Here are 100 books that The Usborne Book of the Future fans have personally recommended if you like
The Usborne Book of the Future.
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In my journey, I've sought to blend my interest in ancient wisdoms into a coherent, accessible philosophy I call "Nowism." My aim has been to simplify and share complex teachings in a way that resonates and helps. Through my writing, performing, and speaking, I try to bring these concepts to life, hoping to ignite a spark of understanding and self-discovery in others. More than anything, before I leave this world, I want to contribute something (no matter how small) to the legacy of personal empowerment. I aspire to help people see the world more clearly, to understand themselves more deeply, and to find joy in the present moment.
Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is more than a book; it's a life-altering philosophy.
As someone brimming with creative energy and ideas, I found myself often lost in a sea of projects, losing sight of my true goals. This book was a revelation. It adeptly distinguishes between essentialist and non-essentialist mindsets, compelling you to evaluate your intentions and commitments.
Through its teachings, I've learned to eliminate non-essential projects, focusing only on what truly aligns with my core objectives. It's a must-read for anyone looking to declutter their life and mind, ensuring that every action taken is a step towards what genuinely matters.
The journey of trimming the unnecessary from my life is ongoing, but it's liberating to have fewer, more meaningful irons in the fire.
The life-changing international bestseller that started a global movement - now updated with the new 21-Day Essentialism Challenge and an exclusive excerpt from EFFORTLESS
Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload?
Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised?
Do you ever feel busy but not productive?
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an Essentialist.
In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a Leadership and Strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of…
The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.
**WINNER OF THE STARTUP INSPIRATION CATEGORY OF THE 2020 BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS**
'It's impossible to read this book without being inspired and energised ... Essential reading for any start-up or entrepreneur, at any stage of the journey.' - Alison Jones, Host of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast and author of This Book Means Business
'Genuinely fresh and jargon-free' - Financial Times
How to Have a Happy Hustle shares the secrets of innovation experts and startup founders to help you make your ideas happen.
If you're looking for fulfilment outside the day job, have an idea but don't know where…
The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.
Sometimes as a futurist, my challenge is to make people imagine a world that is very different from today. To help them look beyond the horizon.
Science Fiction is great for that but novels take us into a whole other world: we replace one set of blinkers for another, descending - however pleasurably - into a fictional universe.
It’s unlikely I can get my clients to read many novels to imagine many different futures. Which is where short and micro stories come in. Sometimes my clients commission me to write them, but sometimes it’s a pleasure to read them from other people.
I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories and opens my mind in the same ways.
I can’t pay Adrian Hon’s collection any greater compliment than to say it reminds me of reading Asimov’s short stories…
Imagining the history of the twenty-first century through its artifacts, from silent messaging systems to artificial worlds on asteroids.
In the year 2082, a curator looks back at the twenty-first century, offering a history of the era through a series of objects and artifacts. He reminisces about the power of connectivity, which was reinforced by such technologies as silent messaging—wearable computers that relay subvocal communication; recalls the Fourth Great Awakening, when a regimen of pills could make someone virtuous; and notes disapprovingly the use of locked interrogation, which delivers “enhanced interrogation” simulations via virtual reality. The unnamed curator quotes from…
The future is the one thing in which we are all invested. In order to shape the future we must be able to visualise possibilities, prepare for consequences, and take action. My job is to help companies, charities, and governments to see and prepare for the future. But so many of the lessons that I find myself trying to teach to leaders have their parallels in our personal and working lives - including mine. In a time of great uncertainty about the future, we all must take time out to picture where we’re going, make choices about our direction, and invest in ourselves to achieve our dreams.
When examining the future, you’re always dealing with lots of different sources of information.
Trying to understand how they align, interact, and compete is complex. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working as a futurist, trying to plot out a new business plan, or just thinking about your personal life.
One thing that has always helped me is writing. Getting it down on paper is a powerful way to structure your thoughts, to share them, and kick off collaboration.
If you want help using writing to explore your mind and your world, then this is the book. It’s in many ways quite simple, but it’s no less powerful than that.
