Peter Schwartz’s The Art of the Long View was the top vote-getter in the APF’s inaugural most important futures work balloting. This year members voted for books in the recent past as well as “classics.” They had 10 votes, either choosing from a list of 20 nominated by the “Most Important Futures Works team, or writing in up to five personal choices. Starting next year, the team plans to focus on identifying the most important works of the current year on an annual basis. These may go beyond books to include futures works in other media as well. The team was led by Ken Harris, and consisted of Andy Hines, Amy Oberg, Cindy Frewen Wuellner, Gitte Larsen, and Oliver Markley.

The “top ten” in order of votes received:

• The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz
• Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era by Wendell Bell
• The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, Richard Slaughter (ed.)
• Limits to Growth by Donnella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jergen L. Randers and William H. Behrens
• The State of the World (series) by The Worldwatch Institute
• The State of the Future by Jerome Glenn and Ted Gordon
• The Art of Conjecture by Bertrand de Jouvenel
• Futures Research Methodology by Jerome Glenn and Ted Gordon
• The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond