Books by Frank Rose


NOW AVAILABLE:

The Sea We Swim In Teaching Guide

Before it was a book, The Sea We Swim In was a study companion for participants in Frank’s executive education seminar in Strategic Storytelling at Columbia University. Now Norton has made his new, 23-page teaching guide available for free download to anyone who would like to use the book as a teaching resource. Included are discussion questions, suggested workshops and outside resources (including academic papers, online videos and magazine and newspaper articles) for every chapter, along with chapter summaries that explain the arc of the book and the nine key elements of story that Frank lays out in its pages.

“If you want to connect with customers — that is, with the audience for the experience you’ve created — Frank Rose shows not only that you have to think narratively but how to go about it, element by element. And he wonderfully exemplifies his ideas, for his stories about storytelling are superbly written and expertly woven together. Read this book to be immersed in the sea of storytelling that’s so crucial to business success today.”

— B. Joseph Pine II, coauthor of “The Experience Economy” and “Authenticity”

WE SWIM IN A SEA OF STORIES — stories that determine how we comprehend the world, that define our personal lives, our professional lives, our goals and ambitions and ideals. They can control us, or we can control them — if we know how they work. Learn more about The Sea We Swim In …

“Compelling . . . From ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Lost’ (‘television for the hive mind’), it is the immersive, ‘fractal-like com­plexity’ of story­telling that turns on digital audiences and sends them online to extend the fantasy via wikis, Twitter and blogs.”

— P.D. James, The Guardian (London)

NOT LONG AGO WE WERE passive consumers of mass media. Now we approach television, movies, even advertising as invitations to participate. We are witnessing the emergence of a new form of narrative that is native to the In­ternet. Learn more about The Art of Immersion …

“A must-read for anyone who wants to understand both the general thrust of Hollywood innovation and the general influence of agents behind that innovation, starting in 1898 when William Morris opened shop.”

— WME partner Bradley Singer in Business Insider

FOR DECADES, the Morris agency made deals that determined the fate of stars, studios, and television networks alike. But everything changed after the agency’s president dismissed his own best friend, the man who’d brought Barry Diller and Michael Ovitz out of the mailroom. A multi-generational saga of loyalty and betrayal in Hollywood. Learn more about The Agency …

“Readers don’t need to worry that Mr. Rose was chewed up by Apple’s public relations machine. . . . He provides convincing proof that life at young California companies was anything but laid back.”

— Michael Moritz, The Wall Street Journal

IT SEEMS UNTHINKABLE TODAY—but forty years ago, when personal com­puters were still new and the World Wide Web had yet to be invented, Steve Jobs was cast out of Apple. And it wasn’t just Wall Street that applauded—it was most of Silicon Valley. Learn ore about West of Eden …

“Lucid and authoritative . . . it demystifies a disturbing subject. . . . No one knows how the cognitive areas [of the brain] work: how vision is interpreted, memory is stored, or thought is processed. No one even knows what thought is. Consequently, computer simulations of the brain are attempts to imitate the unknown.”

— The Washington Post

IN A CRAMPED LABORATORY in the Berkeley engineering school, scientists are trying to teach a computer to think—not just to shuffle data but to learn, reason, remember, understand English, and exhibit common sense. But first they have to get it to put on a raincoat before going out in the rain. Learn more about Into the Heart of the Mind …

“A thoroughly fascinating book. Accompanied by George Bennett’s stunning photographs, each profile is explicit, candid and deeply personal.”

— Publishers Weekly

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT BEING MALE. About power and discipline, sex and violence, and the roles they play in the lives of American men. Think of it as a personal and idiosyncratic survey designed to produce not statistical data but individual answers to the question of what it means to be a man. Learn more about Real Men…