#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the world's most innovative thinkers explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment--now updated with new material.

Fascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.--Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war or ecological catastrophe? What do we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? How should we prepare our children for the future?

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari untangles political, technological, social, and existential issues and offers advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.

[Filterworld] is about how algorithms changed culture...[Chayka asks] what is taste? What is a sense of aesthetics? And what happens to it when it collides with the homogenizing digital reality in which we now live.--Ezra Klein

From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed--informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch--as we've grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.

This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called Filterworld. Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires--and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences--human lives--for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.

In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity--the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

To the last question, Filterworld argues yes--but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.

From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.

From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed--informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch--as we've grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.

This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called Filterworld. Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires--and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences--human lives--for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.

In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity--the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

To the last question, Filterworld argues yes--but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.

Year 2000 shares the untold story of the actors operating on the global stage responsible for managing computer hardware and software for Year 2000 compliance, thus keeping national infrastructures, finance, and commerce functioning.

* Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and TIME * Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *

A haunting book of rare courage. --Clarissa Ward, CNN chief international correspondent and author of On All Fronts

To be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko's unrelenting attempt to document her country as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself.

Here is Russia as it is, not as we imagine it. The result is a singular portrait of a nation, and of a young woman who refuses to be silenced. In March 2022, as a correspondent for Russia's last free press, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She filed her pieces knowing that should she return home, she would likely be prosecuted and sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. Yet, driven by the conviction that the greatest form of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write.

I Love Russia stitches together reportage from the past fifteen years with personal essays, assembling a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last work from her homeland that she'll publish for a long time--perhaps ever. It exposes the inner workings of an entire nation as it descends into fascism and, inevitably, war. She writes because the threat of Putin's Russia extends beyond herself, beyond Crimea, and beyond Ukraine. We fail to understand it at our own peril.

The first major English-language history of Ukraine from its emergence after the demise of the Soviet Union through the current Russian invasion

A fascinating and highly informative narrative.--Arthur Herman, Wall Street Journal

In 1991, after seventy years of imperial Soviet rule, Ukraine became an independent country. Since 2022, it has been fighting an existential war against an unprovoked, brutal, and ongoing invasion by Russia. At the center of its resistance is the resilience of a united people.

Ukraine expert Adrian Karatnycky provides an eyewitness account of the history of the modern Ukrainian state and of the nation through the tenures of the six presidents who have led Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR, including Volodymyr Zelensky. Karatnycky shows how--despite the influence of corrupt oligarchs, pressures from Russia, and the legacies of Soviet rule--an inclusive and united Ukrainian nation has emerged that inspires the world as it defends the principle that states and peoples have the right to their national sovereignty.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the world's most innovative thinkers explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.

Fascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.--Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war or ecological catastrophe? What do we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? How should we prepare our children for the future?

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari untangles political, technological, social, and existential issues and offers advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.

In response to right-wing extremism in the United States and around the world, Ken McGoogan offers lessons from history by looking back at the rise of authoritarianism and the collapse of European democracies in the lead-up to World War II.

In Shadows of Tyranny, historian Ken McGoogan warns against the future by drawing on the past, setting the emergence of alt-right fascism in the US against what happened last century in Europe. Incorporating conventional history, political analysis, biographical sketches and literary criticism--referencing visionary works by Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis and Philip Roth--Shadows of Tyranny honors those who defied dictatorship and exposed totalitarianism in all its guises.

McGoogan traces the ways democracy succumbed to paranoia, polarization, scapegoating and demagoguery less than a hundred years ago in the days of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Taking a biographical approach to history, he highlights the personal stories of those individuals who fought their way through the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. He looks at what the authors, journalists and poets of the day were writing, who was listening, and who wasn't.

The book tracks George Orwell, of course, but also journalists like Matthew Halton, Dorothy Thompson and Martha Gellhorn, philosophers like Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, and such multi-faceted figures as Winston Churchill, Andre Malraux, Norman Bethune and William Stephenson. It follows them from the obliviousness of the 1920s through the stunned awakening of the 1930s, and on into the nightmare horror of the 1940s. McGoogan spotlights heroes of the French Resistance, such as Josephine Baker and Marie Madeleine Fourcade, before shifting the focus to reveal startling similarities between those events of the past and the trajectory of American politics under leaders like McCarthy and Trump.

