What We Are Reading Today: Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

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Updated 23 August 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

Author: Jeffrey Ding

When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of innovation—the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats.

In this book, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing new technologies at scale.

Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Road That Made America by James Dodson

Updated 14 August 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Road That Made America by James Dodson

James Dodson’s “The Road That Made America” is a lively, epic account of  the 800-mile-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia.
In time, the Great Wagon Road became America’s first technology highway as people and ideas that traveled down the road shaped the character of the fledgling nation and helped define who we are today.


What We Are Reading Today: Of Time and Turtles by Sy Montgomery

Updated 13 August 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Of Time and Turtles by Sy Montgomery

Sy Montgomery’s “Of Time and Turtles” tells of  her curiosity to the wonder and wisdom of our long-lived cohabitants, turtles‚  and through their stories of hope and rescue.

Elegantly blending science, memoir, philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.


What We Are Reading Today: Strata

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Updated 12 August 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Strata

  • Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth’s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future

Author: Laura Poppick

Laura Poppick’s “Strata” decodes the epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history that are written in strata — ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. 

Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth’s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Overstory’

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Updated 12 August 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Overstory’

  • Richard Powers is an American novelist known for his fiction as well as science fiction works

Author: Richard Powers

Published in 2018, “The Overstory” by Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019.

The novel explores the lives of a group of people and trees, and how they are interconnected, emphasizing the relationship between humans and nature.

In the book, nine characters whose lives were influenced by encounters with trees — either through family history, personal tragedy, science or activism — find their paths crossing.

Their connection to trees and their shared goals lead them to join efforts to advocate for environmental health.

Throughout the story, Powers threads the narrative with themes and concepts such as ecological interdependence, sacrifice and the necessity for conservation, creating a mixture of science, storytelling and environmental ethics.

While the book is a great option for people interested in the environment and natural science, the pacing suffers a bit, despite being well-written. Some readers may struggle to stay captivated by the story.

Richard Powers is an American novelist known for his fiction as well as science fiction works.

Powers has published several works including “Bewilderment,” “Playground” and “The Time of Our Singing.”

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Real Economy by Johathan Levy

Updated 12 August 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Real Economy by Johathan Levy

What is the economy, really? Is it a “market sector,” a “general equilibrium,” or the “gross domestic product”? Economics today has become so preoccupied with methods that economists risk losing sight of the economy itself.

Meanwhile, other disciplines, although often intent on criticizing the methods of economics, have failed to articulate an alternative vision of the economy. Before the ascent of postwar neoclassical economics, fierce debates raged, as many different visions of the economy circulated and competed with one another. In The Real Economy, Jonathan Levy returns to the spirit of this earlier era, which, in all its contentiousness, gave birth to the discipline of economics.

Writing for anyone interested in the study of the economy, Levy provides an invaluable provocation for a broader debate in the social sciences and humanities concerning what “the economy” is.