Howard Bloom – författare

In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom—one of today’s preeminent thinkers—offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a “complex adaptive system,” a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. And he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical.

Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research-and-development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, flocks of flying lizards, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic Era, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality.

Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution; it is a “grand vision,” says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

The Lucifer Priciple is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that “evil” is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric. Though this argument is not a new one—it has been brought forth by such great historical figures as St. Paul, Thomas Hobbes, and Raymond Dart—Howard Bloom here takes fresh data from a variety of sources and shapes it into a lens through which listeners can reinterpret the human experience.

"If Howard Bloom is only ten percent right, we''ll have to drastically revise our notions of the universe through the contagious joy of a great mind set loose on the biggest intellectual puzzles humans have ever faced. Whether you''re a scientist or hyper-curious layperson, Bloom''s argument will rock your world." — Barbara Ehrenreich on Howard Bloom''s The God Problem

Osama bin Laden called Mohammad "a Prophet of Conquest." Pakistan''s Universal Sunnah Foundation brags that under Mohammad''s battlefield leadership, "Islam spread an average of 317 square miles per day."

Right now ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Supreme Leader of Iran know that Islam toppled two of the biggest superpowers in history—Rome and Persia—then took over two-thirds of the inhabited world. Militant Muslims believe that Islam is on the brink of doing it again. The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko Haram lays bare the origins of this profoundly dangerous belief.

Many contemporary thinkers excuse Islamic violence as a legitimate reaction to Western imperialism. They blame America''s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the establishment of Israel in 1948. But Jihad was invented in 624 AD by the only prophet ever to call himself "The Prophet of War." And that prophet was not responding to "legitimate grievances," but an ambition for world conquest.

Howard Bloom—called “the greatest press agent that rock and roll has ever known” by Derek Sutton, the former manager of Styx, Ten Years After, and Jethro Tull—is a science nerd who knew nothing about popular music. But he founded the biggest PR firm in the music industry and helped build or sustain the careers of our biggest rock legends, including Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Queen, Kiss, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run DMC, ZZ Top, Joan Jett, Chaka Khan, and one hundred more.

What was he after? He was on a hunt for the gods inside of you and me. Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me is Bloom’s story—the strange tale of a scientific expedition into the dark underbelly of science and fame where new myths and movements are made.