This book breaks the taboo on prophecy: We're not supposed to talk about a future that doesn't include the powerful states that rule over us today. The Sovereign Individual by Lord William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson (Touchstone, $29). It's both a great history of the space race and a meditation on how to steel yourself to take risks. "What is it, I wondered, that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle…and wait for someone to light the fuse?" Wolfe asks that question in his classic about the test pilots who became the first astronauts. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (Picador, $17). In the 1960s, everyone expected progress. It was a controversial best-seller, but nobody argued with the premise. In 1968, Servan-Schreiber predicted relentless economic growth for America he wrote this book to wake up his European audience to the threat of eclipse. The American Challenge by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (out of print). We've gotten a lot done since, but New Atlantis is still futuristic, especially for science fiction from 1627. Francis Bacon dreamed of science and technology to make our lives better. Today we take for granted what used to exist only in dreams. New Atlantis by Francis Bacon (Wiley, $12).
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