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THE OPTIMIST'S TELESCOPE

Bina Venkataraman

Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age

A trailblazing exploration of how we can think more strategically and thoughtfully about the future - our own, our family's, and our community's.
Many of us never learned how to make smart, long-term decisions, so we avoid making them. In a world where immediate satisfaction is the norm, that's easy to do. Whether it's our finances (20% of Americans have nothing saved for retirement), our health (our overuse of antibiotics has triggered a shocking rise in superbugs), or our jobs (we slash R&D budgets and then our companies fail to keep pace with competitors), we avoid mastering the skills we need to make smart choices about the future. Yet today more than ever, we need to understand how to make such choices -- for ourselves, our families, and the world at large.

Bina Venkataraman understands this. As a former senior advisor in the Obama administration, she led efforts to build partnerships between government and business to combat climate change and learned firsthand that we don't have the vocabulary to talk about thinking ahead. Drawing from her own experience and exciting new research in biology, psyhcology and elsehwhere, she identifies the most effective ways to think clearly about long-term decisions. In the process, she explains the crucial roles that biology, the environment, and culture play in our decision-making and she highlights the surprisingly human and achievable changes we can implement to make smarter, more thoughtful choices in our lives.

The result is a book that shows us the productive ways we can rethink decision-making so that all of us can approach the challenges of the future more clearly.

Bina Venkataraman teaches in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at MIT, and served as senior advisor for climate change innovation in the Obama White House where she led efforts for the first U.S. Presidential Climate Action Plan and built partnerships between the government and the private sector to combat climate change. A former fellow at the New America Foundation, she is a former Director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT.
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Book

Published 2019-08-27 by Riverhead

Book

Published 2019-08-27 by Riverhead

Comments

This past week saw a major Washington Post op-ed by Venkataraman get widely shared (including by Steven Pinker) and an op-ed in Slate today. Read more...

In pacy prose that's easy to digest but offers concrete examples of change..This book offers hope that we can take back some control of our own destinies and aim for a better future. Read more...

The unknown can always be scary. But in this wise, eye-opening, and hopeful book, Bina Venkataraman shows us the ways we can think more clearly and strategically about the future - in our communities, our families, and in our own lives.

[The Optimist's Telescope is] a noble and important book. Taking stories of people who have made a difference and an awareness of how things can be made better, it examines how we can incentivize good behavior, effect change, and make the world a better place. Bina Venkataraman is the good parent this planet so desperately needs.

author's article: The Heirloom: What if we thought of our world as something precious to be handed down through time? Read more...

An intriguing look at strategies for the long-term with citations from business executives, sociologists, and philosophers; highly recommended.

Venkataraman's TED Talk tentatively titled "The Power to Think Ahead in a Reckless Age" will go live the Thursday before on sale, August 22nd. In this memorable talk, Venkataraman explores how we, as both descendants and ancestors of civilization, must step out of our culture of immediacy and fight the allure of everyday minutiae, and think instead of generations to come. Read more...

Time Magazine is running a first serial excerpt online and in print. They feature the piece prominently on the Time.com homepage and support it on socials and in newsletter Read more...

Leadership Now has selected the book as one of the "Top Leadership books for August 2019." : "...Today more than ever, all of us need to know how we can make better long-term decisions in our lives, businesses, and society. Bina Venkataraman sees the way forward." Read more...

fabulous interview on MSNBC Morning Joe: Author Bina Venkataraman joins Morning Joe to discuss her new book 'The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age.' Read more...

China: Grand China Happy Cultural Communications ; Japanese: Subarusya Corporation ; Korea: Thenan Contents Group ; Romania: Curtea Veche Publishin ; Russia: Eksmo ; Taiwan: China Times Publishing

Bina was interviewed on PRI's "Innovation Hub": ...Bina Venkataraman, author of "The Optimist's Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age," looks at the strategies we use, and how good we genuinely are at predicting the future.... Read more...

The Optimist's Telescope will help you think about the biggest decisions you face in your life and that humanity faces in this historical moment. Everyone should read this book.

We live in an age marked by problems of enormous scope and complexity - climate change, income inequality, food security - and yet we are still relying on tools and solutions that have failed us repeatedly in the past. In The Optimist's Telescope, Bina Venkataraman marshals a wide-ranging collection of astounding and provocative examples of our myopia and offers insightful practices for short-circuiting our short-sightedness to address the huge challenges we face as citizens of Earth.

Success Magazine has named it one of "6 Books That Will Help You Think Better and Thrive More" Read more...

A thought-provoking and eminently readable debut... Venkataraman's thoughtful and clear-eyed assessment of how to teach oneself to make more carefully considered decisions should prove a valuable tool for anyone wishing to think less in the short term and more toward the future.

New York Times Book Review calls THE OPTIMIST'S TELESCOPE: "Deeply informed.engaging", and tells readers to "heed Venkataraman's impassioned call for making a commitment to future change." Read more...

Most of us only see the future after it becomes the past. The Optimist's Telescope is here to change that. It's a rare read that's as fascinating as it is important. In it, Bina Venkataraman brings together powerful narrative, cutting-edge behavioral science, and the rich experience of a high-impact career.

Bina Venkataraman has written a how-to book about making better decisions for ourselves, our communities, and Earth itself. She introduces us to an array of colorful and unexpected characters, from ancient philosophers to tech entrepreneurs, all while distilling the science of foresight into practical advice we can all use. A timely and valuable book.

A timely reminder that time is not on our side without long-term thinking.

Authors article: America's Next President Needs Our Imagination: The 2020 presidential race is suffering from voters' blinkered focus on the recent past. Read more...

Chinese peasants once got paid by the piece to find dinosaur bones; soon they took to smashing the bones into tiny pieces to boost their income. This book is a sobering compendium of the many ways in which ill-conceived short-term incentives undermine valuable long-term goals. The stakes go way beyond busted fossils: think rising sea waters, treatment-resistant pathogens, collapsing infrastructure, disappearing topsoil... A grim list and grounds for pessimism unless, that is, it gets read in the context of this book, for Bina Venkataraman has assembled a remarkable repair kit, full of tested tools for harmonizing the lure of present reward with the foresight we need if we are to build a durable future.