The New Optimists, the full MS, is now completed! All that was needed was my own contribution, an ‘afterword’ to come at the end of the book. Completed today . . . I started at the beginning, telling the story of how over 100 people have contributed to turning a good idea into a reality:
“For some time, I’d thought about publishing. The revolution with print-on-demand and web-based technologies has changed the game. In the cold damp light of a winter day in early 2009, I speculated that much could now be done with insouciance, a laptop on the kitchen table and a lifetime’s fascination with how scientists work, how seemingly ordinary men and women as part of their daily routine engage with extraordinary matters and, to paraphrase the mathematician Ian Stewart, “defend us from believing what we want to.”
The full account can be read here.
Tags: acknowledgments, extracts, Jenny Uglow, Keith Richards, quotes