Herman Kahn

On Thermonuclear War

by Herman Kahn  · 16 Jul 2007  · 1,117pp  · 270,127 words

Jones FOREWORD In The Analysis of military problems since the war, the contribution of civilians has been unprecedentedly large in volume and high in quality. Herman Kahn's book clearly demonstrates the chief reason for this phenomenon. The problems of defense have become inordinately complex, and their solution is not susceptible to

…

in method as it is for the substantive solutions and proposals it offers. Without his masterly command of method, it would have been impossible for Herman Kahn to examine such an extraordinary range of interrelated problems and, compared with the extant literature, do it so exhaustively. Since these are lectures in book

…

the author was a Visiting Research Associate at the Center of International Studies. We were glad to support this venture and to sponsor its publication. Herman Kahn's presence at the Center was for many of us a great learning experience. This book opens this experience to many others. Klaus Knork Center

…

exploit weaknesses in our posture may be due to inertia or innate conservatism, any book that treats deterrence objectively may encourage the Soviets toward experiment. * Herman Kahn and Irwin Mann, Techniques of Systems Analysis, The Rand Corporation, Research Memorandum RM-1829-1, June 1957; and Ten Common Pitfalls, Research Memorandum RM-1937

…

alleviating the consequences of thermonuclear war if it comes that I offer these pages to all with the interest—and the courage—to read them. Herman Kahn Princeton, New Jersey June 10, 1960 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Concepts on which these three lectures are based originated in work done under the auspices of The

…

they may contribute to wider understanding of important national problems. This study of nonmilitary defense was initiated, directed, and formulated in its central features by Herman Kahn. Particular parts of the study were the responsibility of the following individuals, approximately in the order the subjects are mentioned in this report: Leon Goure

…

to state that the discussions in this book do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any of the people or organizations that I have mentioned. Herman Kahn LECTURE I THE NATURE AND FEASIBILITY OF THERMONUCLEAR WAR CHAPTER I ALTERNATIVE NATIONAL STRATEGIES Introduction On July 16, 1960 the world entered the sixteenth year

…

derives from The RAND Corporation Research Memorandum RM-2206-RC, "Some Specific Suggestions for Obtaining Early Nonmilitary Defense Capabilities and Initiating Long-range Programs," by Herman Kahn, et al. That report was originally prepared in 1957, and was circulated in a limited fashion to various individuals for information and comment. Minor modifications

…

consensus on these numbers. Usually, the best that can be done is to set limits between which most reasonable people agree the probabilities lie. 3 Herman Kahn and Irwin Mann, Techniques of Systems Analysis, The RAND Corporation, Research Memorandum RM-1829-1, June 1957. The fact that people have different objectives has

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

by Fred Turner  · 31 Aug 2006  · 339pp  · 57,031 words

II computer with which to access it. The students at the School of Management included representatives from business, academe, and government; the faculty included futurist Herman Kahn, climatologist Walter Orr Roberts, and anthropologist Mary Douglas. Brand was hired to teach a course called “Benign Social Genres”—that is, a course in understanding

…

procedure known as the Unified Planning Machinery. Around 1970, though, members of the Planning Group embraced a version of the scenario methodology developed by futurist Herman Kahn.10 Using it, the group had predicted the oil crisis of 1973, allowing Shell to profit when other oil companies had not. In 1981 they

…

developed for earlier forms of combat. In short, they had to simulate the future. At the RAND Corporation and later, at his own Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn, perhaps the most well-known analyst of this period, began to present his simulations in the form of scenarios—narrative scripts of possible futures. These

…

to join them.” The Whole Earth community reciprocated. In 1976, during a brief stint as an adviser to California governor Jerry Brown, Stewart Brand brought Herman Kahn to Brown’s office to talk with the governor and energy conservationist Amory Lovins. He printed their conversation, as well other writings by Kahn, in

…

increasing number of scientists to play with algorithms in ways that had once been restricted to the panjandrums of the RAND Corporation and SRI. As Herman Kahn and his colleagues had once simulated the end of life on earth, small groups of scientists, many based in and around Los Alamos National Laboratory

…

, 6. For a fascinating demonstration of the ways systems analysis helped set the aesthetic terms of planning for nuclear war, see Ghamari-Tabrizi, Worlds of Herman Kahn, esp. 54 –57, 128 –30. 45. Heims, John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, 302. 46. Bowker, “How to Be Universal,” 108. 47. Ibid., 116. 48

