Books by Frank Rose

The Sea We Swim In

How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World
The Sea We Swim In

“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…

The Art of Immersion

How the Digital Generation Is Changing Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories
The Art of Immersion

“We can spy the future in Frank Rose’s brilliant tour of the pyrotechnic collision between movies and games. This insightful book convinced me that immersive experiences are rapidly becoming the main event in media. . . . Future-spotting doesn’t get much better than this.”

— Kevin Kelly, author of “What Technology Wants”

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…

The Agency

William Morris and The Hidden History of Show Business
The Agency

“An encyclopedic account of the development of the modern entertainment business . . . There are stories about how deals were made, bluffs called, booze guzzled, pills popped and stars born. There are stories about mobsters and the birth of Las Vegas, and tales of betrayal during the dark days of the Commie scare and the Hollywood blacklist. . . . Rose has done a remarkable job.”

— Chicago Tribune

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…

West of Eden

The End of Innocence at Apple Computer
West of Eden

“The saga of Apple in its early years is a case study of the California style of creativity smashing headlong into the realities of Wall Street. Once again, Californians came up with a revolutionary idea which the Northeast seized control of and institutionalized. . . . Frank Rose has written the book on Apple and the entire Silicon Valley phenomenon.”

— Kevin Starr, author of the eight-volume “Americans and the California Dream” series

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 MORE…

Into the Heart of the Mind

An American Quest For Artificial Intelligence
Into the Heart of the Mind

“A good, acces­sible re­port for the gen­eral reader on one of the most bizarre fas­cina­tions of mod­ern sci­ence.”

— Theo­dore Roszak, San Fran­cis­co Chron­icle

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…

Real Men

Sex and Style In An Uncertain Age
Real Men

“If ‘Real Men’ is an accurate survey of the current state of masculinity in America, then it’s doing just fine, thank you, without John Wayne. But even if ‘Real Men’ isn’t a representative sampling (and it doesn’t pretend to be), it’s valuable as a series of vivid, meticulous portraits—sharply written, insightfully photographed, enthralling as no myth can ever be but reality always is.”

— The Village Voice

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…