“Any book hereafter isn’t going to be the same.” If the past caught up with you and there was nowhere left to run Would you trust yourself to turn and face it? Time is running out for the men who hide at the edge of the city. The once peaceful existence of their tribe is threatened by an unstable government, one that grows ever more extreme in its desperation to be the richest metropolis in the world. For Jacob, the tribe’s mentor, the sight of a construction crane on the horizon can only mean one thing… There’s nowhere left to run. Unnerved by this development, the tribe looks to Jacob for what to do next. But with few options left, he is forced into an impossible choice. If they stay, they will be at the mercy of the government’s radical and often deadly eviction process. But if they leave the city altogether, they can’t be sure what fate awaits them over the border or whether they will all survive past the arctic winter months. Amid this threat to their future, the members of the tribe turn one by one to their pasts. Defying the doctrine, they connect on a level they never have before, sharing stories of the lives they’ve come from, the people they once were. But for Jacob the time is drawing close when he must put their safety above all else and tell them of the third option. One that would see them go their separate ways. And bring about the end of the tribe for good. Unmasked is a gripping tale of division and impossible choices, and the final book in the Hidden Sanctuary series
In this #1 national bestseller, a journalist who's been attacked by Antifa writes a deeply researched and reported account of the group's history and tactics. When Andy Ngo was attacked in the streets by Antifa in the summer of 2019, most people assumed it was an isolated incident. But those who'd been following Ngo's reporting in outlets like the New York Post and Quillette knew that the attack was only the latest in a long line of crimes perpetrated by Antifa. In Unmasked, Andy Ngo tells the story of this violent extremist movement from the very beginning. He includes interviews with former followers of the group, people who've been attacked by them, and incorporates stories from his own life. This book contains a trove of documents obtained by the author, published for the first time ever.
Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Award for Science "A valuable perspective on the most important problem of our time." —Adam Becker, NPR Light of the Stars tells the story of humanity’s coming of age as we realize we might not be alone in this universe. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life from the ancient Greeks to modern thinkers, and he demonstrates that recognizing the possibility of its existence might be the key to save us from climate change. With clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars asks the consequential question: What can the likely presence of life on other planets tell us about our own fate?
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," said philosopher Frederic Jameson. In Jordan A. Rothacker's The Death of the Cyborg Oracle the former has led to the latter. It's 2220 and climate catastrophe has made most of the earth uninhabitable. In this future, domed Atlanta, solar energy has ended want, but socialism would be more fun if the guilt of capitalism's role in the destruction of earth wasn't inherited by its descendants. Out of this void all goddesses and gods are reborn for worship, monotheism is verboten, and crime is divided into Sacred and Profane. Meet Assistant Sacred Detective Edwina Casaubon, she's just transferred from Profane and working with the legendary Sacred Detective Rabbi Jakob "Thinkowitz" Rabbinowitz. And not a moment too soon, someone has murdered the Oracle of Delphi. "Rothacker's The Death of The Cyborg Oracle is wildly creative, transgressive, and hilarious. With its dystopian futurism, dual critiques of capitalism and Christianity, the book feels beamed in from the future." - John Vanderslice, musician, producer, Pixel Revolt "When I read through The Death of the Cyborg Oracle, I wept. Not from sadness, but from its comforting familiarity and universalism during our times of chaos, anxiety, destruction, and uncertainty. Jordan A. Rothacker's treatment of themes ranging from science fiction to religion, and mythology to ontology provides hope in a time of despair, and a call for rebirth and regeneration while we stare at the possibility of our own dystopian future. Most of all, The Death of the Cyborg Oracle-through its stunning prose and flow-calls on us to examine, understand, and utilize the past to work for a better present." - Adam Shprintzen, historian, The Vegetarian Crusade "When the Profane prophet Alfred North Whitehead made that comment about footnotes and Plato, he could not have foreseen that The Death of the Cyborg Oracle would be the ideal embodiment of Platonic mythmaking. Set after the destruction of one Amazon and the dismantling of another, Rothacker's prescient fiction laments and celebrates our all too human blindnesses and insights. Like the eagle-like eyes of Detective Rabbi Jakob "Thinkowitz" Rabbinowitz, it felt like this book was reading and writing me all at once. Its particular mix of knowing tragedy and anarchic hope will continue to resonate long after closing its pages, like the thud of realization made by a brick of marble thrown into the hole of Tartarus." - Minus Plato, author of No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump "Jordan A. Rothacker has written a holy lamb in wolf's clothing with this short novel-on the surface we have a futuristic detective yarn centred on a gruesomely violent murder, but at its heart it's a treatise on the destructive power of unfettered capitalism and the redemptive magic of faith on both a personal and community level." - Matt Neil Hill, writer, Invert/Extant press "In a time when we are all pickled in these moments and days, Jordan Rothacker's engrossing work allows us to imagine a world beyond this one." - Kelly Girtz, Mayor, Athens, Ga "A solar noir intrigue, complete with climate apocalypse, capitalism abandoned, and the murder of the Oracle at Delphi. Rothacker's bold intelligence and fleet styling will elevate and mesmerize you. Simultaneously a thrilling page turner, and a brilliant critical inquiry as to our time and our future. Smart, creative, prescient." - John Reed, author of Snowball's Chance and All the World's a Grave. "A deeply satisfying, intensely flavored stew of ancient myths and Hebrew iconoclasm, served warm in a glass postmodern bowl. I found it very comforting, especially in its humane account of genders and gods. If this is the future, we don't do as badly as we deserve." - Peter Gardella, religion scholar, author of Innocent Ecstasy and American Civil Religion
A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America.
The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").
The Invisible Hand? offers a radical departure from the conventional wisdom of economists and economic historians, by showing that 'factor markets' and the economies dominated by them — the market economies — are not modern, but have existed at various times in the past. They rise, stagnate, and decline; and consist of very different combinations of institutions embedded in very different societies. These market economies create flexibility and high mobility in the exchange of land, labour, and capital, and initially they generate economic growth, although they also build on existing social structures, as well as existing exchange and allocation systems. The dynamism that results from the rise of factor markets leads to the rise of new market elites who accumulate land and capital, and use wage labour extensively to make their wealth profitable. In the long term, this creates social polarization and a decline of average welfare. As these new elites gradually translate their economic wealth into political leverage, it also creates institutional sclerosis, and finally makes these markets stagnate or decline again. This process is analysed across the three major, pre-industrial examples of successful market economies in western Eurasia: Iraq in the early Middle Ages, Italy in the high Middle Ages, and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, and then parallels drawn to England and the United States in the modern period. These areas successively saw a rapid rise of factor markets and the associated dynamism, followed by stagnation, which enables an in-depth investigation of the causes and results of this process.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.
The provocative, entertaining, impassioned and inspiring memoir of Midnight Oil frontman, environmental activist and politician - a truly remarkable Australian.
This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.
