Microtrends

One of those books that doesn't seem that promising at first but the more you get into it the more interesting it gets. Published before the 2008 USA election but managed to predict a lot of teh underlying trends that in the end determined the outcome.

The message of the book is that you need to spot the small emerging trends not the great swings to get ahead of history.

Aong the journey some interesting quotes "hospital errors kill more people every year than either car accidentst or breast cancer", leading to a grwoth in self diagnosis and medication.

"In the USA today the top 1% of pets live better than 99% of the world's population.". "each year 600,000 prisioners are realeased from prision - a growth of 600% in 30 years"



This is written mainly from an American perspective but several chapters have a sidebar on the international parallel situations (and to be honest a lot of teh trends discussed can be directly translated.