*The Rational Optimist*, the new Matt Ridley book

The subtitle is How Prosperity Evolves and you can buy it here.  The book is due out in May.  Excerpt:

In this book I have tried to build on both Adam Smith and Charles Darwin: to interpret human society as the product of a long history of what the philosopher Dan Dennett calls "bubble-up" evolution through natural selection among cultural rather than genetic variations, and as an emergent order generated by an invisible hand of individual transactions, not the product of a top-down determinism.  I have tried to show that, just as sex made biological evolution cumulative, so exchange made cultural evolution cumulative and intelligence collective, and that there is therefore an inexorable tide in the affairs of men discernible beneath the chaos of their actions.  A flood tide, not an ebb tide.

This book will be adored by fans of Julian Simon.  Ridley is an optimist about the year 2100 and one of the final sections considers whether Africa and climate change will be exceptions to the generally optimistic trends.