…

by “the mise en scene for the modern intellectual,” including “futuristic chairs and a Japanese paper kite dangling from the ceiling.” Ghamari-Tabrizi, Worlds of Herman Kahn, 57. In this case at least, the photographer hinted, the scientific experts might be cool. 57. Mills, Power Elite, 3, quoted in Jamison and Eyerman

…

operations research and systems analysis in World War II, see Edwards, Closed World, 113 –21. 18. Edwards, Closed World, 115, 116; Ghamari-Tabrizi, Worlds of Herman Kahn, 48. 19. See Kahn, On Thermonuclear War; Thinking about the Unthinkable; and On Escalation; Kahn, Wiener, and Hudson Institute, Year 2000. 20. Kahn, quoted in

…

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Worlds of Herman Kahn, 70, 75; Kahn, Brown, and Lovins, “New Class”; Kahn, “From Present to Future.” 21. Kleiner, Age of Heretics, 163 –70. 22. Ibid., 156; Gurdjieff, Meetings

…

Farm Book, by Stephen and the Farm. Summertown, TN: Book Publishing, 1974. Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture. London: Reaktion, 2002. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Sharon. The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984. Gilbert, Matthew. “Getting Wired.” Boston

…

Network, 176, 184, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193; and Hackers’ Conference, 139 – 40, 254; helped computers to be seen as “personal” technology, 105, 238; and Herman Kahn, 186; How Buildings Learn, 205; idealized vision of Native Americans, 59; idea that information-based products embodied an economic paradox, 136; imagined world as a

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann

by Ananyo Bhattacharya  · 6 Oct 2021  · 476pp  · 121,460 words

go to plan. In June that year, Flood had tried to buy a used Buick from his friend and colleague, the futurist and nuclear strategist Herman Kahn, who was planning to move back east with his family. Flood recast the situation as a sort of two-player game where the object was

…

. At RAND, the melding of von Neumann’s game theory with defence policy continued apace and found a vocal advocate in the corpulent form of Herman Kahn. To the chagrin of his colleagues, Kahn toured the US cheerfully recasting their theories as provocatively as possible, rapidly becoming the most infamous of RAND

…

universal disarmament. One of the most notorious reviews of Kahn’s book, by mathematician James Newman, appeared in Scientific American.85 ‘Is there really a Herman Kahn? It is hard to believe … No one could write like this; no one could think like this,’ wrote Newman. ‘Perhaps the whole thing is a

…

much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.’ It comes from the 1962 book Thinking About the Unthinkable. Its source is Herman Kahn. ‘The most spectacular event of the past half century is one that did not occur,’ said Schelling in 2005, a couple of days before collecting

…

/papers/P1472.html. 76. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon. 77. The coinage is Alex Abella’s. 78. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon. 79. Ibid. 80. Herman Kahn and Irwin Mann, 1957, Game Theory, https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1166.html. 81. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2005, The Worlds of

…

Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 82. Herman Kahn, 1960, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton University Press, Princeton. 83. The director borrowed so much from On Thermonuclear War that

A Beautiful Mind

by Sylvia Nasar  · 11 Jun 1998  · 998pp  · 211,235 words

weaponry to forestall war with Russia — or to win a war if deterrence failed. The people of RAND were there to think the unthinkable, in Herman Kahn’s famous phrase.3 It attracted some of the best minds in mathematics, physics, political science, and economics. RAND may well have been the model

…

firms came for meetings. The consultants, mostly under thirty, carried briefcases, smoked pipes, and walked around looking self-important. Big shots like von Neumann and Herman Kahn had shouting matches in the hallways.23 There was a feeling around the place of “wanting to outrun the enemy,” as a former RAND vice

…

to highly theoretical excercises as opposed to applications of game theory concepts to actual questions of nuclear strategy — the province of men like von Neumann, Herman Kahn, and Thomas Schelling.40 Everyone had a safe in his office for storing classified documents, and everyone was warned about taking documents out of the

…

of Its Accomplishments (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, March 1993); Alexander M. Mood, “Miscellaneous Reminiscences,” Statistical Science, vol. 5, no. 1 (1990), pp. 40–41. 3. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton Universih’ Press, 1960), as quoted in Poundstone, op. cit., p. 90. 4. Isaac Asimov, Foundation (New York: Bantam Books, 1991

Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman  · 31 Oct 2013  · 1,073pp  · 314,528 words

on mass murder: How to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it. —James Newman, review of Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War DESPITE BRODIE’S NOMENCLATURE, the first atomic weapons were not “absolute.” They were in the range of other munitions (the bomb that

