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Now more relevant than ever, the groundbreaking international best-seller turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its head—from the “brilliant, deeply original political thinker” David Graeber (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me)Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today.

“One of the greatest thinkers of our age" (The Guardian) presents a new way of living—one modeled on nature’s design instead of capitalism's—for fans of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Doughnut EconomicsIt has often been said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism—and yet that is what the historical moment urgently calls for. As climate chaos, inequality, and social fragmentation intensify, humanity faces an imminent choice: continue with a system built on extraction and endless growth, or reimagine civilization itself. Incremental policy improvements are no longer enough—we need a deep transformation of our current civilization to continue to survive.  In Ecocivilization, leading thinker Jeremy Lent offers that reimagination, grounded in proven design principles of ecosystems and in humankind's evolved inclination toward justice, mutuality, and dignity.What unfolds is a robust framework incorporating Lent’s own expertise, and the lived experiences of those on the ground already putting ecological civilization’s core tenets into practice—justice, mutuality, diversity, and symbiosis. From the global economy to universal housing and income, from infrastructure to agriculture, every major aspect of our society could be redesigned to work together as a coherent whole, setting the conditions for all people to flourish. Ecocivilization shows how this future on a regenerated Earth is not only desirable, but entirely feasible.

After the American presidental election of 2016, Jenny Odell felt so overstimunated and disoriented by information, misinformation, and the expressions of others, that reality itself seemed to slip away. How To Do Nothing is her action plan for resistance. Drawing on the ethos of tech culture, a background in the arts, and personal storytelling, Jenny Odell makes a powerful argument for refusal: refusal to believe that our lives are instruments to be optimised. She argues that nothing can be quite so radical as doing... nothing.

From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives   Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence?   To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice…though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy.   Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible.   An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.

The classic work on debt, now is a special tenth anniversary edition with a new introduction by Thomas Piketty Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history. It shows how debt has defined our human past, and what that means for our economic future.

After the American presidental election of 2016, Jenny Odell felt so overstimunated and disoriented by information, misinformation, and the expressions of others, that reality itself seemed to slip away. How To Do Nothing is her action plan for resistance. Drawing on the ethos of tech culture, a background in the arts, and personal storytelling, Jenny Odell makes a powerful argument for refusal: refusal to believe that our lives are instruments to be optimised. She argues that nothing can be quite so radical as doing... nothing.

When she began writing, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: she was a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, she wrote genre at a time where it was dismissed as non-literary, and she lived West, far from fashionable East coast literary circles. The interviews collected here - covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to her process of world-building, from her experiments with genre to envisioning the end of capitalism - highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.

“Raffish and spirited . . . a nonconformist cri de coeur . . .  Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate . . . It’s been a long time since I’ve read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work.” — Dwight Garner, The New York Times A Montreal garbageman's sharp and funny memoir/exposé, in which he attempts to convince people to "stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears" . . .This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean.Paré-Poupart’s story is atypical: he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more “respectable” fields, he is still on a truck — out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him.Includes eight black and white photographs of the author on the job. His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan.Trash! — the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada — explains and questions efforts to “clean up” a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else.Aligned with great books about work from Zola to Orwell to Lucia Berlin, and in dialogue with societal critiques like How To Do Nothing, Trash! will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“Focused and persuasive . . . Bray’s book is many things: the first English-language transnational history of antifa . . . and a record of advice from anti-Fascist organizers past and present.”—THE NEW YORKERAs long as there has been fascism, there has been anti-fascism — also known as “antifa.” Born out of resistance to Mussolini and Hitler, the antifa movement has suddenly burst into the headlines amidst opposition to the Trump administration and the alt-right. In a smart and gripping investigation, historian Mark Bray provides a detailed survey of the full history of anti-fascism from its origins fighting Hitler and Mussolini, to the present day — the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English. Today, critics say shutting down political adversaries is anti-democratic; antifa adherents argue that the horrors of fascism must never be allowed the slightest chance to triumph again. Bray amply demonstrates that antifa simply aims to deny fascists the opportunity to promote their oppressive politics, and to protect tolerant communities from acts of violence promulgated by fascists.Based on interviews with anti-fascists from around the world, Antifa details the tactics of the movement and the philosophy behind it, offering insight into the growing but little-understood resistance fighting back against fascism in all its guises.

