Scribe Publications – serie

‘A devastating portrait of the cultures and logics underlying big tech. Rushkoff is going to make you mad enough to fight back. A vital, lucid, and enraging read.’ Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingThe tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. When Douglas Rushkoff was summoned to the desert to a private talk for the rich and powerful, he learned about ‘The Mindset’: a theory that inevitable societal catastrophe can be evaded by individuals with enough money and the right technology. Here, Rushkoff traces the evolution of The Mindset through its origins in science and technology to its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset has created — a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies — and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency.

World-leading political economist Maja Göpel shows us how we can set the course for the future in times of upheaval, and why this concerns us all. The way we live is changing fundamentally. The status quo is crumbling, but there is still reason to hope. Drawing on the latest scientific research, Maja Göpel distils complex developments across the environment, the economy, politics, society, and technology, and reveals how we can use this knowledge for a better world.Great transformations in history were triggered by humans, and our window to the future is as open as never before. It is time that we — each of us individually, but also society as a whole — allowed ourselves to think anew, to dream, and to ask a radical question: who do we want to be?After her previous book, Rethinking Our World, eloquently untangled the chaotic world we live in, Maja Göpel now gives readers the tools and motivation needed to build the world we want to live in.

The riveting story of a true-life female Indiana Jones: an archaeologist who survived the Nazis and then saved Egypt’s ancient temples.In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: fifty countries had contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir.Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in World War II, she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis. Now, in her fight to save the temples, she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world: Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and French president Charles de Gaulle.After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage, and, just as importantly, made sure it remained in its homeland.

A Metro book of the yearInterweaving the social, political, and personal, in 1947 Elisabeth Åsbrink chronicles the year that ‘now’ began.In 1947, production begins of the Kalashnikov, Christian Dior creates the New Look, Simone de Beauvoir writes The Second Sex, the CIA is set up, a clockmaker’s son draws up the plan that remains the goal of jihadists to this day, and a UN Committee is given four months to find a solution to the problem of Palestine.In 1947, millions of refugees flee across Europe looking for new homes, among them Elisabeth Åsbrink’s father.In 1947, the forces that will go on to govern all our lives during the next 70 years first make themselves known.

A Nobel Peace Prize-winner outlines his radical economic vision for a better future.Muhammad Yunus is the economist who invented microcredit, founded Grameen Bank, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work towards alleviating poverty. Here, he proposes his vision for a new kind of capitalism, where altruism and generosity are valued as much as profit making, and where individuals not only have the capacity to lift themselves out of poverty, but also to affect real change for the planet and its people.A World of Three Zeroes offers a challenge to young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary citizens everywhere to improve the world for everyone before it’s too late.

An acerbic graphic takedown of capitalism. In Hyper-Capitalism, cartoonist Larry Gonick and psychologist Tim Kasser offer a vivid and an accessible new way to understand how global, privatising, market-worshipping hyper-capitalism is threatening human wellbeing, social justice, and the planet. Drawing from contemporary research, they describe and illustrate concepts (such as corporate power, free trade, privatisation, and deregulation) that are critical for understanding the world we live in, and movements (such as voluntary simplicity, sharing, alternatives to GDP, and protests) that have developed in response to the system. Gonick and Kasser’s pointed and profound cartoon narratives provide a deep exploration of the global economy and the movements seeking to change it, all rendered in clear, graphic — and sometimes hilarious — terms. In the process, they point the way to a healthier future for all of us.

A New Statesman Book of the YearA fierce, feminist retelling of the classic tale Beowulf.Gren and his mother, Dana, a war veteran, live on the side of a mountain, next to Herot Hall, a pristine gated community ruled over by Willa and her son, Dylan. Separated by high gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights, Dylan and Gren are unaware of the barriers erected to keep them apart. But when Gren crosses the border into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, he sets up a collision between Dana’s and Willa’s worlds that echoes the Beowulf story — and gives sharp, startling currency to the ancient epic poem.

