The Pulse of Tomorrow
How Future Shock Still Shapes Our World
The untold story of how Alvin and Heidi Toffler learned to see change differently, and why their way of seeing matters now.
PreorderThe big idea
They learned to see change before its consequences became obvious.
Information overload. Political polarization. Relentless technological disruption. The pace of change can feel overwhelming. Technologies transform how we work and live before we fully understand their consequences. Institutions struggle to keep up. One disruption arrives before we've adapted to the last.
More than fifty years ago, Alvin and Heidi Toffler recognized this problem. They argued that our greatest challenge would not be any single invention or disruption, but the accelerating pace of change and our capacity to understand and adapt to it.
But before we can adapt to change, we have to see it.
Their groundbreaking book, Future Shock, sold more than six million copies and has never gone out of print. They went on to write The Third Wave, Powershift, and other influential works, becoming internationally sought-after speakers and advisers whose ideas reached world leaders, business executives, and millions of readers around the world.
About the book
A lifetime of learning to see
The Pulse of Tomorrow follows Alvin and Heidi Toffler from their early lives in New York City and the factory floors of Cleveland to the corridors of power around the world. Along the way, their experiences, encounters, and discoveries challenged what they thought they knew, deepened their partnership, and shaped ideas that would influence generations.
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01
Learning to See
The experiences that taught them to question assumptions, test ideas against lived experience, look across disciplines, and connect changes that others often encountered separately.
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02
Testing What They Saw
Their ideas moved into the world, where they were tested against different industries, institutions, cultures, and societies, challenging and reshaping how the Tofflers understood change.
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03
Shaping What Comes Next
Their ideas move into the hands of others, helping presidents, prime ministers, kings, military leaders, and business leaders understand profound change, challenge long-held assumptions, and shape what came next.
Now it is
our turn.
Technology is advancing at extraordinary speed. Power is shifting among nations, institutions, companies, and individuals. Populations are aging and migrating. Work, education, science, and economies are being reshaped. And these changes are not happening at the same pace. Technology can move faster than institutions, markets faster than policy, and new capabilities faster than our ability to understand their consequences. The gaps between those rates of change are creating new tensions, shifting advantages, and opening opportunities that did not exist before.
The challenge is not simply keeping up. It is recognizing what is changing, understanding how those changes connect, and seeing the choices we still have as the future is taking shape.
Praise
“The Tofflers taught us to look beyond the technologies of the moment and see the larger forces transforming our economy and society. Their book The Third Wave shaped my thinking so deeply that decades later I borrowed its title for my own book. As we enter another period of extraordinary technological and societal change, The Pulse of Tomorrow is a timely reminder that understanding the future begins with learning how to see change differently.”
“I knew Alvin Toffler for the last fifteen years of his life, and his way of thinking still shapes mine. Deborah Westphal was closer still, and has given us the book they deserved: an inside account of two minds whose genius has not aged a day. Presidents, generals, and CEOs took their counsel for half a century. Now you can.”
“This book could not be more timely, with so many balls up in the air, namely, shifting demographics, technology, geo-economics… Westphal helps us navigate through it all by inviting us to reflect on the peripatetic lives of Heidi and Alvin Toffler. The writing is vivid and engaging.”
“Future Shock taught us to understand change. The Pulse of Tomorrow inspires us to embrace it, shape the future, and carry forward the extraordinary vision of Alvin and Heidi Toffler.”
“To claim that Alvin & Heidi Toffler shaped an entire generation's worldview would be an understatement. They literally defined it. With The Pulse of Tomorrow, Deborah Westphal has done modernity and posterity a great service. This book is not only a tribute to the pioneering couple forever identified with the future, but also a deeply humane portrait of the Tofflers as individuals and their devotion to each other. This cinematic biography is an inspirational reminder of the power of relentless curiosity to uncover the connections between technology, society, institutions, business and geopolitics – and generate novel insights into our complex world.”
“In The Pulse of Tomorrow, Westphal shows how Alvin and Heidi Toffler learned to observe the present with enough curiosity to notice what others missed. A timely reminder that when the world changes faster than our plans, the most powerful skill may be our willingness to keep learning.”
“Alvin and Heidi Toffler helped us make sense of a world in transition. Deb Westphal captures the relentless curiosity of the remarkable couple I met and admired, and shows why we need their way of thinking now more than ever.”
“Around the turn of the millennium, Deborah Westphal opened a door for me to the world of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, a world I knew nothing about. Future Shock became an eye-opener and stayed with me ever since. As an officer, I have spent much of my career making decisions where assumptions about what comes next could change overnight. The Tofflers showed me that the hardest part is not predicting the future, but recognizing when the world has already moved on. In The Pulse of Tomorrow, Deb, who knew them for two decades, shows how they learned to see. It is a book for anyone who must lead and command before the picture is clear and when the time to wait doesn’t exist.”
The Pulse of Tomorrow
How Future Shock Still Shapes Our World
Available March 23, 2027
“Living as we are in the greatest period of change, transformation, chaos, confusion, and uncertainty to have ever hit homo sapiens, Deborah Westphal’s new book, The Pulse of Tomorrow, provides us with one of a handful of lighthouses that can cast real illumination on the storm we are living through.”
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