（推荐）思考未来人类处境所需要阅读的50部书
50 Books for Thinking About the Future Human Condition原文地址，http://www.rand.org/pardee/50books/
说明：
这是由兰德长期全球政策及未来人类处境弗雷德里克•S•帕丁中心（RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition）所推出的为了思考、改善人类未来处境而征求各方专家意见形成的一份推荐书单。在推荐书单的前言中，负责这个项目的兰德工作人员也毫不讳言的声称，这是一份以西方中心观为出发来看待未来的书单，如果读者在阅读过程中觉得这份书单对某些领域内的经典书籍有所遗漏的话，可以发邮件给dewar@rand.org，只要说明足够理由，相信兰德的相关负责人会充分考量你的意见，对这份书单做进一步修改的。
The mission of the RAND Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition is ultimately to improve the human condition in the longer-range future. While there is no sure path to improving the future human condition, there is no shortage of books that address themselves to some aspect of improving that future.
If we were to peer backward from, say, 50 years hence at the books available today, we could probably identify dozens or hundreds that had something useful to say had we only listened. From today’s perspective, however, it is difficult to identify those insightful passages, let alone the books that contain them, from among the thousands that address some aspect of the future.
But suppose we tried for something more modest – a list of 50 books covering broad topics that seem likely to be important in thinking about the future human condition. What might that list of 50 books look like?
The following is a first cut at what that list of books might look like. Why books? Why not articles, or speeches, or university courses, or documentaries, or blogs, or …? The intent of the readings is to be as comprehensive as possible on each of the topics addressed, so book-length treatments seemed like the best approach.
How were these 50 books selected? Many smart people were queried about the books that ought to be on a list of this sort. Recommendations easily numbered in the hundreds, so the same smart people were asked to pick one or two “bests” from their lists. Most of the books below represent “winners” from that process. The remainder were selected idiosyncratically (especially the “wild cards”). Some of the reasoning behind the selections is mentioned below in introducing brief summaries of the books and what they contribute to understanding the future.
The intent of the list is twofold. The first intent is to act as a reading list for someone who wants to understand at a more-than-passing level the factors that we can say seem to be most pertinent today in thinking about the longer-range human condition. I would hope that anyone who had read all 50 of these books would have a good feel for history, for how to think about the future, for the kinds of trends that are likely to have a serious impact on the future, and for the kind of surprises that might befall us as we move into that future.
The second intent is to put a marker on the wall for such a list and to invite many more smart people to think about how we might improve such a list. If there is a book that you think ought to be on this list I would love to hear from you. The only restrictions that you must observe in suggesting a book for inclusion are that you must also suggest the book that it should replace on the list and you must spell out your reasoning. With that in mind, if you have a suggested replacement, please send it to me at dewar@rand.org.
One important caveat is worth mentioning. This is a Western-centric look at the future. There is much here that is assumed about Western culture and history. I would be happy to listen to arguments that some specific aspects of Western culture should be included in book-length detail on this list (such as Christianity or democracy). I would also be happy to listen to arguments for books that bring out other perspectives or that compare such perspectives. In the meantime, I mention this recognition without further defending it.
50 Books for Thinking About the Future Human Condition
·The Past
·The Future in the Past
·Human Development
·Future Issues
Global Governance
International Conflict
Health
Demographics
Technology
Information Technology
Environment
Energy
Global Economics
Culture
Geographic Regions
·The Future
·Wild Cards
The Past （描述过去的书籍）
Our most common tool for thinking about the future is extrapolations from the past. There are certainly dangers in relying too much on the past for thinking about the future, but there is also wisdom in George Santayana’s oft-mangled quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For those who don’t know history well, it is useful to have at least some readings just about the past itself.
The New History of the World - 2002
J.M. Roberts, Oxford University Press
《世界的新历史》
J.M.罗伯茨
详细书讯，http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/?view=usa&ci=0195219279
More current and much shorter than Will and Ariel Durant’s classic Story of Civilization, this is still a monumental work (nearly 1200 pages) starting from Homo erectus and running up through the 9/11 attacks. As Roberts says in the preface, he “wished to avoid detail and to set out instead the major historical processes which affected the largest numbers of human beings, leaving substantial legacies to the future, and to show their comparative scale and relations with one another.” While he admits “none but the most general statements about likely futures could ever be made from such facts as history provides”, he also says “istant history still clutters our lives.” If there is a dominant theme, it is the role that two forces – the nation and Christianity – have played in creating and shaping the modern world (and how each is losing its grip in what is now a “truly unified world history”).
Guns, Germs, and Steel - 1999
Jared Diamond, W. W. Norton and Company
《枪炮、病菌与钢铁——人类社会的命运》
贾雷德•戴蒙德（美国加州大学洛杉矶分校的生理学家和人类学家，1998年凭借《枪炮、病菌和钢铁：人类社会的各种命运》获得了普利策文学奖），上海译文出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393317552/qid=1133840235/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
As Diamond writes, this Pulitzer Prize-winning book “attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years.” It’s main argument is that environmental and geographical factors had more to do with the development of human societies than genetic or cultural factors. Diamond argues that food production was “critical for the accumulation of food surpluses that could feed non-food-producing specialists, and for the buildup of large populations enjoying a military advantage through mere numbers.” Further, he argues that food production was strongly influenced by the domesticability of early animals and plants and that Eurasia had by far the best of these raw materials. Third, because plants and animals are more affected by changes in longitude than latitude, Eurasia was again favored in the spread of civilization by its long stretches of contiguous east-west land. These large areas of land also favored large populations of societies that grew in technological sophistication through competition with one another and, when, travel between continents became commonplace, their dominance over less-advanced societies affected the evolution of human societies down through today.
But what of the future? Clearly, environmental and geographical factors play a much smaller role in evolving societies today. Yet today’s evolution is still strongly influenced by the previous evolution of societies and it makes a difference in thinking about the future if one believes that that evolution was more an accident of environment and geography than the result of inherent advantage.
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - 2005
Jared Diamond, Viking
《崩溃：社会是如何选择成功或失败的》
贾雷德•戴蒙德
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670033375/ref=ed_oe_h/102-0880751-4442516?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Diamond’s most recent book is another cautionary tale in thinking about the future. By looking at past societies that have collapsed (including societies on Easter Island and Greenland and in the American Southwest and Mexico) he speaks to a couple of issues of great interest to futurists: 1) Not all primitive societies have been good stewards of their environment (a cherished misconception in some circles) and 2) if we mismanage our environment and other factors that led to past collapses, it is not difficult to imagine the collapse of today’s global society.
The book discusses past collapses in light of five main factors: a) what the society was doing to its environment, b) what longer-range climatic trends were occurring, c) what the society’s enemies were doing (though war is specifically excluded as a primary factor in a society’s collapse), d) what the society’s friends (i.e., those the society depended on) were doing, and e) how adaptive the society’s culture was to changes that took place. Through these five factors, Diamond describes not only societal collapse, but some societal successes as well. Perhaps the most fascinating example comes from Hispaniola. Though both the Dominican Republic and Haiti were ruled by horrific despots, one did a much better job of protecting the environment than the other. Today Haiti is much closer to societal collapse than is the Dominican Republic because of that. Given that each started out with basically identical environments and geography (and Haiti actually had the advantage in colonial times), the contrast today is striking and informative.
The Future in the Past （过去写著的论述未来的书籍）
People have not always thought about the future in the way we do today. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18 th century that people truly started behaving as though humans had any real control over their destiny (apart from appealing to their gods). Since then, thinking about the future has become a burgeoning activity and literally thousands of books have been written on thinking about and (especially) planning for the future. If one restricts one’s attention to the longer-range future and the human condition, the list of books becomes much shorter and less daunting. The five books below each represent an historical attempt at thinking about the longer-range human future in a particularly interesting way. Even so, five books devoted to this aspect of the future may be too many for a list of this sort. Nonetheless, these are each fascinating accounts in their own right.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace - 1995 (1920)
John Maynard Keynes
《和平的经济后果》
约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140188053/qid=1133840335/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
For long-term policy analysts, this is a ‘smoking gun’. Correct long-term policies are always easy to see in retrospect. This is a case of a correct long-term policy analysis seen in prospect. Keynes was a participant at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. He resigned his (minor) position and wrote this economic analysis that argued (as he had at the Conference) that the reparations conditions were too punitive and that they would leave not only Germany in economic ruins, but the remainder of Europe as well. He even proposes a program for revision of the treaty. Most interesting is what he suggests will happen if the treaty is not revised: “If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final civil war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilization and the progress of our generation.”
The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty Years - 1967
Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Weiner
(MacMillan)
《公元2000年：未来三十年的思索框架》
赫尔曼•卡恩，安瑟尼•J•维纳
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006BRUZ6/qid=1133841076/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is Herman Kahn’s classic text on thinking about the longer-range future. He starts off with multifold long-term trends that he thinks have been going on for centuries and proceeds to some fascinating projections on population and per capita Gross Domestic Product. He also lays out 100 things that are ‘sure’ to come true by the year 2000. Depending on how tough a grader one is, he gets between 20 and 80 of them right. More interesting is the difficulty one has in making predictions that are measurable in the future. For example, how would you grade “Relatively effective appetite and weight control” or “Major reduction in hereditary and congenital defects”?. The more important parts of the book are Chapter 1 where he lays out the argument for the utility in thinking longer range and Chapter 10 where he spells out 10 ways in which doing future-oriented policy research can be helpful. One piece of advice that still echoes today is, “As long as we are in a state of uncertainty about both ends and means, the most important principle may be to refrain from attempting to legislate for the future in detail. Social policies should be devised that leave large amounts of freedom… and that, so far as possible, avoid foreclosing avenues of future revision and new decision.”
The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World - 1976
Herman Kahn, William Brown, and Leon Martel
(William Morrow and Company)
《未来两百年：美国与世界未来会出现的情况》
赫尔曼•卡恩，威廉•布朗，赖昂•玛特尔，远流出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688030297/qid=1133841241/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is a companion piece to Kahn’s book on the year 2000. In it he basically responds to the doom-and-gloom scenario that was laid out in the famous Limits to Growth study from the Club of Rome. Kahn argues that population is the primary driver of the longer-range future and that high world population growth rates around 1976 were an anomaly when looking at historic rates. He thought that the population growth rates would decline after 1976 (which they have) and that would make all the difference. He argues at length that if population levels off at about 15 billion people (probably a high estimate in today’s thinking) that the major problems addressed by the Limits to Growth study could be handled by technology. For those who think that population is the primary driver of the world’s problems, this is a well-argued screed for creating a sustainable earth if we can get population under control. In any event, this book is useful for its serious attempt at looking as far as 200 years into the future.
