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Ted C. Fishman is an award-winning journalist, cultural critic and bestselling author whose work explores the forces shaping our world: economics, demographics, the built environment and the human stories behind global change. His critically acclaimed books include China, Inc. and Shock of Gray, which have been translated into dozens of languages and featured in major media worldwide. His newest book on the material world of concrete is expected in 2027. As a public intellectual, Ted's interests and writings are wide-ranging—from theater criticism to future trends to business analysis. His work has appeared in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Fast Company, The Atlantic and more. Ted delivers sharp analysis and compelling narratives on business, society, and culture. This archive features his journalism, criticism, essays, book reviews, and media coverage spanning decades of reporting from every corner of the globe.
Sep 9, 20231 min read
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The Truths Still Resonate: A Review of “Inherit the Wind” at Goodman Theatre
From NewCity Stage “Inherit the Wind” began life in 1950 as a script so dangerously subversive that it took playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, already a successful writing team, five years before a producer in Dallas agreed to stage it. Today it still has subversive power. The Goodman’s current production with powerhouse performances by its dueling lead actors, Tony Award-nominee Alexander Gemignani and stage and screen staple and local favorite Harry Lennix, brin
Sep 30, 20251 min read
Battles on Language: A Review of “Translations” at Writers Theatre
From NewCity Stage Like the Irish characters and culture in the play, the space is proud, poor and threatened—subordinated by English force, English language and English cultural domination. Though most of the characters are depicted as speaking Irish nearly all the time, Friel’s drama has them conversing in English as though they were dubbed. The English characters speak English to both each other and the Irish, and three of the seven Irish characters are fluent enough in En
Apr 17, 20251 min read
Sound of the Hum: “The Listeners” at Lyric Opera
From NewCity Stage Mazzoli has created a bright and terrifyingly complex, often startling, soundscape. Her music demands all from the Lyric’s always superb orchestra under conductor Enrique Mazzola, and gets it. Read more ...
Apr 3, 20251 min read
The New Face of Law and Order
Cook County’s New No-Nonsense Top Prosecutor From Chicago magazine Eileen O’Neill Burke was elected Cook County State’s Attorney by vowing to get tough on crime. But her approach to making Chicago safer is more nuanced than you might think. Read more ...
Jan 22, 20251 min read
Manual Cinema’s “Christmas Carol” at Studebaker Theater
From NewCity Stage Not Your Usual Christmas Show: A Review of Manual Cinema’s “Christmas Carol” The story follows some of the contours of a Christian transformation narrative; the sinner who danced to the Devil is saved. Yet, in Scrooge’s transformation, the cranky miser finds the spirit of hope and charity without ever meeting or being lectured by a divinity or holy teacher, but rather by ghosts. Indeed, the story takes a critical stab at sanctimonious religious practice in
Nov 20, 20241 min read
Worried about the future? History proves it's hard to predict.
From Fast Company Fifty years ago, 20 of the world's brightest people tried to predict life in 2024. They got an awful lot wrong. Read more ...
Nov 9, 20241 min read
How Swiss giant Holcim is creating more sustainable cement and concrete
From Fast Company Holcim is one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in the manufacturing category. Source: Fast Company The construction industry has been slow to innovate, reluctant to tinker with materials and methods designed to keep people safe from structural failures. But the building sector is also the source of 40% of the global greenhouse gas emissions that threaten the planet’s ecology. Holcim, the giant Swiss cement and concrete manufacturer (the largest ou
Mar 19, 20241 min read
Home Delivery: My Father and the Midcentury House Contest that Launched His Career
S. Guy Fishman’s 1951 Better Rooms Competition first prize entry. Entry detail of a view toward the terrace showing sleeping area at left and sitting area in right foreground. From NewCity Lit Between 1945 and 1946, when the end of World War II spurred the demobilization of 7.6 million Americans who were in military service, Chicago veterans returned to a city short by more than 100,000 homes. Homes affordable to young adults starting anew were especially lacking. The G.I. Bi
Jan 22, 20241 min read
This new cement could become America’s next big bumper crop and help save the world as we know it
Colorado-based Prometheus Materials and other emerging companies are developing new biocements that could help meet the world’s growing concrete demands and avert climate catastrophe. [Photo: Dave Burk/©SOM] The Bio-Block Spiral is a small, short wall, but it may be a bulwark against a giant threat: climate change. The curved, mud-colored structure is part of the current Chicago Architecture Biennial, entitled “Rehearsing the Future.” Unlike the artists’ installations filling
Dec 10, 20231 min read
Concrete Faith: How the Creation of the Bahá’í House of Worship Changed the Course of Architecture
The temple, a masterpiece of intricate, shimmery, seemingly delicate decoration.
