Humanity spent nearly 250,000 years trying to survive.

Now we’re trying to figure out how to spend our lives—and that may be the biggest untold story of the twenty-first century.

This is the book that tells that story.

As billions of people have entered the global middle class, spending has shifted from necessities toward experiences. Vacations. Concerts. Sports. Festivals. Entertainment.

Bo Bernhard gave it a name: the Fun Economy—and it now moves roughly one in every seven dollars spent on Earth. Line it up against the world’s economies and only the United States and China are bigger.

Through vivid stories from around the globe, Bernhard explains why experiences increasingly define our identities, why cities compete for memories instead of factories, why sports have become the world’s last great shared rituals, and why the pursuit of unforgettable experiences is reshaping everything from business strategy to public policy.

Part globe-trotting adventure, part sociology, part economics, The Fun Economy is filled with surprising stories readers will eagerly retell, characters they will never forget, and fascinating ideas that will permanently change how they see the modern world.