The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting - 1999 (1976)
Daniel Bell
《后工业社会的来临：对社会预测的一项探索》
丹尼尔•贝尔，商务出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465097138/qid=1133841362/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
Daniel Bell is responsible for popularizing the phrase “post-industrial society.” He saw clearly in 1972 that we were entering an era that was markedly different than the industrial society that had dominated the first three quarters of the twentieth century. Part of the importance of this book is that Bell can be characterized as both a sociologist and a futurist. This is an excellent example of the role that sociology can play in seeing with some accuracy well into the future. (Some have argued that all longer-range thinking is basically sociology because of the dominance of social institutions in driving longer-range outcomes.)
Bell interestingly starts his arguments with Karl Marx’s characterization of the capitalist society and how Marx sees it playing out. Bell goes on to show where the rise of the middle class in a knowledge society has thwarted Marx’s vision of a world of capitalists and subjugated workers, thus ameliorating the tension that Marx thought would lead to the eventual dominance of the workers. Bell’s 75 page foreword for the 1999 edition makes fascinating reading as he looks back on how he did.
Future Shock - 1971
Alvin Toffler
《未来的冲击》
阿尔温•托夫勒，新华出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553277375/qid=1133841783/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
Toffler, a noted futurist, has written several books that are candidates for the list of 50. This is his classic book on the accelerating pace of life and was chosen both because of its broad futuristic sweep and its publication date (1971) – giving us a chance to see how well it has aged. To me, the most important contribution of this book is its serious attempt to pin down the concept of accelerating change. For Toffler the key concept is transience – the “temporariness” or impermanence of every day modern life. Transience “provides the missing link between sociological theories of change and the psychology of individual human beings.” By describing the increasing transience in man’s relations to things, places, people, organizations and ideas, Toffler makes the case that it is this pervasive transience today (in the ‘70s) that defines the nature of the accelerating change of life and is causing the psychological effects of future shock.
The book is full of speculations about the future. Some of them, including a characterization of the potential of the early internet, are decidedly prescient. Others have long since been overtaken and still others seem less likely to come about than they might have in the ‘70s. In contrast to the book’s record on speculations, its arguments related to transience and future shock have held up rather well – again pointing to the utility of social science in thinking about the longer-range future.
Human Development（人类发展）
The term “human development” has come to mean “an expansion of human capabilities, a widening of choices, an enhancement of freedoms and a fulfillment of human rights.” It was not always thus. It is primarily due to Amartya Sen and to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that human development has come to mean more than expansion of real income and economic growth. Since 1990, UNDP has been producing the Human Development Report (HDR) that yearly measures human development progress and the 1990 report specifically explored the relationship between economic growth and human development. The primary metric used for measuring human development in the HDRs is the Human Development Index (HDI) – a metric that combines measures of life expectancy, education, and income by country. Although the HDI has become the primary metric in measuring human development, the HDRs also contain dozens of other measures by country that are related to expanded capabilities, widening choices and enhanced freedoms and human rights.
Since this list is designed to track the RAND Pardee Center’s interest in aiding progress in human development, it is important to include books on human rights and on the history of human development, and to include at least a few of the Human Development Reports themselves.
The Evolution of International Human Rights - 1998
Paul Gordon Lauren
《国际人权的演化》
保罗•戈顿•劳伦
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081221854X/qid=1133842310/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is a comprehensive history of human rights. Starting more than two thousand years ago in China and Persia, it captures the growth and evolution of human rights down to modern times. Lauren distinguishes usefully between the ‘first-generation’ civil and political rights that arose out of the American and French Revolutions in the 18 th century and the ‘second-generation’ social and economic rights that emerged in the nineteenth century. There are nice chapters on the abolition of slavery and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The two main points I took away: 1) what we consider to be human rights continue to expand and 2) the achievement of human rights is a slow, evolutionary, bottom-up process. As Lauren says, “The struggle for human rights has always been and always will be a struggle against authority.” It is hard to escape the notion that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (that all United Nations countries signed and have reaffirmed on more than one occasion) form the comprehensive set of goals for human development. In the 30 articles of the declaration are every imaginable human right. The goals, then, have been set and the challenge today is to speed progress in ensuring those rights for everyone.
Readings in Human Development - 2004
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and A. K. Shiva Kumar
《人类发展选读》
萨其戈-弗库达帕和A.K.希瓦•库玛，人民大学出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195670523/qid=1133843399/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is a nice compilation of articles that enables the reader “to trace the conceptual origins and evolution of the human development approach; to better understand the issues related to its measurement; and to get a flavour of some innovative policy applications.” Particularly useful for understanding the HDRs is a chapter on the ten basic conceptual choices (e.g., human condition or human development? reducing poverty or improving well-being? human development for all or equitable human development?) that shaped those reports.
On the more technical side, there is a nice regression analysis of the relationship between human development and economic growth and a chapter on technical aspects of several other indices typically included in HDRs (including the human poverty index, the gender-related development index, the gender empowerment measure, and the technology achievement index). The policy explorations are taken from a variety of the early HDRs.
Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development - 2000
United Nations Development Programme
《2000年人类发展报告：人权与人类发展》
联合国开发计划署组织，中国财经出版社
该书电子版下载地址，
http://www.undp.org/hdr2000/english/HDR2000.html
This report, according to the long-time directory of the Human Development Office, “afforded a major conceptual breakthrough in clarifying the relationship between human rights and human development. The Report identifies seven freedoms as inherent to both. These span the spheres of social, economic, political and civil life, including freedom from discrimination, from fear, of speech, from want, to develop and realize one’s human potential, from injustice and violations of the rule of law, and to obtain decent work.” The year 2000 was also a time for reflecting on the 20 th century and there is a nice list of unprecedented advances worldwide in each of the seven freedoms.
Each of the Human Development Reports has a large set of tables in the back covering a wide variety of data related to human development. In addition to the HDI and other UNDP-developed indices, there is data for every country (where available) on health, education, economic performance, resource use, aid flow and debt, energy use, environmental profile, and others.
Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development - 2001
United Nations Development Programme
《2001年人类发展报告：让新技术为人类发展服务》
联合国开发计划署组织，中国财经出版社
该书电子版下载地址，
http://www.undp.org.np/publications/hdr2001/
This report start out by noting that “the 20 th century’s unprecedented gains in advancing human development and eradicating poverty came largely from technological breakthroughs” including antibiotics and vaccines, and breakthroughs in plant breeding, fertilizers and pesticides. It also notes, however, that technology is created in response to market pressures – not the needs of poor people, who have little purchasing power. Further, market failures are pervasive where knowledge and skills are concerned and governments have provided funding to substitute for market demand in every technologically advanced country today. Developing countries, then, tend to lack both market and non-market mechanisms for getting technology to support development.
The good news in this report is that the network age is changing how technologies are created and diffused in ways that aid developing countries. While there are continuing worries about the “digital divide”, the network is already helping developing countries with political participation, transparency in markets and institutions, health service delivery, and income. The UNDP created a technological achievement index to track the diffusion of technological progress in countries. While the report acknowledges that there are still significant challenges in getting technology to work for human development, it provides several examples of how developing countries are creatively surmounting these challenges.
Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World - 2002
United Nations Development Programme
《2002年人类发展报告：在碎裂的世界中深化民主》
联合国开发计划署组织，中国财经出版社
该书电子版下载地址，
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/
This report argues that “for politics and political institutions to promote human development and safeguard the freedom and dignity of all people, democracy must widen and deepen.” It argues that the central challenge for deepening democracy is building the key institutions of democratic governance: a system of representation, with well-functioning political parties; an electoral system that guarantees free and fair elections; a system of checks and balances based on separation of powers; a vibrant civil society; a free, independent media; and effective civilian control over the military. The report says that, since 1980, 81 countries have taken significant steps towards democracy and 140 of the world’s nearly 200 countries now hold multiparty elections. On the other hand, only 82 countries, with 57% of the world’s population, are fully democratic. There’s an interesting set of tables that gets at objective measures of governance. Included are data on levels of democracy, the rule of law and government effectiveness, corruption, participation in governance, civil society, and ratification of rights instruments.
Human Development Report 2003: Millennium Development Goals: A Compact Among Nations to End Human Poverty - 2003
United Nations Development Programme
《2003年人类发展报告——千年发展目标：消除人类贫困的全球公约》
联合国开发计划署组织，中国财经出版社
该书电子版下载地址，
http://www.undp.org.np/publications/hdr2003/
The 2003 report takes on the Millennium Development Goals – they’re challenges, progress since they were agreed to in 2000, and the Millennium Development Compact. Ten tables are introduced that track each of the goals. Several of the tables are sparsely populated with data, emphasizing the difficulty in even measuring the problems, let alone progress or success. Two regions of the world, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central & Eastern Europe & CIS have actually suffered setbacks in their Human Development Indices since 1975. Those are also the regions doing worst at achieving the MDGs, though there are other regions that are not making sufficient progress towards some of the goals. The goal least likely to be achieved is the goal for primary education. The report suggests several steps that rich countries can do to help achieve the goals.
Human Development Report 2004: Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World - 2004
United Nations Development Programme
《2004年人类发展报告——当今多样化世界中的文化自由》
联合国开发计划署组织，中国财经出版社
该书电子版下载地址，
http://www.undp.org.in/hdr2004/
This report argues that human development requires that people’s cultural identity must be recognized and accommodated by the state. It argues for multicultural democracy and presents several emerging models, including political participation in New Zealand, India and Croatia; religious freedom in India and France; legal pluralism in Guatemala, India and South Africa; language policies in Tanzania; and socio-economic policies in Malaysia, India, South Africa, and the United States. This report adds new tables with demographic trends and with water sanitation and nutritional status. It also presents the human development indices from a regional perspective. Future Issues （未来议题）
At the heart of any thinking about the future is trying to figure out what trends visible today are likely to persist (and for how long) into the future. There are some trends that are easy to predict – even well into the future, but they tend to be less interesting because of their relative permanence (geographical features, the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, etc.). There are shorter-term trends (such as clothing fashions and stock market levels) that are hardly worth thinking about in the longer-range future because of their relative impermanence. Between these extremes there are some trends visible today that seem predictable to the point that they are generally worth “betting on” even well into the future and even if we cannot say for certain exactly where they will lead. For example, stem cell research is a topic under vigorous debate around the world today. No one can say for sure what will happen in the near future with stem cell research. But because of the promise of, and the interest in, stem cell research, it seems clear that research will continue well into the future somewhere and at some level of intensity. In other words, it seems safe to say that stem cell research is still likely to be an important issue 25 and 50 years into the future and therefore it is important or useful to understand some of the issues surrounding stem cell research when thinking about the longer-range future.
