Mood Matters
"Mood Matters" makes the radical assertion that all social events ranging from fashions in music and art to the rise and fall of civilizations are biased by the attitudes a society holds toward the future. When the "social mood" is positive and people look forward to the future, events of an entirely different character tend to occur than when society is pessimistic...
John L. Casti is a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, where he works on the development of early-warning methods for extreme events in human society. He is also the co-founder of The Kenos Circle, a Vienna-based society for exploration of the future, and author of the previous bestselling volumes, Paradigms Lost, Would-Be Worlds and The Cambridge Quintet. He lives in Vienna.
"I am an assiduous reader of John Casti's books as they provide a complex-systems perspective on things, in addition to being very pleasant to read. He is a real scientific intellectual."
Nassim Taleb, Author of "The Black Swan"
"In this fascinating book, John Casti argues that far from events driving public attitudes the converse is true. At very least, he makes a convincing case that the causal arrow can and often has run either way. More than ever before, we need a global "mood" that promotes sustainability, which makes this an important and timely book; it matters."
Robert M. May, Professor of Zoology, Oxford and former President of the Royal Society (2000-2005)
Who and what determines the future?
New book Mood Matters: From Rising Skirt Lengths to the Collapse of World Powers demonstrates how social mood drives human events
Copernicus's 1543 book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres turned the world upside down (literally) by arguing the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom of his time, namely, that the Sun revolved around the Earth. A daring new book, Mood Matters by John L. Casti, turns today's conventional wisdom about how events occur upside down, too.
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A new interview with John Casti is now available at SellingBooks.com.
The author shares how the book was first conceived, and reveals additional experiences from his twenty years as a writer of scientific books:
Interview with John Casti at SellingBooks.com
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