Everything we're learning about how we function best as humans in the digital age is pointing towards one of our oldest technologies: the pen and the page.
Exploratory writing - writing for ourselves, not for others, writing when we don't know exactly what it is we want to say - is one of the most powerful and lightweight thinking tools we have at our disposal. It's also been, until now, one of the most overlooked.
When you have online influence, you have the ability to transform minds, behaviors, and outcomes. Dario Sipos is a Digital Marketing Strategist, Branding Expert, Keynote Public Speaker, Business Columnist, and Author of the highly acclaimed books Digital Personal Branding and Digital Retail Marketing. Dario has spent significant time working all over the World in the digital field, helping clients and developing brands. He helps leaders influence positive outcomes in all directions, even under the most difficult, changing conditions. Dario will help you build your influence in all directions of your online presence.
This book introduced me to the concept of a complete reinvention of retail, from brick and mortar to online shops, including changes in how consumers shop.
Retail is considered slow and without the possibility for any drastic improvement. Reengineering Retail explores the revolution in retail by giving a glimpse into future developments. This book is the only one where the author’s vision is a future where every part of the existing retail experience will be transformed. The author bravely discusses the change of core economic revenue models, which helped me to understand a new potential roadmap to the future.
Since the release of Doug Stephens' first book, The Retail Revival, change in the global retail sector has accelerated beyond even the boldest forecasts. As predicted, online giants like Amazon and Alibaba.com are growing at a dizzying pace. Hundreds of well-known brick and mortar retailers have closed their doors, and brands and retailers across categories are struggling to understand the shifting needs and expectations of a new consumer.
Picking up where The Retail Revival left off, Reengineering Retail explores the coming revolution in the global retail and consumer goods market, offering sales and marketing executives a roadmap to the future.…
I worked for many years in business consultancy (writing many books like the bestselling “Successful Time Management [Kogan Page]) before branching into other genres, including fiction and light-hearted travel writing (e.g., Beguiling Burma [Rethink Press]). My five novels all involve ordinary people caught up in situations that involve mystery or crime (or both). Like most fiction writers, I find it difficult to recognize where ideas come from, though I do draw on various aspects of my own life; for example, Long Overdue [Stanhope Books] involves sailing and a missing person. Certainly, I relate to sailing and, for many years, owned a boat.
Another unusual premise. An asteroid has been spotted on a collision course with Earth, and civilization appears doomed, yet our hero remains set on solving his current case, a death originally dismissed as suicide, which is, in fact, a murder.
Surprisingly, the two themes are made to sit well together, and the intent to solve the crime never seems inappropriate in dire circumstances. This is a real page-turner, which I loved.
In THE LAST POLICEMAN, Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Ben H. Winters, offers readers something they've never seen before: A police procedural set on the brink of an apocalypse. What's the point in solving murders when we're going to die soon, anyway? Hank Palace, a homicide detective in Concord, New Hampshire, asks this question every day. Most people have stopped doing whatever it is they did before the asteroid 2011L47J hovered into view. Stopped selling real estate; stopped working at hospitals; stopped slinging hash or driving cabs or trading high-yield securities. A lot of folks spend…
I’ve always been a voracious reader of the news and history, consuming everything from Johnny Tremain to Slaughterhouse-Five, from old-fashioned newspapers to online news feeds. I’ve also always loved writing fiction. I aligned my interests in history, the news, and writing in my first novel, The Blood Lie, based on a hate crime in my hometown in the 1920s. Since then, I’ve written two other novels based on true events: Ripped Away and my novel, listed below.
The 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion. I remember exactly where I was - at home - and what I was doing - living my everyday young person’s life.
This is the setting for the three siblings in this novel, which I could not put down. Like me, the characters have to process the reality of the explosion right alongside doing homework, squabbling with each other, and watching sitcoms.
I love how the kids end up much more resilient without any heavy-handed messaging from the author. And the ’80s details are the best!