There is a wide variety of issues of this type to choose from and for this go-round of the list, those that have been chosen are global governance, international conflict, health, demographics, technology, information, environment, energy, global economics, culture, and geographical regions. The inclusion of each of these areas will be defended briefly before the book(s) relating to them are identified and summarized.
Global Governance （全球治理）
The quest for domination of the world goes back at least to Alexander the Great in the 4 th century BCE. Some concept of governance on a global scale, however, is an important issue today and likely to be a more important issue in the future not because of someone’s quest for world domination, but primarily because of economic globalization (an important issue in its own right). There are many issues that affect the global commons that have long since been ripe for management on a global scale (including issues such as air pollution, harvesting of the ocean’s bounty, land mines, and the like). Economic globalization – which is addressed below and seems quite likely to persist well into the future – is adding urgency to the concept of and requirement for some governance mechanism that acts at the global level. Global governance is evident today in the United Nations and a wide variety of international treaties and declarations, but governance challenges at the global level are almost certain to persist well into the future. An understanding of some of these global issues and possibilities for global governance is important and useful in thinking about the longer-range future.
Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century - 1999
Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, Marc C. Stern (eds.)
《全球公益：21世纪的国际合作》
英格•考尔，伊莎贝尔•格朗博格，马克•C•斯特恩（编辑）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195130529/qid=1133844732/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is the first book that wrestled with the concept of and issues surrounding global public goods. Public goods (at their ‘purest’ level) are things that don’t get used up when they are enjoyed and can’t be hoarded. They are unlikely to be generated by the market because there is no incentive to produce them. At the national level, that usually means the government has to supply those goods. At the global level, there is no such entity, yet global public goods – clean air, fresh water, ocean fisheries, etc. – are increasingly important to the human future. Similarly, global public ‘bads’ – land mines, CFCs, carbon dioxide, etc. – are also in need of attention. This book looks at jurisdictional, participation, and incentive problems for a variety of global public goods. There have been additional volumes relating to global public goods since this one appeared, but this is a good introduction to the issues and it provides some plausible next steps.
International Conflict（国际冲突）
The 20th century witnessed the two most devastating international conflicts in the history of mankind. World War I – also called the “war to end all wars” – was followed by the even more devastating World War II, so it is only prudent to think about the possibility of such international conflict even in the face of 60 years without it. This is not to say that “other wars” are not important, but it is to say that international conflict is more important and understanding the possibilities for it are more important in thinking about the longer-range future. While there isn’t a trend of international conflict per se, it is worth understanding what we can about what causes large-scale wars and how we might prevent them as we think about the future.
Understanding International Conflicts - 2005
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
《理解国际冲突：理论与历史》
约瑟夫•奈，上海人民出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321209451/qid=1133844992/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is Joseph Nye’s classic text on international politics as it relates to conflict. The main question he tackles is whether there is an enduring logic to conflict in world politics. He starts by saying that of the three basic systems of international politics – world imperial, feudal, and anarchic systems of states – it is the last that is most relevant to the contemporary world. The two main logics he tests against 20 th century conflict are the realist view – in which the central problem is war and the use of force and the central actors are states – and the liberal view – in which a global society functions alongside the state through cross-border trade, travel, and international institutions. These are used to explain some things that the realist view has trouble with. He touches on other logics, including Marxism, dependency theory, the neorealists, and the neoliberals, and he treats the constructivists – who emphasize the importance of ideas and culture in international politics – as almost equal with the realist and liberal views though it isn’t really a logic, per se. In the end, he finds a combination of the realist and liberal logics and the constructivist view all necessary to explain conflict in the contemporary world. More interestingly, he sees globalization as moving the world inexorably beyond the old Westphalian system of nations. And the central question he poses is, “How then is it possible to preserve some order in traditional terms of the distribution of power among sovereign states while also moving toward institutions that are based on ‘justice among peoples?’”
Health（健康）
Good health is clearly one of the most important elements of a positive human condition. It is also an element missing for a large percentage of today’s population. Whether the lack of health is caused by diseases such as HIV/AIDS or malaria, or inadequate potable water, or lack of food, or dangerous physical environments, there is significant room for improvement. Many of the world’s health problems are well-known today and are being worked to some degree by a variety of means and organizations. In thinking about the longer-range future of health, it is more important to look for where significant improvements in overall health in the human population might come from. While there is a variety of possibilities, at this point, the most promising possibility on the longer-range horizon comes from genomics.
Genomics and World Health - 2002
The Advisory Committee on Health Research
《基因组学与世界卫生》
卫生研究咨询委员会
该书电子版下载地址，
http://www.whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2002/a74580.pdf
The focus of this report is on the potential of genomics for health care in the undeveloped and developing world. There are two primary concerns: 1) because of the expense of research on genomics and biotechnology, the gap between health in developed and undeveloped countries will increase (and the diseases of the undeveloped countries will be shortchanged), and 2) the money spent on genomic research will take away from funding for more traditional and well-tried approaches of clinical practice, public health and clinical and epidemiological research. The last chapter has a series of recommendations for WHO to do what it can to ensure that genomic research benefits the entire world. There is also an excellent summary chapter on the potential of genomics for health care in general. The potential includes advances in treating monogenic and other communicable diseases; cancer and other complex multifactorial diseases; development abnormalities and mental retardation, and aging. Emerging genomics fields include pharmacogenomics, gene therapy, stem cell research, plant genomics as it relates to human health, forensic medicine, biotechnology and even evolutionary biology. We are clearly at the leading edge of a long exploration of genomics and biotechnology as it relates to human health and other facets of life.
Demographics（人口统计）
In the Bible, God says to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply…”. Believers and non-believers have been following that advice for millennia, but it is only in the 20 th century that it began to be clear that humans might actually be capable of overrunning the planet. While the growth rate of earth’s population has begun to abate, the built-in momentum of population growth is bound to continue for at least a couple of decades into the future. Because we are now in danger of producing more humans than we can feed and house, the earth’s population and demographics are almost certain (barring even more horrific possibilities) to be important issues until it is clear that mankind has gotten its reproduction under control. It is not too apocalyptic to say that the future human condition is critically dependent on the carrying capacity of the earth and on mankind’s ability to control its reproduction.
How Many People Can the Earth Support? - 1995
Joel E. Cohen
《地球能养活多少人》
乔•E•科恩
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393314952/qid=1133845848/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
This is still the classic work on the human carrying capacity of the earth. The book begins with a history of human population and an explanation of demographics and how populations change. From there, Cohen explores a wide variety of population projections for the earth (and how poorly they have fared compared with reality). He then explores a variety of projections for the earth’s carrying capacity. These explore notions of carrying capacity based on a number of constraints including land, water, agriculture, sunlight, natural resources, and the like. (The answers for earth’s carrying capacity range from 4 billion – which we’ve already passed – to more than a trillion). Cohen makes some good, technical suggestions for paying attention to population, but for me, the most interesting concept in the book is the ‘demographic transition’. As a historical pattern, the demographic transition has four stages. The first stage has high birth and death rates that are nearly equal. In the second stage, the death rate drops while the birth rate stays high. In the third stage, the birth rate falls, and in the fourth stage, the birth and death rates are both low and roughly equal. This is a pattern that has recurred in most developed and many developing countries, but so far, no known mechanism explains the data.
Technology（技术）
It has been clear since the first industrial revolution in England that technology can play an important role in improving (or degrading) the human condition. Technology is a particularly good indicator in thinking about the future because of the generally stately pace with which it evolves and gets introduced into society. Genomics and biotechnology are good examples. These fields were inaugurated in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the helical structure of DNA. While there have been some amazing discoveries in these fields since then, the pace at which the accumulated knowledge has been employed to improve the general human condition is still gaining steam more than 50 years later. While we can’t say with certainty what genomics and biotechnology will produce 50 years hence, it is safe to bet that some of the promise we can see in these fields today will be realized. It is important, then, to understand something about those technologies today that hold the greatest promise for the future human condition.
The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century - 2002
John Brockman (ed.)
《未来五十年：21世纪上半期的科学》
约翰•布罗克曼
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375713425/qid=1133850740/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is a collection of essays from 25 eminent scientists who were asked how achievements in their specialties would change our world over the next fifty years. As one might expect, the quality is uneven, but the general collection gives a glimpse of a variety of plausible futures and the best essays are fascinating. One by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyhi on the future of happiness worries that our ability to control the human genome is likely to produce intense selective pressure to produce happy children, but we know that happy people do not tend to value material possessions, are less affected by ads, and are not as driven to power and achievement. Is that what we want? An essay by Roger C. Schank argues that our society that prizes the ability to come up with answers will be dramatically changed by ubiquitous technology that will make coming up with answers a triviality for everyone. He argues that, as answers become devalued (because anything easily obtained is devalued in our society), questions will become more valued and creativity will become what defines educated and intelligent people. A third essay by Richard Dawkins suggests that at the rate gene sequencing is advancing, in fifty years we might each be able to carry around our own personal genome. With literally millions of sequenced genomes, we could track (among other things) in astonishing detail historic migrations of peoples from ancient times. Short blurbs can’t do justice to the full essays, but there are several that suggest intriguing potential futures.
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters - 2000
Matt Ridley
《基因组：人种自传23章》
马特•里德利，北京理工大学出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060194979/qid=1133851230/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?v=glance&s=books
We are clearly on the cusp of a great leap forward in our understanding of the human body and, indeed, of all living things. This book is a very readable introduction to the state of knowledge of (particularly) the human genome as of 2000. Our continuing unraveling of the mysteries of the genome will, as Ridley puts it, “revolutionise anthropology, psychology, medicine, paleontology, and virtually every other science.” This book gives a good sense both of how incredibly complex the genome is and of what our further understanding of it may portend. Perhaps the most important lesson for me was how similar the human genome is to the genomes of all other living things – even bacteria. This suggests both that we can use the somewhat simpler genomes of other living things to better understand the human genome, but that we can also use understanding of any genome to improve our understanding of all genomes.