"Flux happily offers a moving appraisal of lives buffeted by personal and systemic traumas; a deep dive into the good, the bad and the ugly of self-serving corporate culture; and no shortage of “wait, what the heck just happened?” thrills." -- The New York Times Book Review "Brazen, exhilarating, fun, and surprising! I couldn't predict where this novel was going, but I was definitely along for the ride." -- Ling Ma, author of Severance A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious employers have inadvertently discovered time travel—and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes . . .   Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.   So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon, and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic ’80s detective show, Raider, whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.   Flux is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

A collection of the very first, the very last, and the very best interviews conducted with Prince over his nearly 40 year career.There is perhaps no musician who has had as much influence on the sound of contemporary American music than Prince. His pioneering compositions brought a variety of musical genres into a singular funky and virtuosic sound. In this remarkable collection, and with his signature mix of seduction and demur, the late visionary reflects on his artistry, identity, and the sacrifices and soul-searching it took to stay true to himself. An Introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib offers astute, contemporary perspective and brilliantly contextualizes the collected interviews.

Set in the 1880s, the story follows Ovid Vesper, a former Union soldier who has been having enigmatic visions after an explosion at the Battle of Antietam. As he travels across the country following those visions, he finds himself in stranger and increasingly more dangerous encounters with other worlds hidden in the spaces of his own. Ovid brings his steady calm and compassion as he helps the people of a broken country, rapidly changing but still reeling and wounded from its Civil War two decades earlier. He assists with matters of all sorts, from odd jobs around the house, to guiding children back to their own universe, to hunting down unnatural creatures that stalk the night - all the while seeking his own personal resolution and peace from his visions and the war that changed his life. This epic journey across the American West with Ovid and a surprising cast of characters blends elements of the classic Western with historical fantasy in a way like no other.

In the wake of the recent hit biopic A Complete Unknown, this probing appreciation asks: Do the lyrics of Bob Dylan tell the true story of the ever-changing, ever-radical life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter?In a dingy windowless bungalow on the Warner Brothers back lot in Hollywood in 1977, in the midst of what may have been the longest interview he ever gave (it stretched over ten days), a chain-smoking Bob Dylan confessed to journalist Ron Rosenbaum that he was troubled by something missing from his music. Dylan — who was editing a dramatic movie based on his life, even as his life seemed to be falling apart — told Rosenbaum there was a sound he was after that he’d only come close to on one record so far. The sound, he told Rosenbaum, was of “thin, wild mercury.”This is a book that captures the elusive mercurial artist and his work in a way no other has — a vivid, compelling pursuit of Dylan, successively a hipster folkie, a Greenwich Village sparkplug of a cultural revolution, who plugged into an amplifier to drive away folkie solemnity, then became a countrified crooner, the man who, just months after Rosenbaum’s interview, became a fire-breathing, proselytizing Christian . . . before returning to being a non-religious Jew.What was behind it all, Rosenbaum asks, and how can we understand him through his lyrics? Tracing it from Dylan’s childhood — when his father hired a Brooklyn rabbi to come to remote Minnesota to prepare his son for his bar mitzvah — through the still touring singer’s late, often inscrutable lyrics, Rosenbaum probes Dylan’s “argument with God,” his differentiation between authenticity and sincerity, and his relentless heretical stances. Of course, complicating matters for anyone trying to trace the development of Dylan and his life’s work is Dylan’s recurrent denial of the continuity of self. (Whenever asked why he doesn’t sing the old songs the same way as on the record, Dylan typically responds with an irritated, “That’s not me.”)Ron Rosenbaum has covered Dylan for almost the entirety of his — and Dylan’s — career, starting as a Village Voice culture reporter in 1969. In this deeply personal and literary appreciation, and as Dylan continues to tour and compose new songs, still refusing to play old songs the old way, Rosenbaum offers a moving and involving portrait of an icon who may have been more constant than it appeared after all.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER that connects the dots from Donald Trump's racist background to the Russian scandals"A searing indictment." — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"Johnston has given us this year's must-read Trump book." — Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'DonnellThe international bestseller that brought Trump's long history of racism, mafia ties, and shady business dealings into the limelight. Now with a new introduction and epilogue.  Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, who had spent thirty years chronicling Donald Trump for the New York Times and other leading newspapers, takes readers from the origins of the Trump family fortune—his grandfather's Yukon bordellos during the Gold Rush—to his tumultuous gambling and real estate dealings in New York and Atlantic City, all the way to his election as president of the United States, giving us a deeply researched and shockingly full picture of one of the most controversial figures of our time.

