As articulated in this 226 page book (plus references), the theme here is “To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need”. The authors unabashedly direct the book at liberals (and in the USA typically Democrats) on how to establish a course of politics and action that is different from what we are seeing with the Trump administration. The focus is largely on how the USA can better innovate – not just invent but actually build out from inventions so that the inventions become mainstream.

There is enough questioning of dogma in the book to please this reviewer. In particular the authors point to how things like land use planning and zoning were really a 20th century invention for the USA and that newly established plans and zoning have served, in a contradictory fashion, to limit the positive impacts of Democratic policy positions like more housing for the homeless and others, or more uptake of new environmental and energy technologies like solar, wind or other renewables. It also points to generally positive for the environment laws and policies – e.g., creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, water and air pollution rules and regulations, among others – that at the same time have procedurally hamstrung building out future-oriented, and more sustainable, energy, health housing or transport interventions.

The writing points to the ironic reality that Republican-led jurisdictions (some states like Texas and the city of Houston) have far outstripped Democratic-led jurisdictions in creating homes for the homeless. But it’s not just a Republican versus Democrat treatise. The authors also point to the policy orphan COVID-related “Operation Warp Speed” has become with both Democrats and Republicans seemingly ignoring or not learning from, but instead falling into unproductive partisan bickering.

Also, whether it was a COVID vaccine, the development of solar panel technology or other USA-driven inventions, there seems to be a consistent pattern of good inventions being poorly disseminated in the USA. From a USA perspective, the dissemination of such inventions is being better done by countries such as China or Germany, leaving the USA to play catch up. The writing points to the success of American science, but at the same time states “At the highest levels, American science has become biased against the very thing that drives its progress: the art of taking bold risks” and “creaky institutions getting in the way of inventing”.

Their point overall seems not to be that the direction of all the science or policies is flawed, but that the implementation (or technology transfer) of those policies and related inventions has been flawed. We have overburdened innovation roll out because of a legalistic, onerous regulatory system that undermines the good things we would like to see built or adopted. Contradictorily, we have also fallen prey to a generalization that only the private sector can drive innovation and ignored the positive role that government can and has played on major initiatives ranging from Roosevelt’s New Deal to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – both of which made game changing investments for the betterment of social and environmental outcomes in the USA.

This definitely seems like a “policy wonk” kind of book. However, it is well-written and interesting. It also drives home the message that “focus matters” and IF we can continue to do good science, create fundamentally sound policies and then take actions that build on them (i.e., effectively disseminate what we invent), success does happen.

p.s. Thanks to brother Lonny for giving me the book to read!