ourselves and for others. To be able to look at the moon, or the leaves on a forest floor, and read them to understand direction without a compass, or an oncoming storm without an iPhone--this is not magic, this is our natural state of being. We are drifting too far from nature--that's the sharp point of this book--and soon, we won't be able to find our way back. Not so sure about the premise? Huth tells the story of three kayakers off the coast of Nantucket. He was one of them--and he survived. The other two died because they could not read the water as he had learned to do.
Networked: The New Social Operating System - Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman (MIT Press, 2012)
The triple revolution is easy enough to understand. We’re living at intersection of three significant changes in modern life: Social networks, which encourage connections between people regardless of their physical location; the widespread availability of the internet, which provides a never-before-possible power for information access, and transmission and reception of messages in every medium; the mobile revolution has transformed digital devices into “body appendages” that allow “people to access friends and information at will, wherever they go…” It’s not just that there’s a remarkable internet or an astonishing Wikipedia, and it’s not just that we’re able to access this material and respond to it at any moment from any location. It’s these phenomena mapped over a much-changed society and dramatically shifted individual behavior patterns. It’s all one large idea, and it’s time that we begin to think about these changes in a more holistic way.
The New Geography Of Jobs - Enrico Moretti (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)
Caught in the middle? The best thing you can do is hang out with people who are pushing their way up the productivity curve. That is, MOVE! Leave the town where things aren’t happening, and take a job, almost any job with growth potential, in a place with high potential... Today, an immigrant is significantly more likely to have an advanced degree than a student born in the US. Foreign born workers account for 15% of the US labor force, but half of US doctorate degrees are earned by immigrants. Immigrants are 30% more likely to start a business. Since 1990, they have accounted for 1in 4 venture backed companies...This is one of those books that looks at the facts--and the facts attached to those facts--and comes up with perfectly reasonable conclusions that run contrary to the ways that we live our lives. That's because we rely upon beliefs--and beliefs provide only a small portion of what we should demand from knowledge and understanding.
Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation - John Seely Brown (Harvard Business School Press, 1997)
Marc Retting's comments on Amazon get right to the point: "John Seely Brown has done us a big favor: he weeded through the business literature, picked a few authors that really help us "see differently," found works that describe their ideas in tight little packages, and put it all in one book. JSB's own framing comments are also valuable. Selected highlights: Brian Arthur on increasing returns, Gary Hamel's Strategy as Revolution, Morris and Ferguson on the power of platforms, Brandenburger and Nalebuff on Game Theory for strategy, sections on competitive advantage and managing innovation. I'm having my interaction design students read this, to add to their palette of points of view."
The Innovator's Cookbook: Essentials for Inventing What Is Next - Steven Johnson (Riverhead Books, 2011)
It's fun to watch the publisher's promotional video about this book (no reason to say more). Here's what Brain Pickings had to say: "a formidable compendium of essays, interviews, and insights on innovation by big thinkers like Richard Florida, John Seely Brown, Peter Drucker and many more, alongside Johnson’s own ever-enchanting writing and new material by tech darlings like Google’s Marissa Mayer and Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, dethroning innovation from its status of buzzword royalty and approaching it instead with a lucid, thoughtful, cross-disciplinary lens refracting across education, art, science, economics, urban design, and more...Underpinning the anthology is a message about the essential role serendipity plays in innovation — or, as Johnson puts it, “the importance of getting lost.”