WINNER OF THE 2025 GOLDSMITHS PRIZEA wickedly smart, Borgesian novel that explores the boundaries between art and life, vision and reality, beauty and commerce . . .When visitors to a famous conceptual artist's installation start mysteriously disappearing, the aftershocks radiate outwards through twelve people who were involved in the project, changing all of their lives, and launching them on a crazy-quilt trajectory that will end with them all together at one final, apocalyptic bacchanal.Mixing illusion and reality, simulacra and replicants, sound artists and death artists, performers and filmmakers and theorists and journalists, We Live Here Now ranges across the world of weapons dealers and international shipping to the galleries and studios on the cutting edge of hyper-contemporary art. It spins a dazzling web that conveys, with eerie precision, the sheer strangeness of what it is like to be alive today.

"This is just the book for anyone who enjoys the podcast 'How I Built This.'" - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "Nader is one of America’s most effective social critics." - ForbesOne of corporate America's greatest foes shows how 12 CEOs he has known uniquely rejected narrow yardsticks of shareholder value by leading companies to larger models of prosperity and justiceOver the course of 7 decades Ralph Nader has been Corporate America’s fiercest critic. Supreme Court Justice William Powell singled out Nader in his infamous memo as the “single most effective antagonist of American business… [the] target of his hatred… is corporate power.”But now, in a book that will surprise both his fans and critics, Nader profiles a small group of CEOs who he believes performed extraordinarily well as business leaders and civic reformers, some well-known, some not, who should be celebrated as exceptions whose life and career should be a course of emulation and inspiration for students of business, executives and the wider citizenry. This select group of mavericks and iconoclasts — which includes The Body Shop’s Anita Roddick, Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, Vanguard’s John Bogle and Busboys and Poets' Andy Shallal —give us, Nader writes, “a sense of what might have been and what still could be if business were rigorously framed as a process that was not only about making money and selling things but improving our social and natural world.”

From the moment J. D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, he was stalked by besotted fans, would-be biographers, and pushy journalists. In this collection of rare and revealing encounters with the elusive literary giant, Salinger discusses—sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly—what that onslaught was like, the autobiographical origins of his art, and his advice to writers. Including his final, surprising interview, and with an insightful introduction by New York Times journalist David Streitfeld, these enlightening, provocative, and even amusing conversations reveal a writer fiercely resistant to the spotlight but powerless to escape its glare.

Come and meet Shere Hite—the feminist hero whose notorious work revolutionized how we think about sex, marriage, and the female orgasm...Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionized the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? Using original research material and sharp cultural analysis, Rosa Campbell explores Hite’s complicated life and literary legacy. Campbell expands on Hite’s ideas about sex — namely, that sex is sexist — and tracks Hite through her fraught childhood, her struggles working in the porn industry, and her eventual cancellation by the far-right Evangelical movement. All the while, Campbell holds Hite and The Hite Report to account for their own failings and absence of intersectionality. In a post-Dobbs, post-MeToo world, this book’s examination of shifting ideological movements is essential to understanding both the current feminist movement, as well as how conservative, reactionary, counter-mobilization efforts can silence even the most successful of women. Contains 8 black and white vintage photos.