Nanotechnology: Basic Science and Emerging Technologies - 2004
Michael Wilson et al.
《奈米光电技术：基础科学以及新兴技术》
麦克尔•威尔逊（eBay首席科学家）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584883391/qid=1133851429/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
A collaboration among five experts on various aspects of nanotechnology, this book describes the state of nanotechnology research as of 2004. It begins with an introduction to nanotechnology and then covers areas such as molecular nanotechnology, nanomaterials and nanopowders, nanoelectronics, nanobiometrics, optics, photonics, and solar energy. It is a fairly technical read, but one can get a clear sense of the potential for nanotechnology without understanding the chemistry involved. The important thing about nanotechnology is that we are just beginning to see what the ability to construct materials atom by atom will produce. We are already seeing commercially viable products, including improved sunscreens, cleaners, car protection products, and industrial polishing powders, but the promise is so much greater. Building materials at the atomic level is already producing products with remarkable properties – a one-atom-thick covering for a car windshield, for example, that makes it almost as hard as diamonds. In both the material and biological realm we are likely to see increasingly remarkable products. Great progress is being made in laboratories both in being able to produce materials with remarkable properties and being able to scale that production up to commercially viable amounts. Some of the more fanciful nanotechnology possibilities, such as nanomachines that can do surgery on humans or using DNA to produce nanomachines, are decades or more away, but there seems to be little scientifically that would prevent us from eventually making them. There is much yet to be discovered and the possibilities for nanotechnology include such things as inexpensive, effective means for cleaning up environmental damage and reducing global dependence on a variety of scarce materials. The one thing that is clear is that research should and will continue in this area well into the future.
Information Technology（信息技术）
Information technology (IT) has been transforming modern society since before the introduction of the personal computer in the early 1970s. As such, IT would have fit naturally under the category of “Technology” in this list. At this point in its evolution, however, we should be able to begin to see beyond the technological promise to some of the societal implications of the advances made possible by IT. Speculation about those implications has been rampant since the 1970s as well, but speculation is beginning to be backed up by serious data collection and analysis. It is not just the technology, but effects of the widespread use of that technology that we are beginning to see. For this reason, information was given its own category in the list.
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? - 1998
David Brin
《透明社会：个人隐私Vs. 信息自由》
大卫•布里恩，先觉出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020132802X/qid=1133851830/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?v=glance&s=books
Because of the intrusive capabilities of the latest IT products, privacy has become a widely-debated issue today. The feasibility of cheap, ubiquitous camera surveillance connected to the Internet so that just about anyone and anything can be viewed anywhere at any time certainly raises the specter of the total loss of privacy. Rather than worry about how to ensure privacy in such a world, Brin questions the need for privacy itself. Instead, he argues the virtues of ‘reciprocal transparency’ where, instead of no one being able to see what anyone else is doing, everybody can see what everybody else is doing. People rightly fear that letting others (say the FBI or a big corporation) see what you are doing can lead to mischief, but Brin argues that if you are allowed in return to know what others are seeing and to comment on it – to make them accountable, too – the opportunities for mischief abate. He argues that reciprocal transparency is much more in keeping with our democratic traditions than is privacy (which is nowhere to be found in our Constitution); that it is privacy, not accountability, that enables despots and crime to flourish.
Brin recognizes that reciprocal accountability is not better than privacy in all cases, but he argues compellingly that the notion of reciprocal accountability should be given much greater consideration as we struggle with an IT-induced change in privacy. His concept is clearly important as we struggle today with identity theft (which he mentions explicitly) and international terrorism, but it also suggests that how we as a society choose to deal with technologies that enable greater transparency has important longer-term implications as well.
Environment（环境）
There are two major aspects of the environment that are arguably likely to persist into the longer-range future and affect the human condition – environmental damage and the possibility of significant climate change. Some knowledge of each is important in any conversation about the longer-range human condition.
The Two-Mile Time Machine : Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future - 2000
Richard Alley
《二英里时间机器：冰核, 急剧的气候变化, 以及我们的未来》
理查德德•艾理[宾州大学的地球科学教授，同时也是美国国家研究院（National Research Council）相关议题委员会的主席，本身正是一位货真价实且有重要地位的史前气候学家。他还是位冰核（从冰河中挖出的长冰条，能显示地球气候几百万年来的变化）专家]
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691102961/qid=1133852187/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
The ‘two-mile time machine’ is a two-mile ice core from Greenland that provides insights into the earth’s climate over the last 100,000 years. Alley does a nice job of using everyday examples to illustrate what we know about climate and how we know it. The ice core is only one way of knowing about climate and Alley brings in other ways to solidify the evidence. He gives a nice description of the thermohaline circulation (THC) – which is much in the climate news these days – and its instabilities. The most sobering parts of the book are that we are in an anomalously ‘quiet’ climatic period compared with the rest of the climatic evidence and, historically, things can change dramatically (by 10 degrees C) very quickly (in a year or two). This is a well-nuanced exposition of those possibilities and a good exposition of what we know and what we don’t know about the likelihood of significant climate change.
Natural Capitalism - 1999
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
《绿色资本主义：创造经济双赢的策略》
保罗•霍肯,艾茉莉•罗文斯, 杭特•罗文斯，天下杂志出版
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316353000/qid=1133852898/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This book argues for an overhaul of capitalism to include the full costs of the use of natural resources. This notion alone (that others have argued as well) is important in thinking about the longer-range human condition. What makes this book particularly useful is its reasonably comprehensive look at means not only for including the costs of natural resource use, but means for reducing natural resource use. The four central strategies of ‘natural capitalism’ are radical resource productivity, biomimicry, service and flow economy, and investing in natural capital. The book looks at radical resource productivity in a wide variety of arenas including wheeled vehicles, buildings, production processes, water systems, and agriculture. Biomimicry (see the “Wild Card” category below) is the concept of emulating nature’s “life-temperature, low-pressure, solar-powered assembly techniques” as a means of improving the efficiency of natural resource use. A service and flow economy – as opposed to an economy of goods and purchases – would have the products owned by the producer and leased as services to customers. Instead of owning a washing machine, for example, the customer would lease it and it would be up to the company to maintain it. This would give producers much greater incentives to make products that lasted a long time, needed little maintenance, and could easily be disassembled and recycled when their useful life was up.
The book also addresses some of the cultural problems in implementing a natural capitalism scheme on a large scale. One of the most interesting examples in the book is the city of Curitiba, Brazil. Facing the usual developing world problems of limited resources and explosive population growth, it has become a model city by “implementing hundreds of multipurpose, cheap, fast, simple, homegrown, people-centered, initiatives harnessing market mechanisms, common sense, and local skills.” In all, this book is a useful compendium of the feasibility of moving to a significantly more sustainable future.
Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: General Synthesis - 2005
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
《生态系统和人类福祉》
千年生态系统评估
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597260401/ref=ed_oe_p/102-0880751-4442516?%5Fencoding=UTF8
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was called for by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. It represents the work of more than 2000 authors and reviewers worldwide. It’s three main conclusions are: 1) Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, 2) the changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development, but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, and 3) the degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century. The authors also present some scenarios in which that degradation could be reversed, but caution that those scenarios involve significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices that are not currently under way. This is as current and comprehensive a look at the earth’s ecosystems as is available today.
Energy（能源）
The world is becoming increasingly dependent on oil to fuel improvements in the human condition and nowhere is this more evident than in China’s rapidly growing economy. There is still a raging debate about how soon the earth will run out of oil or out of inexpensive oil, but it is clear that on a longer-range time horizon that oil is unlikely to dominate the energy scene the way it has for the past century. The book chosen in this section concentrates on the United States, but presents a comprehensive look at the kinds of technologies that could be developed to reduce dependence on oil. For the longer-range future, the possibilities for alternative energy sources are important to understand.
Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security - 2004
Amory Lovins
《在石油危机中取胜：为赢利, 工作以及安全而创新》
阿莫瑞•洛文斯（被时代杂志评选为本世纪二十位最有影响力的环保专家，现任落矶山研究中心负责人）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007140998X/qid=1133854974/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This book was recommended to me by Paul Baran, whose credentials as a deep thinker about the future are nonpareil. It’s an admittedly biased look at the potential for the United States to wean itself off of oil – Lovins has been involved in several alternatives to oil energy. Nonetheless, this is a thoroughly researched, carefully reasoned and amply documented look at a path that would essentially eliminate U.S. dependence on imported oil. Lovins’s arguments rest on three primary means of displacing oil: 1) using oil more efficiently (particularly through making vehicles lighter and safer through advanced materials), 2) substituting for petroleum fuels other liquids made from biomass and waste, and 3) substituting saved natural gas for oil in uses where they’re interchangeable, such as furnaces and boilers. He also argues for replacing oil with hydrogen, but does not rest his arguments on that more uncertain technology. He presents each oil-displacing technology in two different portfolios: conventional wisdom, with future expectations broadly accepted by industry and government, and state-of-the-art, with the best technologies sufficiently developed by mid-2004 to project confidently. It’s a good argument for genuine feasibility of seriously reducing U.S. oil dependency and thereby presents a wide variety of means for reducing overall world dependence on oil. Global Economics （全球经济）
Economic globalization will clearly be one of the drivers of the longer-range human condition – for better or worse. There is a growing consensus that economic development is the best way to achieve improvements in personal income (and, from there, improvements in the human condition) and proponents argue that economic globalization is the best route to economic development. There are cogent counterarguments to the unalloyed good of economic globalization, which is what makes it an important topic to understand when thinking about the longer-range future. There are three books here on economic globalization, which is probably too many in a list of only 50 books. I could easily argue that Friedman’s book is covered by the books by Bhagwati and Stiglitz, so this may be an opportunity to include an additional book on the list of 50 without slighting economic globalization.
