The nation's leading opinion makers converge to address technology and its impact on society and business

The Forbes ASAP annual Big Issue is the most important magazine special in all of high technology. It has been hailed as "the last great bastion of the essay" by author Stanley Crouch. It is historian Stephen Ambrose's favorite publication to write for, and Tom Wolfe has made it the home for more of his original essays than any other publication in the last decade. Each of the five Big Issues has tackled a burning social question as it relates to technology, including the new meaning of work, the changing nature of time in the digital age, the great convergence (work/play, public/private, science/religion), and what is true. And each issue brings together the best writers and thinkers in search of answers. Big Issue contributors have come from business (Bill Gates, Andrew Grove), science (E. O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould), literature (John Updike, Reynolds Price, Elmore Leonard), history (John Keegan, Jacques Barzun), politics (Gore Vidal, Peggy Noonan), sports (Muhammad Ali), and religion (the Dalai Lama). Sixty-three of the best essays from the first five Big Issues are complied in this new collection, with an original foreword by longtime Big Issue fan Peter Jennings.