“A defense of human dignity in the era of A.I.  . . .  including a dramatic plea for guardrails to ensure that artificial intelligence eases — rather than exacerbates — inequality and poverty.” — The Washington PostA stirring call for humanity vs machines issued by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church . . .Artificial intelligence encroaches on our lives more insidiously by the day, bent on destroying everything that makes us human. In the first encyclical of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV makes a ringing defense of the value of human life, thought, and expression. A bold statement of faith and values, the Pope’s manifesto immediately becomes an essential document of our time.

The first-ever collection of interviews with the tortured but groundbreaking singer Billie Holiday, part of Melville House’s beloved Last Interview series   Legendary singer Billie Holiday comes alive in this first-ever collection of interviews from throughout her career. Included is her last interview, given from her deathbed in a New York City hospital, where police were standing by ready to arrest her for a parole violation should she recover. Also included: The transcript of an interrogation by a US Customs official questioning about whether she'd violated her parole by using drugs on a foreign tour. But the book is more than a look at just the famously tragic side of her life. In other conversations, drawn from music magazines, late-night radio programs, and newspapers across the US and Canada, she discusses her childhood, musicians who influenced her, her friendship -- and falling out -- with the influential sax player Lester Young, why she chose the gardenia as her symbol, why she quit Count Basie's band, her substance abuse problems, writing songs and whether she wrote her own memoir, and more.  In frank and open conversations, Billie Holiday proves herself far more articulate, aware, intelligent, and even heroic than the way she's often portrayed. This collection is an essential volume for all who have been moved by her music.

In the vein of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and Martha Gellhorn's The View from the Ground, a remarkable work of reportage based on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground reporting, that tells how Greece's violent far right is trying to destroy the birthplace of democracy . . .In 2012, Greece’s far-right political party the Golden Dawn were building a significant street presence in Greece. Over the previous decade they had grown from a tiny group of neofascist brawlers to a formidable vigilante force responsible for multiple murders, street fights and shootings.On the eve of the 2012 election one of their candidates said that the “knives will come out after the elections.” And the knives did come out. Golden Dawn became a significant parliamentary presence and used it as a platform to escalate their terror campaigns against migrants and leftists across the country. They also became an inspiration for far-right groups across Europe and the Americas.   Journalist Patrick Strickland first arrived in Greece in 2015 to cover the European refugee crisis, just as Golden Dawn were ramping up their campaign of terror. With an eye for journalistic detail that recalls Orwell’s reportage in Spain, Strickland traces the antecedents of Golden Dawn to the dark years of Nazi occupation and subsequent military dictatorship, and looks at the post 2008 economic crisis that emboldened the far right.He also introduces us to the resistance forces standing up to the right, taking us to the Greek islands where people rallied together to support the hundreds of thousands of refugees traveling across the Aegean Sea. Strickland also takes us to the anarchist squats in Athens where activists took over abandoned buildings and opened them up to the refugees, a tactic they viewed as an anti-fascist alternative to dooming migrants to life in the squalid refugee camps. You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave is an exemplary work of narrative nonfiction and compelling journalism that provides an intimate portrait of the stories of migrants and activists resisting the growth of the far-right, as well as a vivid and shrewd analysis of the evolving political landscape in Greece and Europe.

A veteran music journalist argues that the rise of music streaming and the consolidation of digital platforms is decimating the musical landscape, with dire consequences for the future of our culture …In The Endless Refrain, former Washington Post writer and editor David Rowell lays out how commercial and cultural forces have laid waste to the cultural ecosystems that have produced decades of great American music. From the scorched-earth demonetizing of artist revenue accomplished by Spotify and its ilk to the rise of dead artists “touring” via hologram, Rowell examines how a perfect storm of conditions have drained our shared musical landscape of vitality.Combining personal memoir, intimate on-the-ground reporting, industry research, and cultural criticism, Rowell’s book is a powerful indictment of a music culture gone awry, driven by conformity and subverted by the ways the internet and media influence what we listen to and how we listen to it.