Future Stories review: Has thinking about the future got even harder?

In unstable times we need to think clearly about the future. There is a lot to learn from David Christian’s Future Stories: A user’s guide to the future, an ambitious book with a Big History approach

By Elle Hunt

Future Stories

David Christian (Penguin Random House)

NOW more than ever, it feels like the future is uncertain: the times, they are unprecedented. Adam Tooze, an economic historian at Columbia University in New York City, recently described the global outlook as a “polycrisis”, remarkable not only for the number of risks currently active, but also their volatility.

As well as the pandemic, we have the invasion of Ukraine, inflation, pressures on food and energy markets and upheavals in …