The Mit Press: 939 books
The Future Is Not What It Used to Be
Climate Change and Energy Scarcity
Language: English
Release Date: August 16, 2013
A hard look at the twin challenges of climate change and energy scarcity that examines historical precedents and allows no room for complacency.
The future is not what it used to be because we can no longer rely on the comforting assumption that it will resemble the past. Past abundance of...
Energy and Civilization
A History
Language: English
Release Date: May 12, 2017
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization.
"I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization:...
Solar Revolution
The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry
Language: English
Release Date: September 26, 2008
An innovative analysis that shows how the shift to solar energy—in particular, the use of photovoltaic cells—is both economically advantageous and inevitable, and will rival the information and communication technologies revolution in its transformative effects.
In Solar Revolution, fund...
An Economist in the Real World
The Art of Policymaking in India
Language: English
Release Date: October 9, 2015
An economist's perspective on the nuts and bolts of economic policymaking, based on his experience as the Chief Economic Adviser in India.
In December 2009, the economist Kaushik Basu left the rarefied world of academic research for the nuts and bolts of policymaking. Appointed by the then...
The Stack
On Software and Sovereignty
Language: English
Release Date: February 26, 2016
A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture.
What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It...
Between Reason and Experience
Essays in Technology and Modernity
Language: English
Release Date: April 9, 2010
A leading philosopher of technology calls for the democratic coordination of technical rationality with everyday experience.
The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages,...
What Algorithms Want
Imagination in the Age of Computing
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2017
The gap between theoretical ideas and messy reality, as seen in Neal Stephenson, Adam Smith, and Star Trek.
We depend on—we believe in—algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to...
Recycling Reconsidered
The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States
Language: English
Release Date: December 9, 2011
How the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard.
Recycling is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice,...
Invisible Engines
How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries
Language: English
Release Date: February 15, 2008
Harnessing the power of software platforms: what executives and entrepreneurs must know about how to use this technology to transform industries and how to develop the strategies that will create value and drive profits.
Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched,...
by Joshua Gans
Language: English
Release Date: March 18, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: March 18, 2016
An expert in management takes on the conventional wisdom about disruption, looking at companies that proved resilient and offering managers tools for survival.
“Disruption” is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive—or,...
Parentonomics
An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting
Language: English
Release Date: August 27, 2010
What every parent needs to know about negotiating, incentives, outsourcing, and other strategies to solve the economic management problem that is parenting.
Like any new parent, Joshua Gans felt joy mixed with anxiety upon the birth of his first child. Who was this blanket-swaddled small person...
Reclaiming the Atmospheric Commons
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and a New Model of Emissions Trading
Language: English
Release Date: September 9, 2016
How the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative created a new paradigm in climate policy by requiring polluters to pay for their emissions for the first time.
In 2008, a group of states in the northeast United States launched an emissions trading program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)....
Big Ideas in Macroeconomics
A Nontechnical View
Language: English
Release Date: December 27, 2013
An accessible description of modern macroeconomics, and a defense of its policy relevance.
Macroeconomists have been caricatured either as credulous savants in love with the beauty of their mathematical models or as free-market fundamentalists who admit no doubt as to the market's wisdom. In...
How Games Move Us
Emotion by Design
Language: English
Release Date: March 4, 2016
An engaging examination of how video game design can create strong, positive emotional experiences for players, with examples from popular, indie, and art games.
This is a renaissance moment for video games—in the variety of genres they represent, and the range of emotional territory they...