Shadows of Tyranny aims to revive the words of Winston Churchill when he said, Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Twentieth-century novels such as George Orwell's 1984 and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale produced visions of future dystopia that rang with echoes of past tyrannies. Always implied was a warning that history's worst chapters are never truly closed, and that we must not fail--as many of our forebears did--to recognize that the threat of totalitarianism cannot simply be wished away.

Former USA Today journalist and author of The Chosen Few, Gregg Zoroya, reveals the untold story of the Battle of Ramadi, the true start of the war in Iraq that spanned more than eight years, claimed thousands of lives, and evolved into a traumatic legacy for the US military and its veterans.

Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards, and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were benchwarmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting.

Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S.-led Coalition swept into Baghdad, and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter. When the battalion first arrived in the provincial capital of Ramadi, Iraq, in February of 2004, their assigned mission should have been little more than handing out candy, smiling, and making friends with a conquered people. Instead, they were thrust into a savage battle where hundreds of insurgents organized a three-day offensive aimed at driving the Marines out of their city of 400,000. Amidst the violence that broke out across Iraq in April of 2004, the fight in Ramadi marked the true beginning of the war.

In Unremitting, journalist Gregg Zoroya tells the fast-paced, dramatic, meticulously-researched, and poignant story of that battle. Capturing the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle, Zoroya explores this vital part of American military history and beyond, showing how Ramadi was not just a game-changer for the Iraq War, but also for the Marines, sailors, and soldiers who fought there--and the trauma that remains with survivors more than two decades later.

The degree of enemy coordination, violence and success in Ramadi was remarkable. Some of the worst actors within the Iraq insurgency were (there). The Marines and sailors of 2/4 were tested as few have been since the Vietnam War. ... This is their story.
--General Joe Dunford, USMC (Ret)
19th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
36th Commandant of the Marine Corps

This book explores the human relationship to changing biodiversity by bringing together multidisciplinary insights into human-nature relations from the humanities. New animal and plant species arrive and previously existing ones may disappear. However, the historical and social perspectives of the changes have been understudied so far. This book approaches the human relationship with changing biodiversity from three different angles: belonging and non-belonging, emotions, and environmental policy. The question of belonging and non-belonging is crucial when it comes to changing biodiversity. The authors ask who decides where species can move and live and when invasive becomes native. Similarly, emotions have a big role in human-nature relations. The book shows why we grieve the loss of some species and hate some other species, and how our emotions change over time. The writers also aim to show how environmental policies, or the practice of governing species, are affected by societal discussion, emotions, scientific research, and topical concepts as well as how these policies shape biodiversity and our perceptions of different species. The authors provide fresh insights into human-nature relations and explain why we need multidisciplinary approaches in order to fully understand their complexity.

One of our most important public intellectuals reveals the hidden history of our current global crisis.

Longlisted for the Orwell Prize
A New York Times Notable Book of 2017
Named a Best Book of the Year by Slate and NPR

How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world--from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism across the world to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the eighteenth century before leading us to the present.

He shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises--of freedom, stability, and prosperity--were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world--or were left, or pushed, behind--reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: with intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose--angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.

Today, just as then, the wide embrace of mass politics and technology and the pursuit of wealth and individualism have cast many more billions adrift in a demoralized world, uprooted from tradition but still far from modernity--with the same terrible results.

Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other.

In the tradition of The Wire, the utterly absorbing (The New York Times) story of the cinematic transformation of Miami, one of America's bustling cities--rife with a drug epidemic, a burgeoning refugee crisis, and police brutality--from journalist and award-winning author Nicholas Griffin.

Miami, Florida, famed for its blue skies and sandy beaches, is one of the world's most popular vacation destinations, with nearly twenty-three million tourists visiting annually. But few people have any idea how this unofficial capital of Latin America came to be.

The Year of Dangerous Days is an engrossing, peek-between-your-fingers history of an American city on the edge (Kirkus Reviews). With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, this slice of history is brought to life through intertwining personal stories. At the core, there's Edna Buchanan, a reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man and the shocking police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferr , the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart.

