Sunday, November 05, 2006

Yoda for policy nerds

We're switching to non-fiction for the next few author events at the shop, and for me
Thomas Homer Dixon is the favourite. A huge piece in the Globe (locked behind a subscription wall) in which the author of the Upside of Down lays it all out in terms of the next generation of planetary nasties. This is territory visited by Jared Diamond, Thomas Flannery etc, but Dixon is such a fluid writer with a firm grasp of multiple disciplines. He's Thomas Friedman without the repetition, Malcolm Gladwell with more depth, he briefed Vice President Al Gore during the 90s, and what I like particularly is that he walks the walk.
(Forgive the editorial: Making your home or business Bullfrog Powered is a cinch to meet one's Kyoto requirements several times over).
Taken together, his last book, the Ingenuity Gap and the Upside of Down resemble a cold eyed look a very few years ahead and a bit of hope for later, which brings up the next post.

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