Globalization and Its Discontents - 2003
Joseph E. Stiglitz
《全球化及其不满》，机械工业出版社
约瑟夫•E•斯蒂格利茨（1993年开始成为克林顿总统经济顾问团的主要成员，并且从1995年6月起任该团主席。1997年起任世界银行副总裁、首席经济学家，2001他又获得了诺贝尔经济学奖，现任美国布鲁金斯学会高级研究员）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393324397/qid=1133846167/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winner in Economics, argues that economic globalization has been done wrong. He argues that the “Washington Consensus” (basically fiscal austerity, privatization, and market liberalization) enforced by the IMF structural adjustment policies has led to hunger and riots in many countries and he urges a reformation of the international economic architecture in order to “make globalization more humane, effective, and equitable.” Stiglitz makes detailed arguments against each of the three pillars of the Washington Consensus. He says the IMF has gotten away from its traditional Keynesian role as deficit financier, committed to maintaining economies at full employment, and “has taken the pre-Keynesian position of fiscal austerity in the face of a downturn.” He says that privatization requires significant preconditions before it can work and even then should be part of a more comprehensive program which entails, for example, creating jobs to offset the job destruction that often accompanies privatization. He says that capital market liberalization is a dangerous game and that even trade liberalization needs to be done carefully.
Stiglitz backs up his arguments with extended examples from both the East Asian monetary crisis and Russia. He then gives the examples of Poland and China, both of whom have taken a different path than the Washington Consensus and have done well. Finally he deals with how to fix things. He first sets out the non-economic goals of globalization: “aring about the environment, making sure the poor have a say in the decisions that affect them, promoting democracy and fair trade.” The general problem to be fixed is market fundamentalism as the approach to economic globalization and the fix is global public institutions to prevent market failures. He then lays out several options, including changing the voting rights at the IMF and the World Bank. Several options are in line with the general longer-range problem of global governance for the purposes of ensuring global public goods.
In Defense of Globalization - 2004
Jagdish Bhagwati
《为全球化辩护》
贾迪什•巴格瓦蒂（出生于印度，目前定居在美国，是哥伦比亚大学的经济学教授，曾任“关贸总协定”总干事兼经济政策顾问）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195300033/qid=1133846412/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0880751-4442516?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
In his defense of the broader concept of globalization, Bhagwati begins by trying to understand the sources of anti-globalization and finds among them attitudes that are anti-capitalism, anti-corporations, and anti-Americanism. He finds fears that globalization will lead to “accentuation of poverty in both rich and poor countries, erosion of unionization and other labor rights, creation of a democratic deficit, harming of women, imperiling of local mainstream and indigenous cultures, and damage to the environment.” He then spends the better part of the book arguing that economic globalization is on balance socially benign – which he finds to have important implications for appropriate governance.
Bhagwati finds examples where trade led to less poverty (in the East Asian tigers), where child labor was reduced (increased incomes led to more children being sent to school), where women were helped (particularly in Export Processing Zones), where democracy was encouraged (through the rise of the middle class), where wages and labor standards improved (e.g., thanks to global pressure on multinational companies), where the environment has not degraded (e.g., due to a shift in the economy from primary production to services), where corporations were socially responsible (thanks to shareholder pressure), and so forth. He recognizes the downsides of each of these, but his argument is that economic globalization is what we make of it. His recipe for success is appropriate governance and, more specifically, promoting international labor standards, putting in place institutional mechanisms to cope with the occasional downsides, and managing transitions to globalization. Bhagwati thinks that the two great forces of the 21 st century are economic globalization and the growth of civil societies, and he feels that the latter can be harnessed in the service of governance over managing the former.
The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization - 2000
Thomas Friedman
《凌志车与橄榄树：理解全球化》
托马斯•弗里德曼（《纽约时报》专栏作家，曾三次获得普利策新闻奖，先后担任首席白宫经济新闻记者和首席白宫记者，2005年成为普利策新闻奖委员会的成员）
该书电子版的下载地址，
http://readfree.net/bbs/read.php?tid=94674&keyword=
This is a nice readable introduction to economic globalization from Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times columnist Friedman. He talks about a previous globalization in the last half of the 19 th and start of the 20 th century and contrasts that one with the new one. The previous one was built around falling transportation costs and was overseen by Britain. This one is built around falling telecommunications costs and is overseen by the United States. He argues that the enabling infrastructure of globalization is the Internet and that it was the democratization of finance, technology, and information that gave the Internet its power in this arena. He defines the “electronic herd” in capital markets that can move large amounts of money around the world with electronic speed. And it is the stampedes of the electronic herd that can trigger financial crises.
In a very colloquial manner, Friedman discusses the promise of globalization and what is required to become plugged into the process (e.g., “The Nine Habits of Highly Effective Countries”) and he discusses some of the potential problems of globalization (e.g., growing inequality through the “winner take all” nature of globalization, and environmental degradation). In general, however, he is a clear supporter of globalization and has an entire section on the wrong-headedness of the backlash against globalization. He says, “y sense is that it is “almost” irreversible.” Some of his examples are already dated (such as the “relentless, coherent, well-funded and efficient business plans” of Enron), but his argument for the persistence of globalization is an important viewpoint in thinking about the longer-range future.
Economic Development - 2003
Michael P. Todaro and Stephen C. Smith
《经济发展》
迈科尔•托达罗，中国经济出版社
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201770512/qid=1133846981/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This is the eighth edition of a popular textbook on economic development (with the 9th edition due out soon). The authors point out that development economics goes beyond traditional economics and political economics, and must also deal with the economic, social, political, and institutional mechanisms, both public and private, necessary to bring about rapid (at least by historical standards) and large-scale improvements in levels of living for the masses of poverty-stricken, malnourished, and illiterate peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.” (emphasis in the original) The book is split into four major parts. The first part covers the principles and concepts of economic development. It covers the common characteristics of developing countries and the limited relevance of Western economic growth for contemporary developing nations and it covers the classical theories of development and contemporary models of development and underdevelopment. The second part deals with domestic problems and policies, including poverty, inequality and development; population growth; urbanization and rural-urban migration; education and health; agricultural transformation and rural development, and the environment. Part three deals with international problems and policies, including trade theory; the trade policy debate; balance of payments, developing-country debt, and macroeconomic stabilization; and foreign finance, investment, and aid.
The fourth part covers possibilities and prospects. It begins by discussing the role of governments in development and the limited success that development planning has had in the last three decades. The section on finance and fiscal policy for development is equally guarded on prospects. It is only in the section on critical issues that some clarity comes to the problem of global economic development. The critical issues are the global environmental threat (greenhouse gases and ozone depletion), the economic crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, and globalization and international financial reform. The authors conclude with the observation that whereas three decades ago the interdependence between developing and developed countries was perceived primarily in terms of the dependence of poor nations on rich ones (with developing countries being the fastest-growing export market for developed countries), rising concerns about unpredictable energy prices and mineral scarcities, fears of global environmental damage, ethnic conflicts, and floods of illegal immigrants pouring across the borders of developed countries, that the future welfare of developed countries increasingly depends on the economic performance and social achievements of the developing countries.
The End of Poverty - 2005
Jeffrey Sachs
《贫困的终结：当代经济发展的可能性》
杰弗里•萨克斯（享誉全球的经济学家，美国哥伦比亚大学地球学会主任，Quetelet讲座可持续发展教授，卫生政策与管理教授，美国国家经济研究局研究员，联合国秘书长特别顾问，负责联合国千年发展计划，该计划包括一系列扶贫项目。同时，他曾是国际货币基金组织、世界银行、OECD等国际组织的顾问）
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594200459/qid=1133847177/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Sachs is an economist and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This book is a companion piece to the recently published “A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” and reports from each of thirteen task forces looking at separate aspects of the MDGs. This book is basically an argument that we can end poverty by 2025. By poverty, he means ending extreme poverty (people living on less than $1/day PPP) and ensuring that all of the world’s poor, including those in moderate poverty, have a chance to “climb the ladder of development.” His approach is based on what he calls “clinical economics” to allow a differential diagnosis of what policies and investments each country needs to achieve the MDGs. Clinical economics treats a country’s economic situation the way a doctor would treat a sick patient – comparing symptoms against a checklist of diseases and coming to a diagnosis for that individual patient based on the patient’s symptoms. The heart of the book is extended examples of treating poverty in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, India, and a general look at Africa. Sachs finishes up with an argument for the feasibility of a poverty elimination project. He discusses on-the-ground solutions for poverty reduction, the six types of capital that the poorest of the poor lack (human, business, infrastructure, natural, public institutional, and knowledge), and the kind of “global compact” that would be required between developed and developing countries. He then does a rough calculation of what it would take to eliminate poverty by 2025 and finds it well within the amount of aid (.7% of GDP) that developed countries have already agreed to supply to developing countries. He finishes up his argument by tackling the common myths about why it isn’t possible to eliminate global poverty.
Culture（文化）
Culture can be a powerful driver of the human condition as witnessed by the relentless spread of “Western” culture over the last several decades. To attempt a thorough examination of all cultures that could plausibly have a significant impact on the longer-range future is beyond the capacity of our 50 book limit. If one presumes, however, that the spread of Western culture will continue into the indefinite future, the one arguable candidate alternative to a Westernized future at this point in history would have to center around the Islamic religion. For thinking about the longer-range future, Islamic terrorism does little more than emphasize the importance of understanding the fastest growing religion in the world today.
No god but God - 2005
Reza Aslan
《没有神却有上帝》
雷扎•阿斯兰
详细书讯
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400062133
This book was written after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. It is a history of Islam with the intent to take a wider view of what is going on in the Islamic world. The history includes Muhammad’s life and the evolution of Islam both while he was alive and, more importantly, after he died. It describes the formation of the various sects and pays particular attention to the divergence between the Rationalist (roughly today’s Shi’as) and the Traditionalist (today’s Sunnis) schools. One fascinating passage that speaks both to today’s issues and to the longer-range future is Aslan’s comment that “it is practically impossible to reconcile the Traditionalist view of the Shariah with modern conceptions of democracy and human rights.” The one attempt he sees in any Islamic state to fuse the traditional values of the Shariah with modern principles of democracy and human rights is in today’s Iran.
The history also includes other important Islamic actors including the Sufis, the more radical Wahhabis (what Aslan says we mischaracterize today as “Islamic fundamentalists”), and the Muslim Brotherhood. Aslan says the Muslim Brotherhood’s notion of Islamic socialism has proved to be “infinitely more successful than either Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism in giving voice to Muslim grievances.” Aslan concludes that what is taking place now is an internal conflict in the Muslim world, not an external battle between Islam and the West – who is merely a bystander. He suggests that, like the Thirty Years’ War that took place during Christianity’s internal conflict, it could be violent well into the future.