On a roller coaster of national politics and international diplomacy, these three figures cross paths as their city explores one of the worst race riots in American history as more than 120,000 Cuban refugees land south of Miami, and as drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement. In a battle of wills, Buchanan has to keep up with the 150 percent murder rate increase; Captain Frank has to scrub and rebuild his homicide bureau; and Mayor Ferr must find a way to reconstruct his smoldering city. Against all odds, they persevere, and a stronger, more vibrant, Miami begins to emerge. But the foundation of this new Miami--partially built on corruption and drug money--will have severe ramifications for the rest of the country.

Deeply researched, well-written (New York Journal of Books), and covering many timely issues including police brutality, immigration, and the drug crisis, The Year of Dangerous Days is both a clarion call and a dramatic rebirth story of one of America's most iconic cities.

Dan Stone tells the story of the last great unknown archive of Nazism, the International Tracing Service. Set up by the Allies at the end of World War II, the ITS has worked until today to find missing persons and to aid survivors with restitution claims or to reunite them with loved ones. From retracing the steps of the 'death marches' with the aim of discovering the burial sites of those murdered across the towns and villages of Central Europe, to knocking on doors of German foster homes to find the children of forced labourers, Fate Unknown uncovers the history of this remarkable archive and its more than 30 million documents.

Under the leadership of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the tracing service became one of the most secretive of postwar institutions, unknown even to historians of the period. Delving deeply into the archival material, Stone examines the little-known sub-camps and, after the war, survivors' experience of displaced persons' camps, bringing to life remarkable stories of tracing. Fate Unknown combs the archives to reveal the real horror of the Holocaust by following survivors' horrific journeys through the Nazi camp system and its aftermath.

The postwar period was an age of shortage of resources, bitterness, and revenge. Yet the ITS tells a different story: of international collaboration, of commitment to justice, and of helping survivors and their relatives in the context of Cold War suspicion. These stories speak to a remarkable attempt by the ITS, before the Holocaust was a matter of worldwide interest, to carry out a programme of ethical repair and to counteract some of the worst effects of the Nazis' crimes.

Gregory Weeks's Embracing Autonomy departs from other general treatments of Latin American-US relations not by putting US policy aside but by bringing in the Latin American and global contexts more closely and thus avoiding the incomplete picture provided by a narrow focus solely on the policies of the United States.

The core of autonomy for Latin America from the United States is seen in new, deeper, and more numerous relationships that do not include the United States. The book is not a study of rebellion against the United States, or even a critique of US policy. Instead, it is an examination of the major shifts that have taken place in the region in recent decades and how they have shaped Latin American-US relations.

Weeks's book provides a clearer understanding of where Latin America stands vis-à-vis the United States in the early twenty-first century. In doing so, we gain a better sense of the trajectory of Latin American-US relations and how they develop in turbulent times.

If there can possibly be anything good to come out of the horrors of the last three years, it is this: some of us, at least, have been shaken awake. We now know that we are under attack. We are under attack not so much for the particular things we say or do but simply for wanting to be free, for wanting to be able to think through our lives, and for wanting our lives to be the products of our own choices. Whatever happened over the last few years, we have been fundamentally changed by it. There's no reclaiming the innocence we lost. Life is more serious now. Our obligations are more weighty, or just more apparent. There are certain truths we came to see that can never be unseen. And everything is so much more complicated than we thought. This is a dark time for humanity. But darkness always creates the greatest opportunities for growth and self-awareness, and for us to intentionally remake ourselves for the better. The moment is upon us. We can't reclaim the innocence we lost in 2020, but we can use our experiences to remake a more innocent world for ourselves and for our children. We can, I dare say, create something even greater. Whatever you've been through over the last four years, whatever you left unsaid and undone, whatever you've lost, and however it changed you, this book is for you. Dr. Julie Ponesse is Chief of Biomedical Ethics for The Wellness Company, a 2023 Brownstone Institute Fellow, and the author of My Choice (2021). She has a PhD in Philosophy (Western, 2008) with areas of specialization in ethics and ancient philosophy. Dr. Ponesse has published in the areas of ancient philosophy, ethical theory, and applied ethics, and has taught at universities in Canada and the US for 20 years. In the fall of 2021, she saw her academic career of 20 years fall apart after she refused to comply with a Canadian university's COVID vaccine mandate In response, Dr. Ponesse recorded a special video directed to her first-year ethics students. That video went viral.

