Tom Perrotta meets David Brooks in The Leading Indicators--a powerful modern parable about one American family's fall from grace during the recessionMargo and Tom Helot have the perfect life. He works in finance; she's an enterprising stay-at-home mom. They inhabit a fully redecorated home complete with expensive his-and-hers cars in the drive and situated in the peaceful, leafy suburb of a major American city. Day after day delivery trucks arrive bearing p...

Carter Morris is a high-priced corporate lawyer, negotiating the class-action suit of a lifetime which will result in a massive settlement. As he ponders his sellout, he relives significant moments of his youth, literally. From air raid drills to his arrest for protesting, his memories pull him out of present time and back into the past.Carter tracks down his childhood best friend, the college sweetheart who broke his heart and his idolized older brother who was blown into a fragmen...

The US Navy brought half a century of peace and free trade to the world’s waterways. But climate change and rising nationalism threaten to end this blue age.For decades, the Navy has stood sentinel over crucial waterways, ensuring safe passage of goods from nearly all nations. The result is the longest phase of peace on the waters since the Phoenicians, with rising living standards, more (total) jobs, and the dramatic decline of poverty in Asia.But these pr...

What can a spell-checker tell you about economic trends? Why is the world’s supply of ideas about to double? What did America get right in the nineteenth century that it’s getting wrong in the twenty-first? If Karl Marx were alive today, would he be hosting a show on Fox News?These are just a few of the provocative questions asked by Sonic Boom, a (mainly) optimistic look at the near future. Sonic Boom tells why the world’s economy is likely to be just fine, with ...

Gridiron football is the king of sports – it's the biggest game in the strongest and richest country in the world. In The King of Sports, Easterbrook tells the full story of how football became so deeply ingrained in American culture. Both good and bad, he examines its impact on American society.The King of Sports explores these and many other topics:* The real harm done by concussions (it's not to NFL players).* The real way in whic...

Is civilization teetering on the edge of a cliff? Or are we just climbing higher than ever?Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more.Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than i...

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century--and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.Between contemporary emphasis on grievances and the fears engendered by 9/11, today it is comm...

Is there anything more universally American than NFL football?Love of the NFL runs deep and broad. It is a primetime TV event on multiple national networks, subsidized by public funds and popular from Mount Rainier to Miami Beach. The 2015 Super Bowl, a thriller between the Patriots and Seahawks, was the most-watched program in the history of television, with more than a third of the country watching.Yet football is in trouble. Public anxiety over football ...

The US Navy brought half a century of peace and free trade to the world’s waterways. But climate change and rising nationalism threaten to end this blue age.For decades, the Navy has stood sentinel over crucial waterways, ensuring safe passage of goods from nearly all nations. The result is the longest phase of peace on the waters since the Phoenicians, with rising living standards, more (total) jobs, and the dramatic decline of poverty in Asia.But these pr...

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century--and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.Between contemporary emphasis on grievances and the fears engendered by 9/11, today it is comm...

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century--and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.Between contemporary emphasis on grievances and the fears engendered by 9/11, today it is comm...

Is civilization teetering on the edge of a cliff? Or are we just climbing higher than ever?Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more.Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than i...