The Human Face Of Big Data - Rick Smolan & Jennifer Erwitt (Against All Odds Productions, 2012)
Opening line (with photo because this is a coffee table book): "during the first day of a baby's life, the amount of data generated by humanity is equivalent to 70 times the information contained in this Library of Congress." Seeing the world broken down in terms of time, space and data provides insights not otherwise available: what happens during a single second of a major league baseball game, for example, or the pulse of traffic on a busy highway. Hundreds of pictures bring data to life -- and support the case that big data can transform the way we think and learn -- if we take control over the data, its meaning and dissemination.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud (William Morrow, 1994)
This book ought to be read, at least once a year, by every educator, and every person who works in media. It should be required reading for every college student, and probably for every high school student, too. Scott McCloud is a brilliant deconstructionist--he takes the visual world apart and explains why and how stories and characters work. You may think you know all of this because you read comics, watch TV or enjoy movies. Well, you don't know the half of it, and neither did we. Consider, for example, the decision to depict characters with a great deal of detail or very little detail--how much abstraction and simplification is appropriate for the needs of the story, or the needs of the consumer? What happens when the characters are offstage (or, in the case of comics, between the frames?) How does the creative person deal with time in storytelling (or, for that matter, how does an educator deal with vasat expanses of time when teaching history?) Yeah, this is one of those incredibly provocative books--but it's all presented in comic format, so it's always fun to read. Buy a copy today--don't wait!
What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets - Peter Menzel and Faith D'Alusisio (Material World Books, Ten Speed Press, 2010)
Noolkisaruni Tarakuai, a Massai herder in Kenya survives on 800 calories a day. Her diet consists of ugali (cornmeal porridge), a banana, two cups of black tea, and about two quarts of water. Her picture, with livestock in the background, appears on page 23. In Yemen, Ahmed Ahmed Swaid sells Qat for a living, and eats 3300 calories per day. His diet includes fava cooked with onion, tomato and ground chilies, plus minced meat, qudam (pocket bread) -- that's just breakfast. Lunch includes 9 ounces of lamb plus spices, and saltah (beef stew), salad with dressing, cantaloupe, mango juice. Dinner: more sultah. Plus snacks. Katherine Navas is a student in a dangerous barrio in Caracas, Venezuela. She consumes 4000 calories each day. Her story is most interesting because of the family discussion at dinnertime. Seeing the pictures, reading the stories, comparing their lives to our own -- this is a wonderful way to learn.
Cradile Will Rock: The Movie and The Moment - Tim Robbins (Newmarket Press, 2000)
The core of this Tim Robbins film is the rehearsal and performance of the Orson Welles / John Houseman / Mercury Theater's production of Marc Blitzstein's "labor opera," Cradle Will Rock," but that's just the starting place. Intersectiing stories include creation and destruction of Diego Rivera's truth-telling mural for the new Rockefeller Center, Mussolini's exploitation of the American art world to fund his future plans, the devastation that the Depression brought upon the arts and theater community, and the New Deal's conflicting bureaucratic goals of artistic freedom and protection of the vulnerable nation against challenging forces (which is why a children's play about two beavers falling in love becomes cause for controversy about Communism. It's a wonderfully crazy story with several sharp points about progress. The book (pictured) tells the story with plenty of background, but be sure to watch the film!
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made - Ben Yagoda (Dacapo Press, 2001)
It began in the 1920s as a humor magazine, and by the 1930s, it was the bright shining star of the New York City literary scene. Deftly balancing non-fiction ("fact"), stories ("fiction") and humor, The New Yorker became one of the most popular magazines--not only in New York City, but in the whole nation. Why? The personal passion of the editorial staff, the high standards established by extraordinary writers--both journalists and imaginative writers. There was never a clear plan, but there was an indescribable, sometimes inscrutable philosophy that made it all work. Evidence is abundant in the work of John Updike, John Cheever, John McPhee, Dorothy Parker, J.D. Salinger, Calvin Trillin, Adam Gopnik, Woody Allen, Malcolm Gladwell, James Thurber, A.J. Liebling... here's the long list. Why not create something new that attracts the best? It's a new age (nearly 100 years after The New Yorker debuted). Imagine what we could do on the internet.
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street - Michael Davis (Viking Penguin, 2008)
In just a few years, Sesame Street will celebrate its 50th birthday. It began with little more than a question about whether television could serve a useful purpose in the lives of young children. So: here's the story of an unlikely collaboration between curriculum specialists and child psychologists, producers and puppeteers, song writers and celebrities, all coming together for a common cause: to help children understand the world and become successful citizens. We were so keenly interested, we tracked down the author and asked why there were so few ideas like Sesame Street in the world. He encouraged us to make more. We think he's got the right idea.