Books

• The Fertility Decline

  The human population is still growing. Beneath that total, something has changed: in much of the world, each generation is smaller than the one before. The difference appears slowly—an empty desk, a missing worker, an aging parent with fewer children to call. For two centuries, the great population fear was that humanity would become too numerous. We may be entering the opposite problem before we have fully noticed the turn. A society can become smaller once and remain capable. When every generation is smaller, the adjustment begins again from a narrower base. This book follows that change from a school with too few pupils to the possibility that people might one day build a home beyond Earth. It asks why people are having fewer children, what the decline changes, what governments and institutions can do, and whether renewal can remain compatible with human dignity and modern freedom.

• Justified Crusades

  Working project on history book

• The Loop Turns Inward

  An exploration of what happens when a person, organization, market, political system, or machine begins improving not only its results, but the process that produces them. Moving from software tests and study habits to evolution, competition, and artificial intelligence, the book examines how systems preserve lessons, adapt to changing conditions, and sometimes become dangerously good at pursuing the wrong goal. It argues that greater capability makes human judgment more necessary, because no improvement process can decide for itself what “better” should mean.