The Idea Factory

这本书最耐人寻味的地方，不在它记录了多少项改变世界的发明，而在于它提出了一个近乎残酷的问题：伟大的创新究竟能否被系统地

I’m a book author and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and I tend to describe myself as both a journalist and historian. In addition to the Sunday Magazine, my writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Wired, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Technology Review and Fast Company. Usually I write about science, nature, technology, and business. But oftentimes my articles explore the intersections between all those areas. At least to me, that’s where the most interesting things happen. My first book, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, was published by Penguin Press in 2012. The Ice at the End of the World, my new book, is being published by Random House and chronicles 150 years of exploration and investigation on the Greenland ice sheet. The book was conceived as a story about ice and the process of scientific discovery; it aims to explain how the work in Greenland, aided by an evolving array of technological tools, has led us to a profound understanding of our current climate crisis. In truth, I like to think the book might be more than that. The story of Greenland’s ice sheet—the world’s largest laboratory—includes hair-raising tales of adventure and frostbite; a cast of characters who suffered misery on an almost unimaginable level; and a number of scientists who perceived in the ice a method to decipher clues to the ancient and future earth. It’s a human saga, in other words, as well as an epic of nature. I live in New Jersey with my wife and kids. I’m a lifelong New Jersey native, in fact—my father was a medical school professor and my mother taught first grade—and I grew up in the town of Berkeley Heights, not far from where I live now.