Introducing TED Books
Welcome to TED Books: an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution. Shorter than traditional books, TED Books run fewer than 20,000 words each -- long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. More about TED Books »
TED Books now available:
The Demise of Guys – Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan
Synopsis: Why are young men failing socially, sexually, and in school? Is the rampant overuse of video games and online porn causing the demise of guys? Celebrated psychologist Philip Zimbardo and co-author Nikita Duncan, authors of The Demise of Guys, suggest this might be the case in this provocative TED Book. Based on survey responses from 20,000 men, numerous individual interviews and dozens of studies, Zimbardo and Duncan propose that the excessive use of videogames and online porn is creating a generation of shy and risk-adverse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment. Taking a critical look at a problem which is tearing at families and societies everywhere, The Demise of Guys posits that our young me are suffering from a new form of “arousal addiction,” and introduces a bold new plan for getting them back on track.
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What's Killing Us – Alanna Shaikh
Synopsis: In the past half-century, we’ve changed the way we collectively view the health of the 7 billion people who occupy this planet. Health issues were once seen as an isolated national or regional problem; now they are a global concern. In What's Killing Us, 2011 TED Senior Fellow and healthcare expert Alanna Shaikh lays out the most important challenges and issues in global wellness -- from tuberculosis to HIV/AIDS, flu, maternal mortality, and the diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics -- while untangling the web of jargon that so often permeate those discussions. Shaikh, who runs the international development focused-blog Blood and Milk, also provides clear ideas about how these worldwide problems can be managed.
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Living Architecture – Rachel Armstrong
Synopsis: What will the city of the future look like? More like an ever-changing and vibrant garden than a static set of buildings and blocks. In Living Architecture: How Synthetic Biology Can Remake Our Cities and Reshape Our Lives, British designer and architect Rachel Armstrong re-imagines the world’s extensive urban areas and argues that in order to achieve sustainable development of the built environment -- and help countries like Japan recover from natural disasters -- we need to begin rethinking how we approach architecture. Armstrong sets the scene for fundamentally different ways of making structures and materials, suggesting that we can ‘grow’ more ecologically compatible buildings by using life-like technologies, such as protocells. The result is a new kind of architectural practice where cities behave more like an evolving ecosystem than a lifeless machine.
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Beyond the Hole in the Wall – Sugata Mitra
Synopsis: Ten years ago, educator Sugata Mitra and his colleagues cracked open a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed a networked PC, and left it there for the local children to freely explore. What they quickly saw in their ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment was that kids from one of the most desperately poor and unwired areas of the world could, without instruction, quickly learn how the PC operated and how to go online. They also taught each other the nuances of high-tech connectivity. It was the dawning of Mitra’s introduction to self-organized learning, and it would shape the next decade of his groundbreaking research into how children learn. This important update on Mitra’s original work (which provided the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire) offers new research and ideas that show how self-directed learning can make kids smarter and more creative. He also offers step-by-step instruction on how to integrate it into any classroom. It’s an important lesson that could reshape our schools and reinvigorate our educational system.
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Controlling Cancer – Paul Ewald
and Holly Swain Ewald
Synopsis: The scourge of cancer has ripped through bodies, families, and generations for so long and with such power that it feels almost invincible. But biologist Paul Ewald -- widely regarded as the leading expert in the emerging field of evolutionary medicine -- and co-author Holly Swain Ewald may have found a way of attacking the intractable killer, which they detail here. The Ewalds believe that viruses are at the heart of the onset of cancer and we can attack the disease through an early attack on the virus. In this important study, they form an innovative plan for rethinking and eradicating one of the world’s deadliest diseases.
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Smile – Ron Gutman
Synopsis: How can something as simple as a smile be so deceptively complex? That's the mystery and magic explored in Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act, which explores the sensation and science of the smile. From the broad beaming grin of a toddler to the oily smirk of a used car salesman, smiles convey an enormous range of emotions. Grins also have radically varied meanings in different cultures, as the author learned during his many worldwide trips to explore the complicated, but ubiquitous, act of smiling.
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Launching The Innovation Renaissance – Alex Tabarrok
Synopsis: Unemployment, fear, and fitful growth tell us the economy is stagnating. The recession, however, is just the tip of iceberg. We have deeper problems. Most importantly, the rate of innovation is down. Patents, which were designed to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, have instead become weapons in a war for competitive advantage with innovation as collateral damage. College, once a foundation for innovation, has been oversold. We have more students in college than ever before, for example, but fewer science majors. Regulations, passed with the best of intentions, have spread like kudzu and now impede progress to everyone's detriment. Launching the Innovation Renaissance is a fast-paced look at how we can accelerate innovation and build a solid 21st-century economy.
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Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon – Erin McKean
Synopsis: Ever been brainjacked? Or Breitbarted? Perhaps you’re a kangatarian or a newpreneur. If not, you can still be a wordnik. Come with us as we peek into the notebook of lexicographer Erin McKean in Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon: Thought-Provoking Words from a Lexicographer’s Notebook, her revealing look at a torrent of new words and phrases—in science, politics, social life—that reveal our changing societies. It’s a surprising window on our world.
