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Popular versions of our work

During the past couple of years several authors have made good use of our work in their books. These include:

The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It – December 31, 2019 – by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister

Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance

by Laurence B. Siegel | Dec 5, 2019

More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources?and What Happens Next – October 8, 2019

by Andrew McAfee

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress – January 15, 2019 by Steven Pinker

It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear – March 5, 2019 by Gregg Easterbrook

David Thaler joins us more officially

For decades we have enjoyed stimulating conversations, co-authorship, and the deep reading of David S. Thaler. A protege of Joshua Lederberg, David spent many years at The Rockefeller University and is now based at the Biozentrum – Center for Molecular Life Sciences in Basel, Switzerland. David now rejoins RU as a guest investigator with PHE, and mutual interests spanning evolution, barcodes, Leonardo, and more. Welcome, David.

Andrew W. Marshall Foundation begins work

The foundation promoting the strategic thinking of the late Andrew W. Marshall has begun its work to foster innovative thinking about national security. Cesare Marchetti and Jesse Ausubel prepared their study on the quantitative dynamics of human empires as the request of Mr. Marshall.

We also post Jesse’s remembrance of Andy, “Andrew Marshall and Classics,” which will appear in the forthcoming volume about Andy edited by Andrew May.

Deep Carbon Observatory Decade celebrated

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), which Jesse co-founded in 2009, is completing its initial decade. Jesse wrote a brief history of the program, including its origin in the work of the late Tommy Gold.

A press release summarizes some of the decadal achievements, celebrated at a large conference in Washington DC 24-26 October 2019, as does the Deep Carbon Observatory’s decadal report, a 50-page document released in October 2019.

Several books summarize the work of the DCO.  Published by Cambridge University Press in October 2019, Deep Carbon: Past to Present, is a 684-page collection of 20 chapters by many authors edited by Beth N. Orcutt (Bigelow Lab, Maine, USA), Isabelle Daniel (University of Lyon, France), and Rajdeep Dasgupta (Rice University, Texas, USA).  Aimed at sharing recent progress with the peer scientific community, the book is also available open access.  The volume pairs with the 2013 volume Carbon in Earth, which aimed to provide the baseline of knowledge at the outset of the Deep Carbon Observatory program.

Published by W. W. Norton & Company in June 2019, Robert Hazen’s 288-page Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything offers a popular tour of the work of the Deep Carbon Observatory including cameo portraits of many researchers involved in the program.

Finally, English historian of science Simon Mitton, has completed the first history of deep carbon science, Carbon from Crust to Core: A Chronicle of Deep Carbon Science.  Mitton’s 400-page book, to be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2020, identifies key discoveries, impacts of new knowledge, and roles of deep carbon scientists and their institutions from the 1400s to the present.