Book: Open: The Story of Human Progress

Humanity’s embrace of openness is the key to our success. The freedom to explore and exchange – whether it’s goods, ideas or people – has led to stunning achievements in science, technology and culture. As a result, we live at a time of unprecedented wealth and opportunity. So why are we so intent on ruining it?

From Stone Age hunter-gatherers to contemporary Chinese-American relations, Open explores how across time and cultures, we have struggled with a constant tension between our yearning for co-operation and our profound need for belonging. Providing a bold new framework for understanding human history, bestselling author and thinker Johan Norberg examines why we’re often uncomfortable with openness – but also why it is essential for progress. Part sweeping history and part polemic, this urgent book makes a compelling case for why an open world with an open economy is worth fighting for more than ever.

Open – The Story of Human Progress

Johan Norberg is an author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker, born in Sweden. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. He received his M. A. in the History of Ideas from the University of Stockholm. 

He has written books on a broad range of topics, including global economics and popular science. His In Defence of Global Capitalism has been published in more than 25 countries. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, was called “a blast of good sense” by The Economist, and a “book of the year” in The Guardian, The Economist, and The Observer. Norberg regularly hosts documentaries on development and economics for American public television, including Free or Equal?, Economic Freedom in Action, Power to the People and the The Real Adam Smith.  

For his work, Norberg has received several awards, including the Distinguished Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award from the Atlas Foundation, the Walter Judd Freedom Award, the Julian Simon Memorial Award, and the gold medal from the German Hayek Stiftung, that year shared with Margaret Thatcher.