A magisterial history inspired by Winston Churchill's famous opus, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 is an engrossing account of the twentieth century, with a unique perspective on our turbulent times. In 1900, where Churchill ended the fourth volume of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, the United States had not yet emerged onto the world scene as a great power. Yet the coming century was to belong to the English-speaking peoples, who successively and successfully fought the Kaiser's Germany, Axis aggression and Soviet Communism, and who are now struggling against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Andrew Roberts's History proves especially invaluable as the United States today looks to other parts of the English-speaking world as its best, closest and most dependable allies.

Is civilization teetering on the edge of a cliff? Or are we just climbing higher than ever?

Most people who read the news would tell you that 2017 is one of the worst years in recent memory. We're facing a series of deeply troubling, even existential problems: fascism, terrorism, environmental collapse, racial and economic inequality, and more.

Yet this narrative misses something important: by almost every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than it ever has been. In the United States, disease, crime, discrimination, and most forms of pollution are in long-term decline, while longevity and education keep rising and economic indicators are better than in any past generation. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, and the risk of dying by war or violence is the lowest in human history.

It's not a coincidence that we're confused -- our perspectives on the world are blurred by the rise of social media, the machinations of politicians, and our own biases. Meanwhile, political reforms like the Clean Air Act and technological innovations like the hybridization of wheat have saved huge numbers of lives. In that optimistic spirit, Easterbrook offers specific policy reforms to address climate change, inequality, and other problems, and reminds us that there is real hope in conquering such challenges. In an age of discord and fear-mongering, It's Better Than It Looks will profoundly change your perspective on who we are, where we're headed, and what we're capable of.

Brazil is associated in many people's minds with conviviality, sensuality, and natural beauty. Yet the country behind these images and associations is something of an enigma. It is alternately praised as the country of the future, a rising power ready to take its place at the top tables of global governance, or written off as a perennial disappointment, a country forever failing to reach its potential, mired in corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence. These oscillations between euphoria and despair obscure a country with its own unique trajectory through the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Very Short Introduction offers an account of modern Brazil that covers some of the major features of the country's transformation, including the rise of the modern state in the mid-20th century, the violent repression of dictatorship, the domestic economic, political, and social challenges faced by the country today, and the role Brazil plays in dealing with some of the most important contemporary global problems. In doing so, Anthony Pereira highlights some of the peculiar features of Brazil's development, such as the tendency of its political leaders to engage in complicated, informal political deals; the state's welfare institutions that often exacerbate, rather than improve, the country's deep economic inequalities; and Brazil's long history of peaceful relations with its neighbours despite a high level of state violence against citizens.

ABOUT THE SERIES:
The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

On October 19, 1979, the largest, most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded propelled 5,500 gallons of gasoline into corrugated steel huts filled with U.S. Marines. The gas ignited, injuring seventy-three people, thirteen of them fatally. The Marine Corps commandant, a veteran of combat in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, was stunned as he met scores of horribly burned survivors. Having witnessed a lot of bad things, ugly things, the general declared, none can compare to that experience. And yet this 1979 catastrophe on the slopes of Japan's iconic Mount Fuji remains all but forgotten except by those directly affected.

Now, the fruits of Chas Henry's exhaustive four-year, two-continent investigation provide insight into what many have called the U.S. Marine Corps' worst-ever peacetime disaster. Fuji Fire shares the compelling and intimate stories of heartbreak and inspiration forged by these events while bringing to light new, critical analyses of the incident's causes and effects.

This book provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of all the materials making up the Star Wars franchise relating to the portrayal and representation of real-world history and politics.

Drawing on a variety of sources, including films, published interviews with directors and actors, novels, comics, and computer games, this volume explores the ways in which historical and contemporary events have been repurposed within Star Wars. It focuses on key themes such as fascism and the Galactic Empire, the failures of democracy, the portrayal of warfare, the morality of the Jedi, and the representations of sex, gender, and race. Through these themes, this study highlights the impacts of the fall of the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, and the failures of the United Nations upon the 'galaxy far, far away'. By analysing and understanding these events and their portrayal within Star Wars, it shows how the most popular media franchise in existence aims to speak about wider contemporary events and issues.

The History and Politics of Star Wars is useful for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of a variety of disciplines such as transmedia studies, science fiction, cultural studies, and world history and politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.