‘I swim for every chance to get wasted — after every meet, every weekend, every travel trip. This is what I look forward to and what I tell no one: the burn of it down my throat, to my soul curled up in my lungs, the sharpest pain all over it — it seizes and stretches, becoming alive again, and is the only thing that makes sense.’At fifteen, Casey Legler is already one of the fastest swimmers in the world. She is also an alcoholic, isolated from her family, and incapable of forming lasting connections with those around her.Driven to compete at the highest levels, sent far away from home to train with the best coaches and teams, she finds herself increasingly alone and alienated, living a life of cheap hotels and chlorine-worn skin, anonymous sexual encounters and escalating drug use. Even at what should be a moment of triumph — competing at age nineteen in the 1996 Olympics — she is an outsider looking in, procuring drugs for Olympians she hardly knows, and losing her race after setting a new world record in the qualifying heats.After submitting to years of numbing training in France and the United States, Casey can see no way out of the sinister loneliness that has swelled and festered inside her. Yet wondrously, when it is almost too late, she discovers a small light within herself, and senses a point of calm within the whirlwind of her life.In searing, evocative, visceral prose, Casey gives language to loneliness in this startling story of survival, defiance, and of the embers that still burn when everything else in us goes dark.

An intensive-care doctor reveals the long-term problems caused by ICUs, and how these can be prevented.Thousands of people are admitted to intensive-care units (ICUs) every day, and this is only increasing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of these admissions will be sudden, unexpected, and harrowing — an experience that can alter patients and their families in physical, emotional, and spiritual ways, with effects that endure for years. But there is hope.Dr Ely is a leading ICU doctor. His unconventional methods minimise patients being harmed by the cutting-edge technologies that are saving their lives; post–intensive care syndrome (PICS) is a well-established complication that millions of ICU survivors battle, which Dr Ely aims to eradicate. His cutting-edge studies have convinced doctors around the world to change their ICU practices for the better.Through captivating stories, Dr Ely shows how he and colleagues from around the world have re-introduced humanity into the ICU, creating pathways that bring hope and healing to healthcare. This is the future of medicine, and is a must-read for healthcare professionals, patients, and their families.

A TLS and a Prospect Book of the YearA revelatory, explosive new analysis of the military today.Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century the British Army fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, at considerable financial and human cost. Yet neither war achieved its objectives. Award-winning journalist Simon Akam questions why, and provides challenging but necessary answers. Composed from assiduous documentary research, field reportage, and hundreds of interviews, this book is a strikingly rich, nuanced portrait of one of our pivotal national institutions in a time of great stress.This is as much a book about Britain, and about the politics of failure, as it is about the military.

An award-winning journalist’s investigation into Amazon’s true impact on inequality.The market value of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars. In 2020, its annual revenue increased by over 100 billion dollars. As the company insinuates itself ever further into our lives, Alec MacGillis investigates how it is reshaping society.With empathy and breadth, he tells the stories of those who’ve thrived and struggled in this rapidly changing environment, and shows how Amazon has even become a force in Washington, DC.The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, and its remaking of our world with every click.

An incisive and deeply candid account that explores autistic women in culture, myth, and society through the prism of the author’s own diagnosis.Until the 1980s, autism was regarded as a condition found mostly in boys. Even in our time, autistic girls and women have largely remained undiagnosed. When portrayed in popular culture, women on the spectrum often appear simply as copies of their male counterparts — talented and socially awkward.Yet autistic women exist, and always have. They are varied in their interests and in their experiences. Autism may be relatively new as a term and a diagnosis, but not as a way of being and functioning in the world. It has always been part of the human condition. So who are these women, and what does it mean to see the world through their eyes?In The Autists, Clara Törnvall reclaims the language to describe autism and explores the autistic experience in arts and culture throughout history. From popular culture, films, and photography to literature, opera, and ballet, she dares to ask what it might mean to re-read these works through an autistic lens — what we might discover if we allow perspectives beyond the neurotypical to take centre stage.

A revolutionary framework for living well in a broken world, from an acclaimed author and psychologist.How can I manage heartbreak? How do I cope with death? How can I learn to tolerate anxiety and have hope?In this helpful, practical, and realistic guide to good psychological health, Dr Ahona Guha shows us how to cope, thrive, and still feel hopeful for the future. Combining techniques from a range of therapeutic modalities, she demonstrates how we can build a range of essential psychological skills, and apply them to live a more tranquil and joyful life.Life Skills for a Broken World is a breath of fresh air, cutting through the confusion to provide solid, practical, and evidence-based answers to existential questions, big and small.

A MAIL ON SUNDAY AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR.The little-known true story of the woman who headed the largest spy network in Vichy France during World War II.In 1941, a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of Alliance, a vast Resistance organisation — the only woman to hold such a role. Brave, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job.No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence as Alliance — and as a result, the Gestapo pursued its members relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade’s own lover and many of her key spies. Fourcade herself lived on the run and was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape.Though so many of her agents died defending their country, Fourcade survived the occupation to become active in post-war French politics. Now, in a dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.