Geographic Regions （地域）
In thinking about the future, it is impossible to account for each of the 6 billion people on earth, let alone for the almost 200 countries into which they are grouped. Yet those people and countries are not a homogeneous mixture and it is useful to understand something about the differences among them. Fortunately for a list of 50 books, it is possible to learn something about the important differences by grouping them into geographical regions of roughly similar characteristics. For the purposes of this inaugural list, the regions that seem important to understand when thinking about the longer-range future are: the European Union, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, China, India, and Russia. The latter three, of course, are individual countries, but represent large land masses and large populations.
Understanding the European Union: A Concise Introduction - 2002
John McCormick
《理解欧盟：一个简单的介绍》
约翰•麦考密克（印地安那大学政治学教授）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/033394867X/qid=1133856161/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
In the aftermath of two World Wars (and the Cold War), there have been several experiments in regional integration as a means of reducing tensions that can lead to international conflict. None of these experiments is as important at this point as that represented by the European Union. As McCormick says, “Some argue that the European Union could provide a model that might eventually lead to the breakdown of the state system, and to its replacement by a new community of bigger political and economic units and networks.” At the least, as a stepping stone toward global governance, this could pave the way toward providing global public goods for the betterment of the global human condition.
This book gives the history and progress of the European Union, including the logic of integration itself. The idea of European unity is not new (and was undermined with the rise of the state system), but was reinvigorated beginning with the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. The biggest steps since then have been 1986 Single European Act that (among other things) created a single market and opened the borders among participants, and the 1992 Treaty on European Union (or Maastricht treaty) that paved the way for a common currency. Rejection of the European Constitution in May, 2005 was a backward step and emphasizes the uneven progress that has been made. This is a good discussion of the issues and tensions surrounding full integration and membership in the European Union and whatever its outcome, it will be an important chapter in the evolution of global integration.
The Rise of China - 1993
William H. Overholt
《中国的崛起：经济改革是怎样创造出一个新的强权国家来的》
威廉•H•欧佛（兰德公司亚太政策中心主管，中国问题专家）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393312453/qid=1133856897/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
This book, written in 1993, argued that China’s economy would continue to grow because of “superior strategies in four areas: economics, politics, administration, and financial markets.” In economics their strategy gave priority to industries and sectors where limited government investments would produce rapid growth, they encouraged foreign investment, and they gave priority to light and medium industry. In politics, contrasted with Russia’s strategy of making economic reforms all at once, China’s strategy carefully sequenced the reforms; in administration, China also moved slowly to build up institutions that would enable it to control inflation; and in financial markets, China’s encouragement of bond markets provided a mechanism for soaking up excess money that threatened inflation. Overholt argues how each of these strategies (and other factors, including the crucial role of Hong Kong) contributed to China’s success up to that point and why they were likely to continue to fuel a growing economy in future years.
One of Overholt’s important conclusions for thinking about the future is the notion that economic reform should precede political reform. China appears to be unique both in taking that path and in achieving a modicum of both. There are also interesting chapters on the tensions that China’s economic advance have produced with its regional neighbors and with the United States. Finally, there is a chapter on risks to China’s continued progress (none of which have yet surfaced). This book is interesting not only because of its insights into China’s economy, but also both because of its success in foreseeing at least 12 years into the future and because it presents details of an approach to development that is different than the “Washington Consensus” that had prevailed for so long as the most appropriate means for helping developing countries reform their economies.
China’s Second Revolution: Reform After Mao - 1987
Harry Harding
《中国的第二次革命：毛泽东以后的改革》
何汉理（乔治华盛顿大学埃略特国际关系研究院院长，中国问题专家）
详细书讯，
http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/chinassecondrevolution.htm
This book addresses the origin, content, accomplishments, implications for the international community, and prospects of the reforms that have been and are taking place in China since the days of Mao Zedong. Harding argues that China has followed “a strategy of starting with programs that were likely to produce dramatic increases in production and standards of living, delaying measures that would have the most disruptive impact on the economy, and launching reforms on a nationwide scale only after they have proved successful in local experiments.” In a first set of reforms between 1978 and 1984, Harding describes economic reforms that have “expanded opportunities for private and collective ownership in both agriculture and urban services, offered greater autonomy to enterprise managers, given economic incentives to both peasants and workers, and assigned market forces a greater role in the production, circulation, and pricing of commodities.” In the areas of foreign trade, reforms “allowed foreign investment within restricted organizational formats and established special economic zones along the coast of southeast China to attract export-processing enterprises from abroad.” In the political sphere reform was characterized by “an explicit repudiation of the principal ideological tenets of the Maoist period, greater freedom and predictability in the daily lives of ordinary Chinese citizens, greater creative latitude in scientific and academic pursuits, and greater pragmatism, institutionalization, and consultativeness in national policymaking.” Subsequent reforms have expanded these initial reforms and, in Harding’s opinion, “even if reform should falter, the main outlines of China’s current international orientation will probably continue throughout the rest of the century and beyond.” Written in 1987, the century he referred to was the 20 th century, but his prognosis has not been invalidated in the years since.
As for the longer-range future, while admitting other plausible scenarios, Harding suggests that “ return to Maoism is implausible, as is the revival of a highly centralized economic system or a tightly controlled political order. Increasingly, the choice for China is whether it is possible to stop at moderate reform or whether it will be necessary to move toward further economic and political liberalization.”
China’s economic strategy, in particular, has been based on growth of the internal Chinese market and thus in sharp contrast to the export-led growth strategy followed by other East Asian tigers (and promoted by the “Washington Consensus”). As such, China’s strategy is an important example in thinking about economic globalization.
India: Emerging Power - 2001
Stephen Philip Cohen
《印度：成型中的强权》
史帝芬•柯恩
详细书讯，
http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/india.htm
“This book examines the proposition that India is becoming a major power.” “It is not yet a dominant military or economic power, although its capabilities in these spheres are rising. Rather, it is a state with great cultural and civilizational influence and an increasingly skilled political and strategic leadership that is learning to exploit India’s strengths. It also has a diaspora that constitutes a potential asset for the Indian state.” Cohen says, “India most closely resembles China in its current reemergence as a major state, although it trails far behind in many respects.”
Cohen goes back through two thousand years of India’s history to detail its generally bureaucratic mindset and its remarkable ability to absorb and assimilate its various conquerors over its long history. He points out that a generation ago, India bet on the Soviet Union (during the Cold War), economic autarky, and military might. It lost all three bets and is still recovering from those losses today. The book details India’s ongoing domestic disturbances (arising from its 20 language groups, 50,000 castes, and 500,000 villages), its remarkable economic growth over the last few years, its continuing conflict with Pakistan over the Kashmir region, its status as a nuclear power, its relations with neighboring countries (especially China), its emergence as a well-educated, high-technology power, and its growing relationship with the United States. In all, Cohen believes that from the Indian perspective, the ideal world would consist of many great powers, each dominant in its own region, and pledged to avoid interference across regions and India, of course, would be the great power in its region. He can also see that these hopes are achievable with the right decisions in a few critical areas.
Modern Latin America - 2005
Thomas E. Skidmore
《现代拉丁美洲》
托玛斯•E•斯基德摩
详细书讯，
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/LatinAmerican/?view=usa&com.hesketh.taglib.autoform.formName=default.autoform&sf=all&sd=asc&pf=0&ss=title.asc&bookCovers=yes&pr=9999999&submit=Sort&ci=019517013X
As did most areas of the earth, Latin America had its colonial phase, but most Latin American countries gained their independence (primarily from Spain and Portugal) in the early 18 th century – well before most other countries. Skidmore describes five post-colonial phases in the transformation to modern Latin America. The first two phases (1880 – 1900 and 1900 – 1930) were characterized by import-export growth leading to significant prosperity for some and to growth of large-scale cities. The Great Depression hit the Latin American countries hard, led to a number of military coups and to a period (1930 – 1960s) of import-substituting industrialization (ISI). In the fourth phase (1960s – 1980s), stagnation in ISI due primarily to continued dependence on imported capital goods led to government changes and several highly repressive regimes. Skidmore says the current phase (1980s – 2000s) has been characterized by economic crisis (primarily due to oppressive debt burdens), neo-liberal reform, some economic recovery, and increasing democracy. Case studies of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, the Caribbean, and Central America are used to explore each of these phases to identify similarities and differences among Latin American countries. In the Epilogue, Skidmore explores what these similarities and differences might bode for the future.
Skidmore says one of the most important factors in determining the future is the size and growth of Latin America’s populations. Unless it can get population growth under control he feels the prospects for economic growth are not good, though he sees continued urbanization as a force for population control. In economics, he sees a growing and healthy skepticism of the neo-liberal approach, but nothing yet to replace it. He notes that no major political shifts in Latin America have been directly brought about by the workers and the possibility of peasant revolts is difficult to measure. The middle classes have tended to side with the upper class in crises and he says the tendency is “to favor coups in a crisis but elections when the dust clears.” The church bears watching because the Catholic monopoly on Christianity in the region has been undermined by the rapid inroads of Protestantism, led by well-organized Evangelicals. The military in the 1990s has withdrawn (primarily with the end of the Cold War) and Marxism has lost its appeal across the entire region. As for capitalism, Skidmore notes it’s checkered history in Latin America and its not clear that the current capitalists in this most inequitable region are interested in improving the social welfare of their societies. He concludes that, as in the past, the fate of Latin America will depend largely on its relationship to the centers of international powers.
An interesting appendix has an analytic framework that is useful for comparative analyses of patterns in Latin America, along with several sample comparisons.
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - 1989
David Fromkin
《一次和平终结所有和平：奥士曼帝国的衰落以及现代中东的形成》
戴维•弗罗姆金
详细书讯，
http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/henryholt/search/SearchBookDisplay.asp?BookKey=461168
To understand the Middle East, this book may seem an odd choice, but as one reviewer said, “No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East.” Fromkin’s book covers the period from 1914 to 1922 and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. As the book jacket says, “Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies came to remake the geography of the Middle East, drawing lines on an empty map that eventually became the new countries of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when everything – even an alliance between Arab nationalism and Zionism – seemed possible and oil was not a political issue, Fromkin shows how the choices narrowed and the Middle East began along a road that led to the endless wars and the escalating acts of terrorism that continue to this day.”
