Newt Gingrich is one of the best known — and more controversial — figures in U.S. politics. Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, he is currently Chairman of Gingrich 360, a multimedia production and consulting company based in Arlington, Virginia. Gingrich is well known as the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994, creating the first conservative majority in the House in 40 years. He was a Republican candidate for President of the United States in 2012.

He is also a podcast host (Newt’s World at Fox) and syndicated columnist, as well as the author of 40 books, including 18 fiction and nonfiction New York Times bestsellers. The bestsellers include Gettysburg and Pearl Harbor (both co-authored) and To Save America, of which he is sole author. He will have a new book out in 2022: Beyond Biden.

Because he has been willing to wade into many controversies over a long political career, Gingrich has many detractors on both sides of the political divide. In 2019, The Atlantic portrayed him, posed with dinosaurs, as The Man Who Broke Politics — which, if true, would be a remarkable feat for one man.

Huffpost has allowed us to know that “Gingrich’s politically tin ear has not been limited to minority groups, but seems to extend to any group of which he is not a part.” National Review joined HuffPost in 2011 in not wanting him to run for Republican presidential candidate on account of “his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas” (2011) He must have been goring a lot of pet oxen at the time.

One of his interests is technology development (“The most powerful force changing our society is the information revolution”) and the forces that he sees as impeding it:

If Thomas Edison had invented the electric light in the age of the welfare state, the Democrats would immediately introduce a bill to protect the candlemaking industry. The Democrat ticket would propose a tax on electricity –in fact, Al Gore does propose a tax on electricity. Ralph Nader would warn that electricity can kill; and at least one news report would begin, “The candlemaking industry was threatened today.”

– Speech, Republican National Convention in Houston, August 1992

Some other observations that would not endear him to a certain sort of civil servant or officeholder:

“A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that’s what freedom is all about.” – Inspiring Quotes

and

“Congress was designed by the Founding Fathers to move slowly, precisely to avoid the sudden panic of a one-week solution that becomes a 20-year mess. – BrainyQuote

Get the best available rate by registering for COSM 2021 (November 10–12) by October 31.

Here’s who else you can hear and maybe meet and talk to:

Peter Thiel speaking in person at COSM, Seattle, November 10. As a world class venture capitalist, he is known for bluntness about what works and what doesn’t. COSM 2021 focuses on the converging technologies, remaking our world. Thiel asks, is new tech soaring or slumping?

Carver Mead: “Listen to the technology; find out what it’s telling you…” That’s the motto of CalTech’s Carver Mead, who will speak at COSM 2021. Integrated circuit design pioneer Carver Mead is also deeply interested in physics problems, in seeing “quite visibly what matter is down at its heart.

and

Top world chemist, James Tour, to speak at COSM 2021. Tour builds molecules for a living, a position that causes him to stand in awe” of God: “Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith.” Apart from his hundreds of papers and dozens of patent families, Tour’s passion is introducing the public to the many worlds of science.