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Media Makeover – Alisa Miller
Synopsis: Media Makeover: Improving the News One Click at a Time is a bird’s-eye view on how “news” is made -- and how readers and viewers can re-make it. Alisa Miller, CEO of Public Radio International, lays out what's missing from our news diets and explains why certain kinds of news are harder to come by -- and shows how we can take control of the news to get a more accurate picture of the world. Media Makeover: Improving the News One Click at a Time is a must-read for anyone who wants to be better informed: consumers, innovators, technologists, journalists, and media leaders alike.
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Weekday Vegetarian – Graham Hill
Synopsis: A vegetarian diet can markedly improve your health and fitness, but what if you still love munching into a juicy burger every now and again? Graham Hill has a powerful and simple solution: Become a weekday vegetarian. Don't eat meat Monday through Friday. During the weekends, you're back to being a carnivore.
Hill, who founded the eco-blog treehugger.com, has expanded the popular short talk he gave at TED2010 into a potentially life-changing digital book that explores the personal, economic and societal benefits of moving meat out of your diet. Don't fear that vegetarian dishes all taste like sawdust. Hill includes 20 great-tasting veggie recipes to get you started.
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Make Love Not Porn – Cindy Gallop
Synopsis: In Make Love Not Porn: Technology's Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior, Cindy Gallop talks about the personal experiences and research that inspired her to give her legendary TEDTalk "Make Love Not Porn" -- and the explosive growth of the website MakeLoveNotPorn.com since the talk went viral. She shares stories of people who've learned from her talk and from the site, from people who've supported it and challenged it. It's an important read about the new realities of intimacy in the digital age.
About the author: Cindy Gallop's 2009 TEDTalk was a powerful look at the effects of online porn on a generation of young people.
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Beware Dangerism! – Gever Tulley
Synopsis: If you're over 30, you probably walked to school, played on the monkeybars, learned to high-dive at the public pool. If you're younger, it's unlikely you did any of these things. Has the world become that much more dangerous? Statistically, not at all. But our society has created pervasive fears around letting kids be independent and take risks -- and the consequences for our kids are serious. Gever Tulley takes on these media-inflated fears -- which he calls "dangerism" -- with surprising statistics and insights into the nature of fear and risk.
About the author: Gever Tulley is the co-founder of the Tinkering School, a weeklong camp where lucky kids get to play with their very own power tools.
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The Happiness Manifesto – Nic Marks
Synopsis: Much of modern life is based on the assumption that happiness comes from economic prosperity. Many -- politicians, media and citizens alike -- seem to assume the goal of government is to keep the economy moving. Here, Nic Marks argues that the blind pursuit of economic growth has created an environment that actually undermines our happiness. He offers some bold suggestions on how nations and people can return to a shared common purpose: nurturing well-being.
About the author: Nic Marks is the founder of the Centre for Well-Being, an independent think tank at the New Economics Foundation in London.
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Homo Evolutis – Juan Enriquez & Steve Gullans
Synopsis: There have been at least 25 prototype humans. We are but one more model, and there is no evidence evolution has stopped. Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans, two of the world's most eminent science authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs, take you into a world where humans increasingly shape their environment, their own selves, and other species. By the end you will see a broad, and sometimes scary, map of life science-driven change. Not just our bodies will be altered but our core religious, government, and social structures as humankind makes the transition to a new species, a Homo evolutis, which directly and deliberately controls its own evolution and that of many other species.
About the authors: Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.
Steve Gullans is an experienced investor, entrepreneur and scientist. He co-founded RxGen a pharmaceutical services company.
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About TED Books
The success of TEDTalks has demonstrated that millions of people around the world are hungry to absorb new ideas. Many of the talks create a desire to go deeper -- but not everyone has the time to read an entire book on a subject. TED Books fill that gap. While a traditional book is at least 60,000 words, TED Books, at fewer than 20,000, allow someone to see an idea fleshed out in a satisfying way -- but without having to devote a week of reading time to it.
The mass adoption of new e-book technologies like Kindle and iPad has changed the rules of the game. We suspect the traditional length of books has been dictated as much by the constraints of the physical medium of print as by what a modern reader actually wants. (Publishing wisdom is that 20,000 words in print feel too small to sell, so authors may be encouraged to write much more expansively, even if the idea itself doesn't require it.) But just as iTunes allowed people to build new listening habits around individual music tracks, instead of albums, so the new reading technologies allow instant distribution of books of any length -- facilitating new, more focused reading habits.
With more demands than ever on people's time, we think many will welcome the chance to absorb a TED Book on a single short plane flight or on a day's commute.
Does this mean the dumbing down of reading? Actually, we suspect people reading TED Books will be trading up rather than down. They'll be reading a short, compelling book instead of browsing a magazine or doing crossword puzzles. Our goal is to make ideas accessible in a way that matches modern attention spans.
Where to buy / How to view
TED Books are available from Amazon.com and Apple's iBookstore, and for the Nook platform. They can be purchased for $2.99 each (US).