CHRISTIAN CROWLEY, GO-TO-MARKET RA BY QNTM I’m a big fan of all of qntm’s work, but Ra stands out to me because it treats the premise “what if magic were real?” with a rigor and modernity that feel genuinely fresh. It’s not fantasy; it’s sci-fi, and the story pushes that basic premise into deeper, tech-driven themes that make the world feel like a strange version of the future. What really stuck with me is how character-driven it is. The truths of this world unfold through the perspectives of several memorable characters, and watching them navigate and slowly uncover the underlying logic of their reality is incredibly satisfying.
ROBERT HACKETT, EDITORIAL Remember “Barbenheimer”? That’s how I think of Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s The Technological Republic arriving around the same time as Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. In Abundance, Klein and Thompson argue that the U.S. has lost its capacity to build (across housing, energy, healthcare, infrastructure, etc.), and that restoring it will require a New Deal-style revival of the state. They call for approving projects at “warp speed,” fast-tracking permitting, and replacing decades of procedural drag with a bias toward action. One devastating illustration of the current dysfunction is the story of a housing complex for the homeless in San Francisco: a project funded by Charles and Helen Schwab was built quickly and affordably only because public funds were avoided.
Private philanthropy achieved what government routinely struggles to deliver—and for roughly half the time and cost. What does it say about the state of our system where public process so often obstructs progress? Read together, these two books highlight two sides of the same problem, and they point toward possible solutions. The timeless story that makes you smarter and more skeptical.
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