In addition to the fact that I respect Vice President Gore, one of the reasons I purchased this book was because of Gore's use of mind-maps to introduce each section in the book. Visualizing the connections among different fields and different ideas is a powerful way of getting points across. But somehow, perhaps because of the length of the book, the book begin to gather dust on my shelf. I finally pulled it down, thinking to give it another try. But the world has probably changed more in the past six months than in the past six years. This is 2020, and this book came out in 2013. I wouldn't know what might still be relevant. So, unfortunately, I gave up.

Al Gore's "The Future" attempts to look far into the future, and discusses six drivers of global change. I find it hard enough to review my own Company's Five Year Plans, looking into the immediate future, and we only have to deal with one specific industry. Gore's book is like a twenty-five year plan looking into the future on not just one industry, but everything which affects us. I found it just too broad, too subject to uncertainties, and I just couldn't stay focused. Also, part of my problem, was was that I listened to this as an audio book, and I think the book could have been made more interesting if they had used a professional speaker rather than allow Al Gore to do his own narration. ( )

He was going along quite well until he crashed into the mistake of calling Malcolm ("anecdotes trump real data") Gladwell an "analyst". Strike two was mentioning William Gibson. But the real problem I had was the chapter notes...more of the distressing trend of putting the sources at the end without actually noting them. A book this dense with information, done right, has (or should have) many, many citations and I find it extremely annoying to have to flip back and forth wondering if the sentence I just read is sourced or not. Bad form. Yes, I know the intent is to not interrupt the flow, and to not make the text seem academic, but rare is the book I plan to read twice in a row and I don't want to go back to check sources because I want to move on to something else.

Okay. Enough grousing. This is a dense book and full of important observations. Well written and well researched. I got a chuckle when he let the professional slip a few times:

...because of our idiotic acceptance of the livestock industry’s insistence that it is perfectly fine for them to reduce some of their costs by becoming factories for turning out killer germs against which antibiotics have no effect”

(Emphasis mine)

Now, he does get down and dirty on more than a few subjects. The section on eugenics is quite disturbing, particularly when he points out that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes' decision in 1927 (supporting forced sterilization) has ever been repealed. The economic, climate change, global political (and the other drivers) are in-your-face and must-be-dealt-with no nonsense subjects. He does well.

Gore packs a tremendous amount of information in his analyses of the drivers of the future. This is worth a second read to extract even more. ( )

I can't say Mr. Gore is an excellent writer. His prose leaves something to be desired, but the information, ideas, and analysis he presents in this book are important and well worth consideration, although it is pretty depressing. The cultural, political, and technology challenges seem daunting, and one might come away thinking our civilization, if not our species, is doomed. But we have faced and met challenges before, and I'm not ready to give up on us yet. ( )

Al Gore reads this book and I can understand why it's 15 CDs, he reads the book slow. There are a few boring parts that feel like a textbook is being read to the listener, but there were also parts I was very interested in. Several parts I didn't know and it was kind of scary to learn some of the stuff happening to the population, our land/water and government. I'm kind of glad I won't be around in 50 years but also sad what we are leaving my daughter and future generations. It really made me think we truly are headed to a dystopia world. Seems like in 75 years there really won't be anything left if not in 50. Makes me very sad that we have abused this planet without really thinking about what we were doing. ( )