…

provocations had to be deterred, not just those directed against the United States but also those directed against allies, and even the enemy’s enemies. Herman Kahn, an early popularizer of some of the more abstruse theories of deterrence, distinguished three types: Type I involved superpower nuclear exchanges; Type II limited conventional

…

strategy was Thomas Schelling. He was one of a number of figures in and around RAND during the 1950s—including Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn—who despite their differences contributed to a developing framework for thinking about these weapons that acknowledged their horrific novelty yet tried to describe their strategic

…

matter, and that is one of the reasons a decision maker may want to take a breath at a landing to consider next steps.”53 Herman Kahn sought to show that even once nuclear exchanges had begun there were ways of conducting operations that might keep the pressure on the other side

…

Institute for Strategic Studies, 1973), 6. 5. Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). 6. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 126 ff. and 282 ff. It was originally going to be known as “Three Lectures on

…

Thermonuclear War.” 7. Barry Bruce-Briggs, Supergenius: The Megaworlds of Herman Kahn (North American Policy Press, 2000), 97. 8. Ibid., 98. Noting the appalling style, Bruce-Briggs concludes that: “The artlessness imparts authenticity; were the author a

…

. Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba, Adelphi Paper No. 17 (London ISS, February 1965). 54. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 226, 139. 55. Herman Kahn, On Escalation (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965). 56. Cited in Fred Iklé, “When the Fighting Has to Stop: The Arguments About Escalation,” World Politics 19

Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality From Camp Meeting to Wall Street

by Jackson Lears

who consulted with John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The man who most fully elaborated the balance of terror was the RAND analyst Herman Kahn. His enormous girth made him anything but “wiry,” and he remained uncharacteristically confident (even among Cold War rationalists) about using rationality to manage the run

…

Durham Family of Brooklyn, New York, Practices Civil-Defense Drills. Photograph by John Vachon for Look magazine, 1951 (Museum of the City of New York) Herman Kahn. Photograph by Thomas J. O’Halloran, 1965 (U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division) Norman Mailer, writer

Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

by William Poundstone  · 2 Jan 1993  · 323pp  · 100,772 words

, aging motels with names like the Flamingo West, and seafood restaurants adorned with giant clam shells and signs of anthropomorphic lobsters in chef’s hats. Herman Kahn, one of RAND’s best-known analysts, interrupted his thinking about the unthinkable to take a midday swim in the Pacific. When John von Neumann

…

RAND’s first projects was the selection of targets for a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. In a memorable bit of RAND prose, theorist Herman Kahn asked (1960), “Would the survivors [of nuclear war] live as Americans are accustomed to living—with automobiles, television, ranch houses, freezers and so on? No

…

sides will plunge the world into destruction. Russell, of course, is being facetious in implying that Dulles’s “brinkmanship” was consciously adapted from highway chicken. Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (1960) credits Russell as the source of the chicken analogy. Chicken readily translates into an abstract game. Strictly speaking, game theory

…

percent asked for $100, is $1,206,380. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The Kennedy administration was receptive to the RAND Corporation’s circle of strategists. Herman Kahn and Daniel Ellsberg (who later came to public attention for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers) championed the notion that U.S.-Soviet conflicts

…

. THE MADMAN THEORY The most disturbing thing about the chicken dilemma is the “advantage” an irrational player has or seems to have. In On Escalation, Herman Kahn claimed, “Some teenagers utilize interesting tactics in playing ‘chicken.’ The ‘skillful’ player may get into the car quite drunk, throwing whisky bottles out the window

…

to set off catastrophe. Hitler is supposed to have said he wanted a bomb that would destroy the whole world, a story that RAND’s Herman Kahn made much of in his analyses of thermonuclear war. In the historic long run, occasional bad leaders and bad decisions are inevitable. The fact that

The Chomsky Reader

by Noam Chomsky  · 11 Sep 1987

in their grasp, they shouldn’t worry about such matters. At times this pseudoscientific posing reaches levels that are almost pathological. Consider the phenomenon of Herman Kahn, for example. Kahn has been both denounced as immoral and lauded for his courage. By people who should know better, his On Thermonuclear War has

…

decision-makers, such an attack is highly unlikely.” A simple argument proves the opposite. Premise 1: American decision-makers think along the lines outlined by Herman Kahn. Premise 2: Kahn thinks it would be better for everyone to be red than for everyone to be dead. Premise 3: If the Americans were

