An enjoyable dive into the intricate anatomy of global innovation, from the wildly creative to the coolly efficient.
Silicon Valley, long seen as the global epicenter of tech magic, has not lost its luster, even as ambitious rivals scramble for the spotlight.
In this brisk, eye-opening survey, technology and business writer Gul examines how and where transformative technologies reach the market, and why innovation flourishes in certain places. His scope is wide: China, South Korea, Singapore, Silicon Valley, Canada, London, and Switzerland, each explored through their cultural and historical contexts. Drawing on interviews with venture capitalists, researchers, and entrepreneurs, Gul investigates what makes a place truly innovative—and why so few places with concentrated entrepreneurship centers have been able to mount a serious challenge to Silicon Valley. Gul writes that “while the world’s older industrial economies might have looked very different, its newer tech economies are strikingly similar and becoming even more similar over time.” He argues that “the contest is not between different models but different intensities of the same model.” Whether organized as “rainforests” or “farms”—“farms are controlled systems where inputs and outputs are predetermined” and “rainforests are a lot more chaotic”—all seek to bring ideas to market quickly. Among the author’s sharpest insights: Many nations have invested heavily in AI, but the U.S. remains dominant due to early momentum and vast stores of training data. Immigration, he shows, is also tightly linked to innovation. Canada’s emergence as an AI powerhouse is driven in part by three cutting-edge researchers—each an immigrant—while China’s AI strategy is shaped largely by domestic talent, producing rapid advances but limited external diversity. Still, China and the U.S. now compete head-to-head in AI. Gul refutes the notion that permissive social environments inherently generate more innovation, noting, “There’s obviously a China-sized hole in that argument.”
An enjoyable dive into the intricate anatomy of global innovation, from the wildly creative to the coolly efficient.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781982110536
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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