A Newbery Honor Book * BookPage Best Books * Chicago Public Library Best Fiction * Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee * Horn Book Fanfare * New York Times Notable Children's Book * School Library Journal Best Book * Today Show Pick * An ALA Notable Book
"A 10 out of 10 . . . Anyone interested in science, sibling relationships, and friendships will enjoy reading We Dream of Space."-Time for Kids
Newbery Medalist and New York Times-bestselling author Erin Entrada Kelly transports readers to 1986 and introduces them to the unforgettable Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas in this pitch-perfect middle…
Okay, so you’ve read Dune, you’ve read Starship Troopers, you’ve read 2001: A Space Odyssey, and maybe you’ve even read From Earth to the Moon and The First Men in the Moon. Seen the movies, too (or maybe you cheat and say you’ve read the books when you’ve only seen the flicks). Bet you think that makes you an expert on science fiction about space, right? Not even close! If you want to read more than just the well-known classics everyone else has, find these books. Some have become obscure and are now out of print, but they’re not hard to find; try ABE, eBay, and local second-hand bookstores. They’re worth searching for, and then you’ll really have something to talk about.
A near-future space thriller, about a revolution by an orbital space colony against the governments of Earth that seek to keep it under their control, is a fast-moving blend of action, politics, and speculation. Read this and see the sort of vision of humanity’s future in space that captivated people’s imaginations at the dawn of the Space Shuttle era.
I have been a professional illustrator for 20 years. In all this time I have gathered a vast collection of picture books, animated movie artbooks, children's books... I use them as a source of inspiration for my work, but I really collect them because they are my treasure. I don't just look for books with beautiful illustrations, but that really give me something, that make me think, or that stay in my memory. They are timeless books, that are not aimed at any age, that anyone can enjoy, but that at the same time have deep meaning if you know how to look at them. Not all picture books are just for kids.
Through a Life is a book that won me over for its intelligence. The premise may not be new, since it presents the life of a man from his birth to his death. But the way it is presented is absolutely original: on the left page appears a specific fact of the protagonist's life and on the right appears what the protagonist sees at that moment. Or maybe it's what he remembers because that's what life is, what we build through our memories. The concise graphics and very intelligent use of color fascinate me, and I think they make it a marvel of graphic design. A beautiful and painful book at the same time, which leaves you thinking for hours.
Rodney spends his life looking through. Windows give way to screens as he comes to age dreaming of what lies beyond Earth's atmosphere...
This powerfully silent graphic novel by Tom Haugomat follows the saga of a boy who grows up to be an astronaut, just like he always wanted...until a fatal shuttle crash upends his life, and he begins to find solace in beauty here on earth. Told through a series of poignant vignettes, Through is a sweeping story of dreams, expectations, nature, and loss.
My husband/co-author and I are sci-fi nerds and started getting excited about space settlements after writing two space-related chapters in our first book, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. We spent 4 years doing research for A City on Mars and ended up with around 35 shelves of space-related books in our bookcases. About 3 of those shelves are books related to life in space, many of which are astronaut memoirs. Here are some of our favorites, picked so they span from the Apollo to the International Space Station eras!
This book is hilarious and raunchy and is an incredible story about how social progress is made.
Mike Mullane was at NASA when the first astronaut class that included women was recruited. He was a pretty massive sexist when the women initially joined, and he details how his thoughts on working with women astronauts changed as he found the women astronauts to be eminently capable.
By the end of the book, it’s clear that Mullane could still stand to make a little more progress on the sexism front, but he has come a long way. Social progress is often achingly slow, but this is a fun story about how it sometimes slowly inches forward.
Selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of shuttle astronauts, Mike Mullane completed three missions and logged 356 hours aboard the Discovery and Atlantis shuttles. It was a dream come true. As a boy, Mullane could only read about space travel in science fiction, but the launch of Sputnik changed all that. Space flight became a possible dream and Mike Mullane set out to make it come true. In this absorbing memoir, Mullane gives the first-ever look into the often hilarious, sometime volatile dynamics of space shuttle astronauts - a class that included Vietnam War veterans,…
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