Crown Currency – serie

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • “A cri de coeur that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies.”—The Wall Street JournalFrom the Palantir co-founder, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025, and his deputy, a critically-acclaimed and sweeping indictment of the West’s culture of complacency, arguing that timid leadership, intellectual fragility, and an unambitious view of technology’s potential in Silicon Valley have made the U.S. vulnerable in an era of mounting global threats“Not since Allan Bloom’s astonishingly successful 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind . . . has there been a cultural critique as sweeping.”—George F. Will, The Washington Post“Provocative . . . worthy of your time.”—Edith Chapin, former Editor-in-Chief of NPRSilicon Valley has lost its way.Our most brilliant engineering minds once collaborated with government to advance world-changing technologies. Their efforts secured the West’s dominant place in the geopolitical order. But that relationship has now eroded, with perilous repercussions.Today, the market rewards shallow engagement with the potential of technology. Engineers and founders build photo-sharing apps and marketing algorithms, unwittingly becoming vessels for the ambitions of others. This complacency has spread into academia, politics, and the boardroom. The result? An entire generation for whom the narrow-minded pursuit of the demands of a late capitalist economy has become their calling.In this groundbreaking treatise, Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of ambition, arguing that in order for the U.S. and its allies to retain their global edge—and preserve the freedoms we take for granted—the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our most urgent challenges, including the new arms race of artificial intelligence. The government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that has propelled Silicon Valley’s success.Above all, our leaders must reject intellectual fragility and preserve space for ideological confrontation. A willingness to risk the disapproval of the crowd, Karp and Zamiska contend, has everything to do with technological and economic outperformance.At once iconoclastic and rigorous, this book also lifts the veil on Palantir and its broader political project from the inside, offering a passionate call for the West to wake up to our new reality.

“Thrilling . . . an important tale of how American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit is creating a new type of space age.”—Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Elon MuskMusk vs. Bezos. China vs. the United States. The government vs. the private sector.Welcome to the rivalries and alliances defining the New Space Age. At stake? Trillions of dollars, national prestige, and a place in the history books.“A fine piece of reporting; historians will be able to use this first draft of rocket history to craft deeper analyses of our first real steps as a space-faring society.”—The New York TimesMoon landings and space walks once captivated the public’s attention. But, in recent decades, the U.S. space enterprise has felt moribund. Now, that’s finally about to change.A fleet of powerful new rockets is poised to take humans into the cosmos more than ever before. A lunar land rush has sparked a geopolitical competition among nations. And the world’s two richest men have engaged in escalating brinkmanship, as NASA and the U.S. government embraces Silicon Valley innovation to jump-start the nation’s ambitions.Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. In this gripping work, award-winning Washington Post writer Christian Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity’s off-planet future. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China’s aggressive moon mining plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk’s engineers log 100-hour weeks—leaving veteran astronauts marveling that they’re now operating “flying iPhones.” What will happen as human ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Which country will win the race back to the moon? Was Donald Trump’s much-derided creation of the Space Force a surprising act of foresight, and will the U.S. finally make a real push to the moon and eventually toward Mars?Masterfully paced, rigorously reported, and vividly told, Rocket Dreams offers a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the grit-fueled global battle to push humankind further into the cosmos—revealing that the science fiction dreams of the last century may soon become our reality.

With AI upending work and life, the bestselling authors of Smart Brevity offer a one-stop survival guide to dramatically improving your life, work, and happiness.Toxic complexity clogs our meetings, inboxes, calendars—even in our daily habits. We can do so much more, but first we need to do less.Simplify shows you how. It's a step-by-step playbook for spending most of your time doing things that make you feel and perform better.This urgent manual lets you take control of what is essential in a world where AI might simplify you out of a job. Maximize success by simplifying every aspect of your life. Ruthlessly distill what really matters to you, then clear the space to focus on what you do best.Simplify will help anyone thrive, from interns to CEOs.The authors draw on lessons from founding two hot startups—Axios and Politico—and their years of experience advising Fortune 500 companies. Simplify is packed with advice from some of the world's most successful people—your handbook for eliminating dreary distractions... so you can focus on what matters.