The first biography of a remarkable intellectual: Polymath is the first biography on Alex Comfort, a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, and activist. He is the author of international bestseller, The Joy of Sex (1972).Behind The Joy of Sex: A vital contribution that covers Alex Comfort’s victory over a career-ending disability, a tumultuous second marriage, struggles with the scientific establishm...

“Laursen has given us a comprehensive account of the three decade long war against Social Security. . . . This is a fascinating history that progressives must learn, not only to protect Social Security but also to understand the dynamics behind an effective long-term strategy.”—Dean Baker, author of False Profits: Recovering From the Bubble Economy“This magnificent history documents the hydra-headed campaign to cut and kill Social Security, conducted over decades by rightw...

What do we mean when we talk about “the State”? Multiple polls show a growing disillusionment with the State and representative government as vehicles for progressive change, and particularly as means to tame capitalism, let alone as a basis for seeing beyond it. In a quick and readable format, Eric Laursen proposes thinking about the State in an entirely new way—not simply as government or legal institutions, but as humanity’s analog to a computer operating system—opening up a new interpr...

The Duty to Stand Aside sheds new light on the background and writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book that has been a top seller since the early 1950s but that received an enormous boost during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, when American politics suddenly began to resemble the world Orwell described. By January, when president-elect Donald Trump's aide, Kellyanne Conway, inadvertently coined a phrase that seemed to describe the new condition—“alternative facts”—

Understanding the Crash starts with a simple question that still haunts us all: What has happened to the world economy? With the kind of striking precision that only graphic nonfiction can provide, Seth Tobocman and Eric Laursen explain just how we got into this mess - and how we can get out of it.Looking back across more than a quarter century, the authors outline the roots of our current economic crisis. They show how the troubles of a working-class community in Cleveland...

“By what cunning perversion of logic and history has the modern capitalist State persuaded us that it is the only possible form of polity? Why do we passively accept its claim to inevitability and its lame excuses for the increasingly invasive surveillance of our private lives? How do the already powerful hide short-cuts to even greater influence and wealth across a ruined environment and vast stretches of poverty? In thoughtful, provocative, and engaging reflections on the modern State, E...

Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller, The Joy of Sex. He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-WWII decades, and persuading twelve million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anx...

"Rather than provide literary criticism or biography, Kristian Williams is most concerned in this felicitous collection to derive George Orwell's method-the process he used to translate personal experiences and worldly explorations into democratic anti-capitalist principles, and convey them to broad audiences in an irresistible fashion." -Andrew Cornell, author of Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth CenturyOld debates about democracy vs. socialism vs. fascism ...

‘Will Storr is one of our best journalists of ideas … The Status Game might be his best yet’ James Marriott, Books of the Year, The TimesWhat drives our political and moral beliefs? What makes us like some things and dislike others? What shapes how we behave, and misbehave, in groups? What makes you, you?For centuries, philosophers and scholars have described human behaviour in terms of sex, power and money. In

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe seven-time #1 New York Times bestselling author, Fox News star, and radio host Mark R. Levin explains how the dangers he warned against in the “timely yet timeless” (David Limbaugh, author of Jesus Is Risen) bestseller Liberty and Tyranny have come to pass.In 2009, Mark R. Levin galvanized conservatives with his unforgettable manifesto Liberty and Tyranny, by provi...

**A New York Times bestseller!A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike.**Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history...

The extraordinary story of the 20th century, as told from the furthest fringes of science, art and culture. For readers of Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.Before 1900, history was an account of great discoveries that actually made sense. People understand innovations like the steam engine, agriculture, or electricity. The twentieth century, by contrast, gave us quantum entanglement, cubism, relativity, psychedelics, postmodernism, chaos maths...