When we celebrate the New Year in 2025, we are also marking a quarter century into the new millennium. We often think it's going terribly, but is it really? How has the past quarter-century set us up for the next 75 years?

In THE BRIGHT SIDE: How Optimists Change the World, and How You Can Be One (on sale January 7th) Dr. Sumit Paul-Choudhury—former editor-in-chief of The New Scientist—provides an impassioned defense of optimism as a catalyst for change and declares it a moral imperative. He can help put the past 25 years in perspective as we look toward the future.

Per Sumit, submitting to fear is easy. Optimism, though, in the face of the unknown—a willingness to accept and confront uncertainty—is the definition of true moral courage. Realism, for all the good press it receives, often leads to passivity and surrender. (See below signature for other topics).

This thought-provoking deep-dive into the roots and implications of optimism drops Jan 7th, after the New Year and before the inauguration—a perfect time to measure our reserves of optimism and look back on all that we have accomplished. In THE BRIGHT SIDE¸ Sumit offers a corrective to the tidal wave of pessimism that regularly rises up to engulf us all. (See below for other topic ideas).