BIG IDEAS PRESS Mission Statement Humanity has a problem: human knowledge tends to be highly compartmentalized. Research is conducted within narrowly-defined academic disciplines, and the books coming out of that research focus on topics that are narrower still. The result is an information archipelago — a multitude of islands of narrowly-focused, specialized knowledge. That knowledge has value, but specialized knowledge is no longer enough. Humanity's matrix of interconnected problems transcends disciplinary boundaries, and the knowledge needed to deal effectively with those problems must also transcend those boundaries. Extreme complexity is a characteristic of the human situation, and whether the focus of an inquiry is personal, global, or cosmic, we need to supplement specialized knowledge with context-informed, perspective-enriched, multidisciplinary knowledge. We need books that link the islands of the information archipelago, books that connect the dots. To deal with big issues, we need big ideas — ideas that are broad in scope, address matters of deep human concern, transcend narrow categories and knowledge boundaries, and deal with complexity in helpful ways. In response to this need, Big Ideas Press will publish books that help us sift what is really important in life from the not so important and downright trivial, and books that respond to primal concerns such as our place in the cosmos, personal concerns such as living an enjoyable, creative, significant life, and societal concerns such as sustainability and economic justice