At the beginning of World War I, Europeans thought the war would be over in a matter of weeks, that the Ottoman Empire would finally collapse, and that it would be divided up among the Great Powers to conclude “the Great Game.” With access to archives of previously secret documents and private papers, Fromkin shows how those ideas changed as the war wore on and the Ottoman Empire proved more resilient than expected. In the end, the remnants of the Ottoman Empire became the only “spoils” of World War I, so arguments over the division of the Empire became much more intense. In addition, the European thirst for dominion slackened severely among the general population. The result for the British was that by 1922 when they committed to the program for remaking the Middle East – they no longer believed in it. By destroying the old order in the region irrevocably and taking a half-hearted approach to reform, Fromkin says the Allies left the 20 th century Middle East in a situation similar to Europe’s in the 5 th century and “t took Europe a millennium and a half to resolve its post-Roman crisis of social and political identity: nearly a thousand years to settle on the nation-state form of political organization, and nearly five hundred years more to determine which nations were entitled to be states.”
Russia in Search of Itself - 2004
James H. Billington
《俄罗斯：找寻自己中》
詹姆斯•毕林顿（美国国会图书馆馆长，比林顿博士曾获得30余项荣誉学位，1992年普林斯顿大学的伍德罗•威尔逊奖、1999洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学奖和2000年国际语言和文化教师协会设立的普希金奖。还获得格鲁吉亚第比利斯大学（1999）和莫斯科俄罗斯国立大学人文学荣誉博士学位（2001）。比林顿还当选为俄罗斯科学院院士并获得法国艺术文学勋章、德国骑士十字奖章和韩国的光华勋章。比林顿长期担任《外交》与《今日神学》编辑顾问委员会及外国学术委员会成员，根据富布赖特-海斯法案负责世界范围的学术交换。比林顿还是约翰•肯尼迪表演艺术中心和美国哲学学会及美国艺术与科学院成员）
详细书讯，
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wwcp.title&book_id=58483
Billington is the U.S. Librarian of Congress and an expert on Russia. Rather than look at the economic arc of post-Cold War Russia he has chosen to look at the internal cultural dialog that is taking place in Russia. At this point Communism has been largely discredited and the appliques of democracy and capitalism are running into cultural resistance. Billington, however, notes that Russia has something of a history of being able to adapt significant changes abruptly, as they did with Byzantine religious and artistic models a millennium ago and Communism in the early part of the 20 th century. Further, he argues that “no nation ever poured more intellectual energy into answering the question of national identity than Russia and he implies that we won’t really know how Russia will settle out until today’s Russians have settled that question.
Billington has been privy to a good deal of the debate about national identity that has been raging since the early ‘90s. Unlike the past, he says that this debate has neither been driven from the top down nor has it been set by an intellectual giant such as Andrei Sakharov or Alexander Solzhenitsyn. An indication of the confusion among the Russian people was a poll in which some 80% of the population “completely agreed” that democracy was important. At the same time over 70% also “completely agreed” that strong authoritarian rule was important. For people interested in the longer-range future, Billington speaks of three provisional conclusions that emerge from his study: 1) “the range of distinctly possible future identities for Russia should include alternatives that are both far better and far worse than any presently anticipated,” 2) “the balance of probabilities points toward an eventual outcome considerably better than is generally thought possible,” and 3) “an enduring positive identity will be possible only if Russians are able harmoniously to synthesize Western political and economic institutions with an indigenous recovery of the religious and moral dimensions of their own culture.”
African Politics and Society: A Mosaic in Transformation - 2004
Peter J. Schraeder
《非洲政治和社会：转型中的马赛克》
彼得•J•斯川德
详细书讯，
http://www.wadsworth.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M2b&product_isbn_issn=053456769X&discipline_number=20
Schraeder describes Africa as a “rich mosaic of diversity” and emphasizes the point by noting that “African leaders have employed capitalism, Marxism, socialism, and Islamic revivalism as the bases for creating a wide variety of political regimes, including monarchies, military dictatorships, Islamic republics, and liberal democracies.” He includes North Africa in his study and begins with the past by describing three broad historical periods – the precolonial era (prior to 1884), the colonial era (1884 – 1951) and contemporary independence (1951 – present). The main feature of the precolonial era was that (apart from the slave trade) the continent was doing pretty well, fueled from the 11 th century on by a growing trans-Saharan trade network. All that came to a screeching halt during the colonial era, characterized importantly by resource extraction and the imposition of arbitrary nation-state boundaries. Although Africa is still impacted today by its colonial history, it is also impacted significantly by its legacy from the Cold War as an ideological battlefield for proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The book covers the sociocultural environment in Africa, including the roles that ethnicity and class play and the role of ideology in the politics of development. Governance is covered, including the ongoing tension between state power and underdeveloped but growing civil societies, the prominent role that militaries have played, and the growing number of democratic experiments being carried out. Also covered is the role that foreign relations have played, especially the ongoing role that foreign powers play, both directly and indirectly. Most interesting from the longer-range standpoint, however, is a section on theoretical perspectives. Here, Schraeder covers the two main competing theories – the liberal tradition and the critical tradition. The former holds the vision of the development of free-market democracies in Africa and has undergone significant evolution in the face of ongoing failures on the continent. The critical tradition questions the long-standing liberal tradition and, in its most extreme form, emphasizes that true development will occur only after revolutionary struggles and the creation of populist regimes throughout the continent. Without suggesting how Africa will progress, Schraeder sees reason for optimism: “For every military coup d’etat there exists a transition to civilian rule, such as in Benin, where 19 years of military dictatorship (1972-91) were replaced by democracy (1991-present). For every civil war there exists a case of conflict resolution, as in Mozambique, where a peace accord signed in 1992 ended nearly 30 years of guerrilla warfare. For every ethnic conflict there exists a well-meaning attempt to create multi-ethnic cooperation, such as South Africa’s democratization under the leadership of president Nelson Mandela … and his successor.”
State Legitimacy and Development in Africa - 2000
Pierre Englebert
《国家合法性以及发展在非洲》
皮埃尔•安格尔伯特
详细书讯，
http://www.rienner.com/viewbook.cfm?BOOKID=1107&search=
“The historical endogeneity of the state, its congruence with underlying political institutions and norms of political authority – in a word, its legitimacy – is a crucial variable in understanding the choice of policies that rulers of developing countries adopt and the quality of the overall governance they provide. Both, in turn, are important factors contributing to economic development.” Englebert arrives at this conclusion through regression analysis that is aimed at describing both economic success and failure among African states. His measure of state legitimacy applies throughout the world and his regressions are run across data worldwide (except Central Asia because of their recent independence). They are of particular interest in Africa because most of Africa’s states qualify as nonlegitimate. The analysis shows that Africa’s relative lack of state legitimacy leads to its weak economic performance compared to other developing regions and it shows how variations in state legitimacy among African countries also account in large part for differences in state capacity and economic performance across the region.
Regression analysis also shows that state legitimacy is robust in the face of other more common potential explanatory variables such as terms of trade, commodity dependence, rates of population growth, ethnic heterogeneity, tropicality, access to the coast, and occurrences of civil wars. This strongly suggests that economic policies in poorly performing African states follow the noneconomic logic of their leaders’ quest for political hegemony. Further, it suggests that the ability of some states to incorporate necessary economic reforms may actually depend on something the African states have thus far been unalterably opposed to – territorial redefinition of some African political structures. This latter thought suggests that the boundaries of nonlegitimate African (and other) states may more malleable in the longer-range future than they are today. The Future （未来）
While the section on “Thinking About the Future in the Past” was about past efforts to think about the future, this section is about methodologies for thinking about the future. Although there is no comprehensive compilation of futures research methodologies, the best compilation of major methodologies is by Jerome Glenn and Theodore Gordon of the AC/UNU Millennium Project. The books in this category are either collections of approaches that complement the Millennium Project’s list or are recent advances in thinking about the longer-range future.
Futuring - 2004
Edward Cornish
《走向未来》
爱德沃德•科尼斯
详细书讯，
http://www.wfs.org/futuring.htm
This is a nice, readable introduction to the general topic of futuring by the long-time president of the World Future Society. Particularly nice are the chapters on the history of futuring, a glossary and a robust bibliography with synopses. An up-to-date bibliography can also be found at http://www.wfs.org/futuringbib.htm.
Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: Perspectives on Individual, Social, and Civilizational Change - 1997
Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah
《大历史与大历史学家：以个体、社会以及文明变动的角度来观察》
约翰•戈尔通（和平学的创始人）、苏哈尔•伊那亚图拉（未来学大师）
详细书讯，
http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C5755.aspx
“Macrohistory is the study of the histories of social systems, along separate trajectories, in search of patterns.” “The macrohistorian will be looking for occurrences and recurrences of some well-defined theme” and macrohistory “traces a process through time… sufficiently to see the shape of the trajectories and to identify some underlying mechanisms”. It’s the underlying mechanisms that would be most useful to those who want to think about the longer-range future.
This is a unique and fascinating study of 20 macrohistorians ranging from the Chinese historian Ssu-Ma Ch’ien in the second century BCE, through more familiar names such as Augustine, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Teilhard, and Toynbee, down to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Each macrohistorian is accorded his own section with a brief review of the context in which he lived and an equally brief description of his macrohistorical theory. (There is one woman – Riane Eisler – and she writes her own section). The macrohistorians are then compared across ten defining factors of macrohistory, including #9 – perspectives on the future. As one would expect, different macrohistorians have different perspectives on the future. Herbert Spencer, for example, used a biological metaphor and would predict a world government which would function as the brain of civilization. Pitirim Sorokin would say that the West stands in the middle of sensate civilization, awaiting the final two stages of charisma and resurrection – it awaits new leadership. And so forth.
Since the authors say that, among the macrohistorians studied, “no one is so central and covers so much of the discourses of the others as Toynbee,” their take on Toynbee’s perspective of the future is interesting. According to the authors, Toynbee sees the West as being in a disintegration phase in which “the Creative Minority becomes the Dominant Minority trying to control the Internal and External Proletariat by force.” This phase may last long, but in this phase, “there will almost certainly arise some kind of Universal Church, maybe built around what today is called ‘green values,’ essentially values of reproducibility , against exploitation.”
The book also has diagrams of each of the theories that emphasize their linear or cyclic (or other) nature.
Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis - 2003
Robert J. Lempert Steven W. Popper, and Steven C. Bankes
《塑造下一个百年：定量分析以及长期政策分析的新方法》
罗伯特•J•蓝柏特、斯蒂文•W•波柏、斯蒂文•C•班克斯
该书电子版下载，
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1626/
This book describes a methodology developed in the RAND Pardee Center for handling uncertainty about the future in a way that combines the best qualities of computers and humans. The goals of the methodology are to produce policy decisions that are robust to uncertainty about the future and that preserve options for future decisionmakers to the extent possible. The centerpiece of the methodology is a computational environment into which computer models can be connected. These computer models are used as scenario generators and assemble the relevant, available information on a given problem in what is called XLRM form where X are the exogenous uncertainties that affect the future, L are the near-term policy levers, M are the measures for ranking modeled outcomes, and R are the relationships among the variables in the scenario generator. That is, the scenario generator contains the presumed behavior of the system under investigation (R), the policy levers that can affect the behavior of that system (L), measures to help decide the goodness of a policy lever’s effect (M), and the uncertainties inherent in the longer-range future (X). The computational environment can then run a wide variety of policy levers over a wide variety of possible futures and produce “landscapes” of goodness for the various policy levers. Humans can then modify the policy lever combinations to try to produce policies that are good across the uncertainties in the situation. After the humans are comfortable that a given policy regime is good enough, they can also try to develop other plausible futures with which to test the preferred policy. Even for somewhat complex scenario generators, modern computational power and the ability to spread the computations across a number of machines allow for dozens of policy options to be tested against hundreds, thousands, and in some cases, millions of futures.
One of the most important aspects of this technique is its ability to test policy options against more than one scenario generator at a time. For example, if three people have different mental models of how, say, the earth’s climate works, each of those mental models can be captured in a separate scenario generator and policies can be tested against all three scenario generators simultaneously. This allows for a variety of stakeholders in a given situation to see how policies work out across each of their own mental models. This becomes a powerful tool for “leveling the playing field” for a given policy debate.
Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change, and Other Long-Term Fiscal Challenges - 2003
Peter Heller
《谁来支付? 应付老龄化社会, 气候变化, 以及其它长期财政挑战》
彼得•霍勒（国际货币基金组织财政事务部主任）
详细书讯，
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158906223X/qid=1133862163/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0880751-4442516?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Heller’s argument rests on four carefully developed points: 1) certain important structural changes will occur, with high probability, including shifts in the age structure of populations, changes in climatic conditions, continued globalization, and ongoing dramatic technological progress; 2) these developments are likely to have significant fiscal consequences, primarily because explicit policy commitments already made by governments of the world’s industrial countries have predetermined, “to a historically unprecedented degree, much of the fiscal priorities of future generations”; 3) what may seem like far-distant concerns could easily affect both the current economic environment and short- to medium-term policy decisions; and 4) failure to address the implication of these long-term developments will affect the future human condition. In other words, future entitlements and short-horizon fiscal planning combined with foreseeable, significant longer-range structural changes presage a train wreck. Heller argues that the train wreck is avoidable – that “we have sufficient knowledge about some long-term developments for their plausible consequences to be taken into account in formulating fiscal policy frameworks today.” He offers not only technical solutions for longer-term fiscal planning, but, more importantly, also addresses how political impediments might be overcome.
Global Crises, Global Solutions - 2004
Bjorn Lomborg
《全球危机，全球解决方案》
比约恩•隆伯格（丹麦奥尔胡斯大学政治学教授）
详细书讯，
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521606144
This is an interesting approach to setting budgets aimed at longer-range issues. Lomborg led a group called the Copenhagen Consensus. They wanted to come up with a rank ordering, using cost-benefit analysis (CBA), of the major challenges facing humanity. The first task was the compilation of a list of 32 such major challenges. Experts were then polled to identify the 10 most promising challenges from a cost-benefit standpoint. The list of ten included climate change, communicable diseases, conflicts and arms proliferation, access to education, financial instability, governance and corruption, malnutrition and hunger, migration, sanitation and access to clean water, and subsidies and trade barriers. In each of these ten areas, a renowned economics specialist within the field was approached to write a ‘challenge paper’ that: 1) gave a brief overview of the dimensions of the challenge, 2) identified between one and five practicable opportunities to address the challenge, and 3) made an extensive overview of the cost-benefit analyses in the literature and applied them to the different opportunities. Two additional scholars were commissioned for each challenge paper to provide additional commentary. Penultimately, eight distinguished economists were convened for five days in Copenhagen to hear, half a day at a time, the 10 papers and commentaries and to ask questions of the challenge paper authors and commenters. Finally, the panel of eight economists rank ordered the entire list of opportunities across all ten major challenges by cost-benefit ratio. This is a process that will be repeated at least one more time – in 2008.
The book presents all of the challenge papers and comments as well as the rankings of each of the eight economists in the final panel and their comments. The final ranking of opportunities was achieved by taking the median of the eight individual rankings. The list of opportunities is interesting, but coming up with cost-benefit analyses for many was problematic. The panel gave weight to both the institutional preconditions for success and to the demands of ethical or humanitarian urgency. The panel also took the view that political costs should be excluded and that just economics costs of delivery should be considered. Even so, the panel found it impossible to rank all of the opportunities and wound up ranking only 17. This included none from the conflicts and arms proliferation, access to education, and financial instability and only one from governance and corruption, and from subsidies and trade. Nonetheless, the final rankings are interesting. The four ranked as very good from a CBA standpoint were control of HIV/AIDS, providing micronutrients to children, trade liberalization, and control of malaria. The four ranked as bad investments were guest worker programs for the unskilled, optimal carbon tax, the Kyoto Protocol, and value-at-risk carbon tax. Several of the experts argued that there were better climate change opportunities and had other suggestions for improvements in the process.
In all, its an interesting, but challenging, approach to ranking the best investments in improvements in the longer-range human condition. It is clearly dependent on very difficult CBAs and expert opinion, but it does cut across a wide range of major challenges facing humanity.
Wild Cards （台湾翻译为“王牌”，大陆翻译为“百搭牌”）
We know with great certainty that there will be surprises in the future. Trying to anticipate those surprises is a fool’s errand, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t include in a list of books related to the future some well-reasoned arguments about some more speculative future possibilities. Picking from amongst the dizzying array of possible choices – including some excellent science fiction – can never be done defensibly. I claim only that each of these three books represent a topic that I found intriguing and that could arguably lead to a world that looks very different from today’s world in some important aspect.
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature - 2002
Janine Benyus
《生物模擬：由自然所启发的创新》
雅尼娜•拜纽什（被誉为“环保运动之母”雷切尔•卡逊女士的接班人、作家、环保运动家）
详细书讯，
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060533226
Biomimicry is basically imitating nature’s processes to solve human problems. Benyus tells of several fascinating possibilities, including “solar cells copied from leaves, steely fibers woven spider-style, shatterproof ceramics drawn from mother-of-pearl, cancer cures compliments of chimpanzees” and others. The basic point is that there is a wide variety of natural processes that produce materials better than the best manmade materials with much less input of energy (basically just sunlight) and materials (generally organic) than man uses. This leaves quite a bit of room for biomimicry to improve on human processes. Perhaps the most intriguing possibility is a re-engineered prairie that would produce about as much grains and legumes as current cropland with much reduced needs for water, machinery, planting, fertilizing, weedkilling, and tending in general, and with much improved erosion control and sustainability. This would come about from perennial, polyculture agriculture rather than the current annual, monoculture model of today.
Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever - 2004
Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman
《奇妙的旅程：从长寿到长生不老》
雷•科志维（著名未来趋势学家）、特里•葛罗斯曼（丹佛市一个长寿诊所的创建者）
详细书讯，
http://www.rodalestore.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10002&storeId=10051&productId=15538&langId=-1&nav_wt=search
This book, by a noted thinker and futurist (Kurzweil) and a medical doctor, is an exploration of aging and how to increase the human life span. At its base, it is a thorough review of our current understanding of aging and nutrition and “Ray and Terry’s Longevity Program” for increasing one’s life span today. In addition, there are speculations on what the authors call Bridge Two – biotechnology advances that could increase life span further – and Bridge Three – nanotechnology and artificial intelligence advances that could ultimately repair all cellular damage associated with aging and allow humans literally to live forever. The possibility of significantly increasing human life spans has tremendous implications for the future – most seriously in increasing the risks of overpopulation – so this is an excellent handbook of what we know of those possibilities today.
Amish Society - 1993
John A. Hostetler
《阿米绪社会》
约翰•A•霍斯泰特勒
详细书讯，
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/1126.html
Most writing today on human development presumes that it will only come about through economic development modeled after the industrialized Western world. Are there any other alternatives? If the Amish were a nation would they be considered a developed country or a developing country? Hostetler’s book is recognized as the authoritative account of the Amish society and makes for interesting reading given current views of development. The Amish are a strongly agricultural society and they are remarkably self-sufficient, generally producing a surplus that they sell to outsiders. They use modern knowledge of agriculture, and some Amish communities use modern equipment such as tractors, but not modern fertilizers or pesticides. They accept no government handouts such as farm subsidies, social security or Medicare. They do take advantage of modern medicine, using doctors from outside their communities and paying in cash or barter. Few Amish communities use electricity, telephones, computers, cars, and the like. They cherish their agricultural tradition and by all appearances have made a go of an agricultural society. In what ways is this not a reasonable model for development in some current undeveloped societies?
Apart from their particular brand of religion, the Amish approach has some limits as a model for others. Primarily, they depend on the stability and safety of the U.S. in order to thrive. They originally came to the U.S. because they were being persecuted in Europe. Protection from the U.S. has been important because they would not fight to protect themselves. Another limiting aspect is that the size of their communities is small. That permits them face-to-face communications that are important to the working of the community. If a community gets too big, it splits into smaller communities. Scaling up the Amish example would be difficult in a populous world. The Amish have an average of 6 or more children per family (not sustainable in today’s world) and they limit their children to education through the eighth grade (they say any further education makes a person ‘prideful’). There are limits to the Amish model then for development in the contemporary world, but the Amish are an interesting example of possible alternatives to the Western model of development 时间所限，没能对推荐该书的理由做更多的翻译，希望有时间、有翻译能力的网友能跟进。 希望有时间、有翻译能力的网友能跟进
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