"If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one," the British author JohnGalsworthy wrote at the beginning of this century. In An Agenda for the 21st Century, RushworthKidder, award-winning columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, has taken up Galsworthy'schallenge. He conducts wide-ranging interviews with 22 of the world's most compelling thinkers -artists, scientists, statesmen, and philosophers - asking each one this fundamental question: Whatare the major issues that will face humanity in the 21st century?The answers that emerge arethoughtful, often surprising, and as diverse as the respondents themselves. While the groupgenerally agrees on the set of issues most critically in need of addressing - the arms race,overpopulation, the environment, the North-South gap, education, and morality - there is often sharpdisagreement over the course the future will take.Educator Michael Hooker, for instance, foresees aworld in which technology has solved humanity's survival questions, and in which the main problem isan excess of leisure time. The Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky, on the other hand, worries abouthuman beings becoming increasingly standardized, resembling more and more the robots they havecreated.Philosopher Mortimer Adler calls for a massive commitment to education in critical thinking,without which, he says, democracy cannot survive. Historian Barbara Tuchman and novelist CarlosFuentes each focus on the need to restore a greater sense of morality, both public and private.Repeatedly the interviewees argue that life in the 21st century will not be shaped simply bytechnology, but by our ability to come to terms with the social impact of new inventions.Othersinterviewed by Kidder include Sissela Bok, Jimmy Carter, Norman Cousins, Freeman Dyson, AmitaiEtzioni, Douglas Fraser, Theodore Gordon, Hanna Gray, Paul Johnson, Shuichi Kato, Robert McNamara,Olesegun Obasanjo, David Packard, Lloyd Richards, Abdus Salam, Richard von Weizsacker, and MarinaWhitman. Kidder has written brief portraits of each interviewee and a concluding chapter.Theinterviews were originally published as a series in the Christian Science Monitor where RushworthKidder covers social issues and trends. He is also the author of books on poets Dylan Thomas ande.e. Cummings. Read Less