Books & Books and Politics & Prose present…

An Evening with Steven Johnson

In conversation with Tim Harford

Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer

(Riverhead, $28) 

Mon, May 17, 5 PM ET

PURCHASE BOOK + TICKET HERE

General Admission is free and open to the public. Ticket and book bundle options are available for $28 (+ tax & fee) and includes a copy of Extra Life shipped straight to your door. Please note that a fee of $6 is included for U.S. domestic shipping of the book. Located overseas? International orders include a flat rate shipping fee of $25.

About the Book:

As a species we have doubled our life expectancy in just one hundred years. All the advances of modern life—the medical breakthroughs, the public health institutions, the rising standards of living—have given us each about twenty thousand extra days on average. There are few measures of human progress more astonishing than our increased longevity.

Extra Life is Steven Johnson’s attempt to understand where that progress came from. How many of those extra twenty thousand days came from vaccines, or the decrease in famines, or seatbelts? What are the forces that now keep us alive longer? Behind each breakthrough lies an inspiring story of cooperative innovation, of brilliant thinkers bolstered by strong systems of public support and collaborative networks.

But it is not enough simply to remind ourselves that progress is possible. How do we avoid decreases in life expectancy as our public health systems face unprecedented challenges? What current technologies or interventions that could reduce the impact of future crises are we somehow ignoring?

About the Author:

Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of thirteen books, including The Enemy of All Mankind, Where Good Ideas Come From, Farsighted, and The Ghost Map. He’s the host and cocreator of the Emmy–winning PBS/BBC series How We Got to Now, and the host of the podcast American Innovations. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Marin County, California, with his wife and three sons.

About the Moderator:

Tim Harford is an economist, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of nine books including “How To Make The World Add Up”, “Messy”, and the million-selling “The Undercover Economist”. Tim is a senior columnist at the Financial Times, and the presenter of Radio 4’s “More or Less”, “Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy”, and the new podcast “Cautionary Tales”.

Tim has spoken at TED, PopTech and the Sydney Opera House. He is an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Tim was made an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in the New Year honours of 2019.