The Ingenuity Gap

The following is a short, idiosyncratic list of the books and articles that I found particularly valuable when writing The Ingenuity Gap. All of them are mentioned in the book's endnotes, but since there are several thousand citations there, readers may benefit from a more select list. I've provided some comments on each of these readings in the Annotated Reading List. You can also reach these comments by clicking on the sub-headings in the list below.

Ingenuity Optimists

Ausubel, Jesse. "Does Climate Still Matter?" Nature. 350, no. 6320 (25 April 1991): 649-652.
Ausubel, Jesse. "Resources and Environment in the 21st Century: Seeing Past the Phantoms," World Energy Council Journal. (July 1998): 8-16.
Ausubel, Jesse. "The Liberation of the Environment," Daedalus. 125, no. 33 (Summer 1996): 1-17.
Nordhaus, William. "Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not," in The Economics of New Goods, eds. Timothy Bresnahan and Robert Gordon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
Simon, Julian. The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Complexity and Chaos

Arthur, W. Brian. "On the Evolution of Complexity," Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality, eds. G. Cowan, D. Pines, and D. Meltzer (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1994).
Bar-Yam, Yaneer. Dynamics of Complex Systems (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
Crutchfield, J. P., Farmer, J. D, Packard, N. H. and Shaw, R. S. "Chaos," Scientific American. 255, no. 6 (December 1986): 46-57.
Williams, Garnet. Chaos Theory Tamed (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1997).

Complex Adaptive Systems

Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Kauffman, Stuart. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Wright, Sewall. "The Roles of Mutation, Inbreeding, Crossbreeding and Selection in Evolution," Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Genetics 1. (1932): 356-366.

Rising Complexity

Perrow, Charles. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
Rochlin, Gene. Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Tainter, Joseph. The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Winner, Langdon. "Complexity and the Limits of Human Understanding," in Organized Social Complexity: Challenge to Politics and Policy, ed. Todd La Porte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

Ecological Systems and Environmental Change

Broecker, Wally. "Unpleasant Surprises in the Greenhouse?" Nature. 328, no. 6126 (9 July 1987): 123-126.
Holling, C.S. "Buzz". "An Ecologist View of the Malthusian Conflict," Population, Economic Development, and the Environment, ed. Kerstin Lindahl-Kiessling and Hans Landberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Holling, C.S. "Buzz". "New Science and New Investments for a Sustainable Biosphere," Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability, eds. AnnMari Jansson, Monica Hammer, Carl Folke, and Robert Costanza (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994).
Turner, B. L. II et al. eds. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
World Resources Institute. World Resources. (Washington, D.C.)

Evolution of the Human Brain

Mithen, Steven. The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996).
Potts, Rick. Humanity's Descent: The Consequences of Ecological Instability (New York: Avon, 1997).

New Growth (Endogenous Growth) Theory

Aghion, Philippe and Howitt, Peter. Endogenous Growth Theory (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998).
Romer, Paul. "Two Strategies for Economic Development: Using Ideas and Producing Ideas," Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics 1992 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993).
Romer, Paul. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy. 98, no. 5, pt. 2 (1990): S74-S75.
Romer, Paul. "Idea Gaps and Object Gaps in Economic Development," Journal of Monetary Economics. 32, no. 3 (1993): 543-573.
Romer, Paul. "The Origins of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives. 8, no. 1 (1994): 3-22.

Market-Induced Technological Innovation

Barnett, Harold and Morse, Chandler. Scarcity and Growth: The Economics of Natural Resource Availability (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, 1963).
Hayami, Yujiro and Ruttan, Vernon. Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
Hicks, J.R. The Theory of Wages (London: Macmillan, 1932).
Olson, Mancur. "Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations are Rich, and Others Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives. 10, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 3-24.
Petroski, Henry. Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Schmookler, Jacob. Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966).
Smith, V. Kerry, ed. Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press for Resources for the Future, 1979).

Rational-Choice Theory

Green, Donald and Shapiro, Ian. Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1994).
Ostrom, Elinor. "A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action," American Political Science Review. 92, no. 1 (March 1998): 1-22.

Constraints on Science

Barrow, John. Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Kahn, Herman and Wiener, Anthony. "The Next Thirty-Three Years: A Framework for Speculation," Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress, eds. Daniel Bell and Stephen Graubard (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1967, 1997), 73-100.

Limits to Social Ingenuity

Falkenrath, Richard, Newman, Robert and Thayer, Bradley. America's Achilles' Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998).
Olson, Mancur. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, Conneticut: Yale University Press, 1982).
Rauch, Jonathan. Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government (New York: Times Books, 1995).
Tuchman Mathews, Jessica. "Power Shift," Foreign Affairs. 76, no. 1 (January/February 1997): 50-66.
Wright, Robert. "Hyperdemocracy," Time. 145, no. 3 (23 January 1995): 41-46.