The Future of War

by Lawrence Freedman  · 9 Oct 2017  · 592pp  · 161,798 words

was no such character in Red Alert, although there was an equally sinister Professor Groeteschele in Fail-Safe. Both Groeteschele and Strangelove were modelled on Herman Kahn, who had written the bestselling account of nuclear strategy, On Thermonuclear War, published in 1960, and had become something of a celebrity as a result

…

Lane, 2016. Gettleman, Jeffrey. ‘Forever Wars: Why the Continent’s Conflicts Never End’. Foreign Policy 178 (2010): 73–5. Ghamari-Tabrizi, Sharon. The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Ghobarah, Hazem Adam, Paul Huth, and Bruce Russett. ‘Civil Wars Kill and Main

…

mischievous sense of humour to the point that one biographer considers his potential as a stand-up comic. See Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 23. The first book on RAND was Bruce L. R. Smith, The RAND

…

Corporation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). The personal rivalries come out in Fred Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983). 24. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960) 144. 25. The actor who played Strangelove, Peter Sellers, modelled him on Wernher von Braun, the German

Clock of the Long Now

by Stewart Brand  · 1 Jan 1999  · 194pp  · 49,310 words

tend to be cute. Third answers to the same question sometimes tell the truth. While you’re working through your answers, I’ll tell about Herman Kahn and free will. The late, great futurist Kahn used to ponder the question of free will with his audiences. “It’s a fundamental question,” he

…

when they think they have free will. They take responsibility more and they think about their choices more. So I believe in free will,” said Herman Kahn. Okay, question time. Are things getting better, or worse? How many hands for better? Uh huh. How many for worse? Interesting. About half and half

…

’ll take measures to fix things before they get worse. Preserve us from witless optimists! On the other hand, how does the question play against Herman Kahn’s pragmatism test? Do people behave better when they think things are getting better or when they think things are getting worse? If you really

…

-myopia: “we overexpect dramatic developments early, and underexpect them in the longer term.” Futurismists are predictable once you know their agenda, whereas futurists are not. Herman Kahn, inventor of scenario planning in the 01960s, was a conservative and proud of it, yet he could always startle an audience with a new perspective

…

will spend the rest of our lives in the present, as it unfolds from day to day. Good foresight, good planning, and good luck (as Herman Kahn always included) can sometimes improve the quality of the present, but the future itself remains forever out of reach. Some futurismists have a utopian agenda

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

by John Markoff  · 22 Mar 2022  · 573pp  · 142,376 words

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda

by John Mueller  · 1 Nov 2009  · 465pp  · 124,074 words

Computer: A History of the Information Machine

by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Nathan Ensmenger  · 29 Jul 2013  · 528pp  · 146,459 words

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

by Annie Jacobsen  · 14 Sep 2015  · 558pp  · 164,627 words

Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman

by Ken Auletta  · 28 Sep 2015  · 349pp  · 104,796 words

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

by Craig Nelson  · 25 Mar 2014  · 684pp  · 188,584 words

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand  · 15 Mar 2009  · 422pp  · 113,525 words

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff  · 15 Jan 2019  · 918pp  · 257,605 words

Possiplex

by Ted Nelson  · 2 Jan 2010

Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History

by Thomas Rid  · 27 Jun 2016  · 509pp  · 132,327 words

Utopias: A Brief History From Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities

by Howard P. Segal  · 20 May 2012  · 299pp  · 19,560 words

Turing's Cathedral

by George Dyson  · 6 Mar 2012

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It

by Richard A. Clarke and Robert Knake  · 15 Dec 2010  · 282pp  · 92,998 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

Mysteries of the Mall: And Other Essays

by Witold Rybczynski  · 7 Sep 2015  · 342pp  · 90,734 words

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 29 Sep 2013  · 464pp  · 127,283 words

The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History

by Derek S. Hoff  · 30 May 2012

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth

by Robin Hanson  · 31 Mar 2016  · 589pp  · 147,053 words

A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam

by Lewis Sorley  · 2 Jun 1999  · 565pp  · 160,402 words

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth

by Juliet B. Schor  · 12 May 2010  · 309pp  · 78,361 words

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James E. Lovelock  · 1 Jan 2009  · 239pp  · 68,598 words

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure

by Tim Harford  · 1 Jun 2011  · 459pp  · 103,153 words

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition

by Kindleberger, Charles P. and Robert Z., Aliber  · 9 Aug 2011

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

by John J. Mearsheimer  · 1 Jan 2001  · 637pp  · 199,158 words

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen  · 4 Sep 2017  · 522pp  · 162,310 words