Nov 1, 20231 min read
How China’s shrinking population is making it less competitive
From FastCompany In his latest book, not yet published in English, Trip.com founder and author James Liang sounds the alarm and calls for new government policies to encourage larger families. [Photo: vasiliki/Getty Images] China today is a tech giant, in large part because it is a giant. The country is home to the world’s largest population of capable young tech workers, all potential innovators. But China’s shrinking and aging population is on course to halve by the year 210
Sep 9, 20231 min read
The Psychedelic Whirl: A Review of “The Who’s Tommy” at Goodman Theatre
From NewCity Stage The biggest surprise in the engrossing staged version of “The Who’s Tommy” now at the Goodman Theatre is how strongly the work stands alone, given the indelible imprint the music by Pete Townshend and his collaborators in The Who have long had on popular culture. Ironically, the success of the musical “Tommy” as a standalone work may have its roots in The Who’s original designs on “Tommy” as a potentially lucrative concert work. When Townshend conceived the
Jun 30, 20231 min read
Lofty History: Architectural Historian Thomas Leslie Offers a New History of Chicago’s Ever-Evolving Tall Buildings
Civic Center with “Untitled” (Pablo Picasso, 1965-1967). View from the south. (Author’s collection) From NewCity Design Thomas Leslie’s latest, deeply researched, visually handsome book on the history of Chicago skyscrapers took root in a long-ago moment of wonder and revelation beneath the Hancock building. His family was visiting the city. “I remember when I was twelve or thirteen and saw the John Hancock Tower for the first time and realized ‘Oh, that’s about the wind.’ Yo
Jun 12, 20231 min read
Solving the concrete paradox: How rebuilding Turkey could pave the way to a more sustainable future
From Fast Company By using a common form of clay as a supplement in the production of cement, manufacturers might reduce their carbon emissions by as much as 75 percent. [Source photo: Hakan Akgun/dia images/Getty Images] In the early morning hours of February 6, 2023, Turkey experienced its most powerful earthquake in more than 80 years. The quake, 7.8 on the Richter scale, together with strong aftershocks, killed more than 50,000 people, left one and a half million people
Jun 7, 20231 min read
The road to climate hell is paved with concrete
Concrete has profoundly improved the quality of human life, but the same material that shelters us from the elements wreaks havoc on the environment. This is part one of a series examining how the materials and construction industries are racing to reduce concrete’s environmental impact. [Photos: zhaojiankang/iStock/Getty Images Plus, Dmitrii Balabanov/iStock/Getty Images Plus] If you’re reading this, chances are you are now either touching concrete or touching something that
Dec 23, 20221 min read
Why the world’s most efficient cement plant needs to continue to innovate
From Fast Company The massive Ste. Geneviève complex on the banks of the Mississippi is the most efficient cement plant in the world, but can Holcim and others in the materials industry innovate fast enough to save us from climate catastrophe? This is part two of a series exploring the environmental impact of concrete. [Source Photo: Ted Fishman] I’m standing about 275 feet above the banks of the mighty Mississippi, watching scores of black buzzards circle and soar and swoop
Dec 10, 20221 min read
Ted Fishman on Endgame: Tulis Buku yang Ingin Kau Baca
Journalist and author of two bestsellers (China Inc. and Shock of Gray), Ted Fishman talks about his life experiences in Indonesia and the amalgamation of various interests that allows him to write about complex topics and make them understandable and meaningful to a general audience.
May 4, 20221 min read
We Booked Jeff Deutsch: The Director of the Seminary Co-Op Talks About His New Volume Celebrating Bookstores, Including The Hyde Park Institution
Jeff Deutsch/Photo: Anne Ryan From NewCity Lit The Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Hyde Park is one of the world’s great academic bookstores. It has tens of thousands of volumes in stock. In 2018, the Sem Co-op sold 28,000 books. Of those, over 16,000 were titles that sold only one copy that year. “That means it’s one book, one title to one customer for the year,” says Jeff Deutsch, the director of the Seminary Co-op who steered the flagship shop and its sister store, 57th Street
Apr 28, 20221 min read
Best of Chicago 2021: Ted C. Fishman’s Personal Best
Photo: Ted C. Fishman From NewCity There’s nothing like emptyheadedness to clear the mind. Bobolink Meadow, a lush bit of fields, woods and water in Jackson Park, is where I go for a good lobe scrub. Over the last two anxious, sullying years the way the Meadow purges my intelligence has been just the ablution I’ve needed. I’m not alone. Mental health professionals have been heavily prescribing doses of wilder spaces for the afflictions of our era. The New York State Departmen
Nov 1, 20211 min read
The Conversation: Elly Fishman Discusses “Refugee High” (with her Dad)
Elly Fishman photographed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. /Photo: Alyssa Schukar From NewCity Lit When NewCity asked me to interview my daughter, Elly Fishman, in advance of her upcoming book, “Refugee High,” I knew I wanted to ask about the drama in making the book. When Elly talked about her work she related what she was learning about the people she was getting to know. And “Refugee High” focuses so completely on them that I still didn’t know how she got so close to them and on w
Aug 5, 20211 min read
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