Includes bibliographical references and index.

End of continuity -- New industries and their dynamics -- New entrepreneur -- New economic policies -- Global shopping center -- Making the poor productive -- Beyond the "new economics" -- New pluralism -- Toward a theory of organizations -- Sickness of government -- How can the individual survive? -- Knowledge economy -- Work and worker in the knowledge society -- Has success spoiled the schools? -- New learning and the new teaching -- Politics of knowledge -- Does knowledge have a future?

Drucker is known as the father of modern management principles and this book in particular displays his lucid thinking as he discusses forces of change in the economy.

Drucker discerns four major areas of discontinuity underlying contemporary social and cultural reality. These are: (1) the explosion of new technologies resulting in major new industries; (2) the change from an international to a world economy - an economy that presently lacks policy, theory, and institutions; (3) a new sociopolitical reality of pluralistic institutions that poses drastic political, philosophical, and spiritual challenges; and (4) the new universe of knowledge based on mass education and its implications in work, leisure, and leadership. Peter Drucker brings to this work an intimate knowledge and objective view of the particular and general. The Age of Discontinuity is a fascinating and important blueprint for shaping a future already very much with us.