The Rational Optimist Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Rational Optimist Book

Matt Ridley, acclaimed author of the classics 'Genome' and 'Nature via Nurture', turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. In 'The Rational Optimist' Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age, and proves, however much we like to think to the contrary, that things are getting better.Read More

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    Matt Ridley acclaimed author of the classics 'Genome' and 'Nature via Nurture' turns from investigating human nature to investigating human progress. In 'The Rational Optimist' Ridley offers a counterblast to the prevailing pessimism of our age and proves however much we like to think to the contrary that things are getting better. Over 10 000 years ago there were fewer than 10 million people on the planet. Today there are more than 6 billion 99 per cent of whom are better fed better sheltered better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10 000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years: calories; vitamins; clean water; machines; privacy; the means to travel faster than we can run and the ability to communicate over longer distances than we can shout. Yet bizarrely however much things improve from the way they were before people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous.In this original optimistic book Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other. 'The Rational Optimist' will do for economics what 'Genome' did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems imagined or real is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10 000 years -- to keep on changing.

  • Foyles

    Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2011.Life is on the up.We are wealthier, healthier, happier, kinder, cleaner, more peaceful, more equal and longer-lived than any previous generation. Thanks to the unique human habits of exchange and specialisation, our species has found innovative solutions to every obstacle it has faced so far.In ‘The Rational Optimist’, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley comprehensively refutes the doom-mongers of our time, and reaches back into the past to give a rational explanation for why we can – and will – overcome the challenges of the future, such as climate change and the population boom.Bold and controversial, it is a brilliantly confident assertion that the 21st century will be the best for humankind yet.

  • BookDepository

    The Rational Optimist : Paperback : HarperCollins Publishers : 9780007267125 : 0007267126 : 31 Mar 2011 : Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2011. Life is on the up.

  • 0007267126
  • 9780007267125
  • Matt Ridley
  • 31 March 2011
  • Fourth Estate
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 464
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