Standard tickets do not include a book. To add a copy of Abundance, you will need to select “Ticket with Book” from the dropdown menu on the City Box Office website (that dropdown menu appears after you have chosen your seats).
From bestselling authors and journalistic titans, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.
To trace the global history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of growing unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, the entire country has a national housing crisis. After years of slashing immigration, we don’t have enough workers. After decades of off-shoring manufacturing, we have a shortage of chips for cars and computers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean energy infrastructure we need. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the environmental problems of the 1970s often prevent urban density and green energy projects that would help solve the environmental problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions in matters of education and healthcare have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires the ability to see promise rather than just peril in the creation of new ideas and projects, and an instinct to design systems and institutions that make building possible. In a book exploring how can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and how we can adopt a mindset directed toward abundance, and not scarcity, to overcome them.
Ezra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times and the author of Why We’re Polarized.
Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, host of the podcast Plain English and a news analyst with NPR. Their new book, Abundance is a call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.
Manny’s is a town hall, a village square, the place where anyone can meet and engage with civic leaders, elected officials, artists, activists, change makers, and each other through fundraisers, weekly trash pickups to beautify the neighborhood, activist fairs, phone banking, and everything in between. Our hope is that what happens here will be the spark for you to get more involved.