Radicals Chasing Utopia

Download or read book Radicals Chasing Utopia written by Jamie Bartlett and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's the hubris of every generation to think that they have arrived at the best way of living. But all the things we now take for granted, all the modern wisdoms we hold to be self-evident, were once derided as dangerous or foolish radical thinking." -- From the Prologue In Radicals Chasing Utopia, Jamie Bartlett, one of the world's leading thinkers on radical politics and technology, takes readers inside the strange and exciting worlds of the innovators, disrupters, idealists, and extremists who think we can do better-and believe they know how. Bartlett introduces us to some of the most influential movements today: techno-futurists questing for immortality, far-right groups seeking to close borders, militant environmentalists striving to save the planet by any means necessary, and psychedelic pioneers attempting to heal society with the help of powerful hallucinogens. The success of democratic societies hinges on our ability to listen to-and in some cases learn from-the radical movements in our midst. Their methods may be extreme, but in chasing utopia, these groups are challenging what is possible and previewing the world to come.

Download or read book Chasing Utopia written by Jennifer Wood and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2018 the world was thrown into a recession so severe that governments could not work out a solution. Desperation and poverty inspired social networks to create a world that ran on the principles of anarchism. This was ended only by the rise of CorpGroup, an Eastern initiative that created the new Eco-World Order. Through a series of encounters, the boundaries of time are erased to offer a captivating insight into the complications of love and friendship. Jess Rivington and the people in her life offer a contrasting account of the world we know and life after the tipping point. In a population which believes segregation is fundamental to their development, there is no desire to question the underlying principles of the Eco-World Order. Jess alone must challenge the system and rescue the man she loves by ending his days as a white slave in another District. In persuading modern society that there is still a place for humanitarian assistance, she must prepare to lose everything.

Download or read book Radicals written by Jamie Bartlett and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the creator of hit podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen ______________________________ 'Thoughtful and intelligent' Observer 'Inside the anti-political revolt that gave us Brexit and Trump' Evening Standard 'Fascinating... Excellent' Literary Review 'Must read ... A radical odyssey' Daily Mail In the last few years the world has changed in unexpected ways. The power of radical ideas and groups is growing. What was once considered extreme is now the mainstream. But what is life like on the political fringes? What is the real power of radicals? Radicals is an exploration of the individuals, groups and movements who are rejecting the way we live now, and attempting to find alternatives. In it, Jamie Bartlett, one of the world’s leading thinkers on radical politics and technology, takes us inside the strange and exciting worlds of the innovators, disruptors, idealists and extremists who think society is broken, and believe they know how to fix it. From dawn raids into open mines to the darkest recesses of the internet, Radicals introduces us to some of the most secretive and influential movements today: techno-futurists questing for immortality, far-right groups seeking to close borders, militant environmentalists striving to save the planet's natural reserves by any means possible, libertarian movements founding new countries, autonomous cooperatives in self-sustaining micro-societies, and psychedelic pioneers attempting to heal society with the help of powerful hallucinogens. As well as providing a fascinating glimpse at the people and ideas driving these groups, Radicals also presents a startling argument: radicals are not only the symptoms of a deep unrest within the world today, but might also offer the most plausible models for our future.

Download or read book The Presidential Fringe written by Mark Stein and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This offbeat slice of American history places the story of our great republic beneath an unexpected lens: that of fringe candidates for president of the United States. Mark Stein explores how their quest for our nation's highest office helped to amplify voices otherwise quashed during their day. His careening tour through elections past includes the efforts of true pioneers in the quest for social equality in our country: the first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull in 1872; the first African American to run for president, George E. Taylor in 1904; and the first openly gay cross-dressing candidate for president, Joan Jett Blakk in 1992. But The Presidential Fringe also takes a look at those who would jest their way into the Oval Office, from comedians such as Will Rogers and Gracie Allen to Pat Paulsen and Stephen Colbert. Along the way, Stein shows how even seemingly zany candidates, such as "Live Forever" Jones, Vegetarian Party candidate John Maxwell, Flying Saucer Party candidate Gabriel Green, or, most recently, Vermin Supreme, provide extraordinary insights of clarity into who we were when they ran for president and how we became who we are today. Ultimately, Stein's examination reveals that it was often precisely these fringe candidates who planted the seeds from which mainstream candidates later harvested genuine, positive change. Written in Stein's direct and witty style, The Presidential Fringe surveys and portrays an American landscape rife with the unlikely, unassuming, unexpected, and (in a few cases) unbalanced presidential hopefuls who, in their own way, have contributed to this nation's founding quest to form a more perfect Union.

Download or read book Power Shift written by Sally Armstrong and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author, journalist, and human rights activist Sally Armstrong argues that humankind requires the equal status of women and girls. The facts are indisputable. When women get even a bit of education, the whole of society improves. When they get a bit of healthcare, everyone lives longer. In many ways, it has never been a better time to be a woman: a fundamental shift has been occurring. Yet from Toronto to Timbuktu the promise of equality still eludes half the world’s population. In her 2019 CBC Massey Lectures, award-winning author, journalist, and human rights activist Sally Armstrong illustrates how the status of the female half of humanity is crucial to our collective surviving and thriving. Drawing on anthropology, social science, literature, politics, and economics, she examines the many beginnings of the role of women in society, and the evolutionary revisions over millennia in the realms of sex, religion, custom, culture, politics, and economics. What ultimately comes to light is that gender inequality comes at too high a cost to us all.

Download or read book The People Vs Tech written by Jamie Bartlett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Dark Net comes a book that explains all the dangers of the digital revolution and offers concrete solutions on how we can protect our personal privacy, and democracy itself. The internet was meant to set us free. But have we unwittingly handed too much away to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists? And, in light of recent data breach scandals around companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information, and artificial intelligence? In this urgent polemic, Jamie Bartlett argues that through our unquestioning embrace of big tech, the building blocks of democracy are slowly being removed. The middle class is being eroded, sovereign authority and civil society is weakened, and we citizens are losing our critical faculties, maybe even our free will. The People Vs Tech is an enthralling account of how our fragile political system is being threatened by the digital revolution. Bartlett explains that by upholding six key pillars of democracy, we can save it before it is too late. We need to become active citizens, uphold a shared democratic culture, protect free elections, promote equality, safeguard competitive and civic freedoms, and trust in a sovereign authority. This essential book shows that the stakes couldn't be higher and that, unless we radically alter our course, democracy will join feudalism, supreme monarchies and communism as just another political experiment that quietly disappeared.

Download or read book American Girls in Red Russia written by Julia L. Mickenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.