FT Business Book of the Year

Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

Age of Discovery by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna

Age of Discovery

As Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna explain in the engaging Age of Discovery, this is not the first time globalisation has divided societies, nor is it the first time technological change has unleashed income inequality, social tension, xenophobia and ideological extremism. — Read the complete FT review

Synopsis

Age of Discovery explores a world on the brink of a new Renaissance and asks: How do we share more widely the benefits of unprecedented progress? How do we endure the inevitable tumult generated by accelerating change? How do we each thrive through this tangled, uncertain time?

From gains in health, education, wealth and technology, to crises of conflict, disease and mass migration, the similarities between today’s world and that of the fifteenth century are both striking and prophetic: we have been here before. So what must we do to achieve our full potential, individually and altogether, this time around? Will we repeat the glories of the Renaissance, the misery, or both?

In Age of Discovery, Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna show how we can draw courage, wisdom and inspiration from the days of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in order to fashion our own Golden Age. Whether we’re seized by Gutenberg or Zuckerberg, the discovery of the Americas or the rise of China, copperplate etchings or silicon chips, the Bonfire of the Vanities or the destructive fury of ISIS, the spread of syphilis or the Ebola pandemic, such Renaissance moments force humanity to give its best just when the stakes are at their highest.