The Next Big Thing: A History of the Boom-Or-Bust Moments That Shaped the Modern World - Richard Faulk [epub]

We are always hearing about the Next Big Thing. Whether it is a new iPhone or the New World, the freshest and newest inventions, discoveries, and fads loom large in the public mind. The impact that everyone thinks these "next big things" will have is often more important than the actual impact it generates. After all, if it fails, it will be almost immediately forgotten. The Next Big Thing searches through 3,000 years of Western culture to find the colorful and key steps (and missteps) that led us to where we are today.

Paradigm-shifting events, such as the spread of ethical monotheism and the invention of the printing press stand beside such cultural ephemera as the aborted U.S metric campaign and the misbegotten vogue for smart drinks.

Each entry features the historical context of that Next Big Thing as well as an overview of its legacy, including photos, sidebars, trivia, and quotes.

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About the Author

Richard Faulk is the author of Gross America: Your Coast-to-Coast Guide to All Things Gross, a catalog of the most grandly gross medical museums, beautifully bizarre wildlife, and delightfully disgusting historical sites our fifty states have to offer. Faulk writes music reviews and profiles for the Silicon Valley Metro and Content magazine, and is chief editor of monthly children's newspaper The Firecracker Forum. He is a contributor to The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, has lectured at Observatory in Brooklyn, NY, and participated in a panel discussion on medical oddities at Death Salon in Los Angeles. Faulk has been interviewed a dozen times on radio, including segments on Midday with Dan Ricks, WYPR, Baltimore; Word of Mouth, New Hampshire Public Radio; and Take Two, KPCC, Pasadena.