The Economist puts out a forward-looking edition once a year, ahead of the year it covers. This is the volume for the year now approaching: the newspaper's attempt to say, before the fact, where world politics, economics, business, science and technology and culture appear to be heading.
The format is a collection of short pieces rather than a continuous argument. Economist correspondents write on the areas they cover, and outside contributors add their own forecasts. Because the entries are brief and self-contained, the annual reads as a set of separate views on separate questions rather than a single thesis about the year, and it can be picked up and put down without losing a thread.
What it offers is a mixture of analysis, prediction and informed speculation. Some of the material rests on things already scheduled or already in motion; some of it is frank guesswork by people who spend their working lives following a particular country, industry or field. Part of the appeal of the series is that it commits itself in print, which means a reader can return to it twelve months later and see what held up.
It suits anyone who follows international affairs and wants a briefing on the coming year in one place — readers in business who need a sense of what is expected in markets and industries, students of politics and economics, and general readers who simply like knowing what the arguments are going to be about. The breadth is deliberate: technology and science sit alongside elections and trade, and the cultural pieces alongside the economic ones.
Each edition stands on its own. You do not need to have read earlier volumes to use this one, and readers who have collected the series will find the familiar structure carried through. For anyone building a shelf of the annual, this instalment continues it.
The Economist's house style applies throughout: unsigned or lightly signed pieces, compressed writing, an emphasis on what is likely to happen rather than on what has already been reported. Readers who find the weekly newspaper useful will recognise the approach, condensed here into a single volume aimed forward instead of back.
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