The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society, Charles Handy

This is the 20th book by Charles Handy, the British organizational theorist and futurist, and it has now reached North America in paperback. It includes 16 essays on what he sees for the future — both in macro terms (capitalism, democracy) and micro (social justice, human relations). Handy discusses difficult concepts in a relaxed, affable manner, often metaphorical. The title, The Second Curve, is an example: he takes the sigmoid curve, a mathematical concept that looks like the letter S on its side and can be applied to most of life’s endeavours: after an initial stage of effort, we reach the top of the curve, followed inevitably by decline; his “second curve” refers to the necessity of starting a second one soon after the first reaches its peak.