Fantasyland

by Kurt Andersen  · 5 Sep 2017

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

by Edward Luce  · 13 May 2025  · 612pp  · 235,188 words

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

by Howard Rheingold  · 24 Dec 2011

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

by David Weinberger  · 14 Jul 2011  · 369pp  · 80,355 words

A People's History of the United States

by Howard Zinn  · 2 Jan 1977  · 913pp  · 299,770 words

Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming

by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby  · 22 Nov 2013  · 165pp  · 45,397 words

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard

by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel  · 3 Oct 2016  · 504pp  · 126,835 words

Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler  · 1 Jun 1984  · 286pp  · 94,017 words

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

by Paul Scharre  · 23 Apr 2018  · 590pp  · 152,595 words

Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides's Trap

by Graham Allison  · 29 May 2017  · 518pp  · 128,324 words

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

by Julian Guthrie  · 19 Sep 2016

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

by Satyajit Das  · 14 Oct 2011  · 741pp  · 179,454 words

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker  · 24 Sep 2012  · 1,351pp  · 385,579 words

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics

by Francis Fukuyama  · 27 Aug 2007

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot  · 9 Jan 2018  · 972pp  · 259,764 words

Twilight of Abundance: Why the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short

by David Archibald  · 24 Mar 2014  · 217pp  · 61,407 words

Kissinger: A Biography

by Walter Isaacson  · 26 Sep 2005  · 1,330pp  · 372,940 words

Licence to be Bad

by Jonathan Aldred  · 5 Jun 2019  · 453pp  · 111,010 words

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming

by Mckenzie Funk  · 22 Jan 2014  · 337pp  · 101,281 words

The Crux

by Richard Rumelt  · 27 Apr 2022  · 363pp  · 109,834 words

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion ofSafety

by Eric Schlosser  · 16 Sep 2013  · 956pp  · 267,746 words

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets

by David J. Leinweber  · 31 Dec 2008  · 402pp  · 110,972 words

Collider

by Paul Halpern  · 3 Aug 2009  · 279pp  · 75,527 words

Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America

by Giles Slade  · 14 Apr 2006  · 384pp  · 89,250 words

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

by Christopher Lasch  · 1 Jan 1978

Wealth, Poverty and Politics

by Thomas Sowell  · 31 Aug 2015  · 877pp  · 182,093 words

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

by Rick Perlstein  · 17 Mar 2009  · 1,037pp  · 294,916 words

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System

by James Rickards  · 7 Apr 2014  · 466pp  · 127,728 words

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

by Michael Dobbs  · 3 Sep 2008  · 631pp  · 171,391 words

The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update

by Donella H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and Dennis L. Meadows  · 15 Apr 2004  · 357pp  · 100,718 words

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000

by Paul Kennedy  · 15 Jan 1989  · 1,477pp  · 311,310 words

Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

by Edward Tenner  · 1 Sep 1997

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

by Joshua Cooper Ramo  · 16 May 2016  · 326pp  · 103,170 words

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

by Niall Ferguson  · 13 Nov 2007  · 471pp  · 124,585 words

1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink

by Taylor Downing  · 23 Apr 2018  · 400pp  · 121,708 words

The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity

by Peter Schwartz, Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt  · 18 Oct 2000  · 353pp  · 355 words

Thinking in Bets

by Annie Duke  · 6 Feb 2018  · 288pp  · 81,253 words

How the Mind Works

by Steven Pinker  · 1 Jan 1997  · 913pp  · 265,787 words

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

by Tom Vanderbilt  · 28 Jul 2008  · 512pp  · 165,704 words

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

by Toby Ord  · 24 Mar 2020  · 513pp  · 152,381 words

Green Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 1993  · 746pp  · 239,969 words

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

by Duncan J. Watts  · 28 Mar 2011  · 327pp  · 103,336 words

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 13 May 2013  · 317pp  · 98,745 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen  · 14 Sep 2020  · 486pp  · 150,849 words

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine

by Peter Lunenfeld  · 31 Mar 2011  · 239pp  · 56,531 words

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

by Adam Greenfield  · 29 May 2017  · 410pp  · 119,823 words

Fuller Memorandum

by Stross, Charles  · 14 Jan 2010  · 366pp  · 107,145 words

The New Class Conflict

by Joel Kotkin  · 31 Aug 2014  · 362pp  · 83,464 words

Guide to business modelling

by John Tennent, Graham Friend and Economist Group  · 15 Dec 2005  · 287pp  · 44,739 words

The Sum of All Fears

by Tom Clancy  · 2 Jan 1989

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang  · 10 Sep 2018  · 745pp  · 207,187 words