Table of Contents

Foreword by Edward Cornish
Prologue: Teaching the Future
Futures Inquiry
The State of the Art
Past Futures
Paradigms
Alternative Futures
The Future of the Earth
The Future of Wealth and Power
The Future of War and Peace
Epilogue: The Next Three Futures
Suggested Reading
Index

Promotional Information

Wagar pulls together all aspects of futures studies in this unique volume and examines how futurists think and work. He compares and analyzes their ideas on a wide range of topics, including the environment, politics, economics, war and peace, and sociocultural issues.

About the Author

W. WARREN WAGAR is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the acclaimed author of A Short History of the Future, Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things and World Views: A Study in Comparative History. Dr. Wagar edited History and the Idea of Mankind and his articles have appeared in The World Future Society Bulletin, The Futurist, and Futures Research Quarterly.

Reviews

"Every serious, or seriously aspiring, futurist should read this broad synthesis of ideas in space and time. Wagar offers four impressive overviews of recent thought on the environment, wealth and power, war and peace, and culture, and then goes on to provocatively argue that each of three major ideologies--technoliberalism, radicalism, and counterculturalism--may have its turn at world power in the next two centuries. We need more of this stimulating Big Picture scholarship!"-Michael Marien Editor, Future Survey

"Wagar, a prolific scholar who has produced many important books on utopian literature and writing about the future and is himself the recent author of a splendid utopian novel, presents in his latest book a superb synthesis of futures studies. . . . An indispensable text for courses in futures studies, this outstanding book will also fill a need felt by all teachers of utopian fiction by making available to them and their students a sophisticated and highly readable overview of the large issues guiding utopographers."- Daphne Patai University of Massachusetts at Amherst