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We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.

A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.

Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.

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Transcript

Question: What are your favorite books?

D. Quinn Mills: Well, I read the Bible all the time. It may be a little bit out of, it is certainly out of fashion in New England. It is not out of fashion in much of the United States. There are enormous insights in that book. As I get older and more experienced in my own life I read things that I read a 100 times before since I was a boy and I realize I ever really understood them at all. So, that's one thing. I am very impressed by the work of a British military historian called whose name was J.F.C. Fuller, who I think is now passed away, but his perception of the broad scope of human history and the relationships of nations and why conflict occured and these kind of thing, which by the way is very different then the general perceptions in United States about these matters, and particularly a three volume work called A Military History of the Western World, which is much more than a military history, is I think one of the most influential things I have ever read and I read it again and again and again.

Recorded on: 9/27/07