From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait But Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times.

Between 2013 and 2016, Tim Urban became one of the world's most popular bloggers, writing dozens of viral, long-form articles about everything from AI to colonizing Mars to procrastination. Then, he turned his attention to a new topic: the society around him. Why was everything such a mess? Why was everyone acting like such a baby? When did things get so tribal? Why do humans do this stuff?

This massive topic sent Tim tumbling down his deepest rabbit hole yet, through mountains of history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, neuroscience, and modern-day political movements, as he tried to figure out the answer to a simple question: What's our problem?

Six years later, he emerged from the hole holding this book. What's Our Problem? is a deep and expansive analysis of our modern times, in the classic style of Wait But Why, packed with original concepts, sticky metaphors, and 300 drawings. The book provides an entirely new framework and language for thinking and talking about today's complex world. Instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis, which is all about what we think, the book introduces a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups. Readers will find themselves on a delightful and fascinating journey that will ultimately change the way they see the world around them.

Anyway he wanted to say a lot more about all of this but there was a word limit on this book description so just go read the book.

(Note: There are over 100 pages of endnotes for this book, so to keep costs for the paperback as low as possible, we've put those pages online. Endnotes are printed in full in the hardcover edition.)

A Times Literary Supplement's Book of the Year 2020
A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020
A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020
A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020

The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that you can make it if you try. The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time.

World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies--vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.

In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar for his doctoral thesis on the island's politics and history of slavery and magic. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber's final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research and the culmination of ideas that he developed in his classic, bestselling works Debt and The Dawn of Everything (written with the archaeologist David Wengrow). In this lively, incisive exploration, Graeber considers how the protodemocratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata came to shape the Enlightenment project, which for too long has been defined as distinctly European. He illuminates the non-European origins of what we consider to be Western thought and endeavors to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024

The entertaining and insightful first history of the Yuppie phenomenon, chronicling the roots, rise, triumph and (seeming) fall of the young urban professionals who radically altered American life between 1980 and 1987 (New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich).

By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies--the elite, uber-educated faction of the Baby Boom generation--had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later.
Brimming with lively and nostalgic details (think Jane Fonda, The Sharper Image, and over-the-top fashion), Triumph of the Yuppies charts Boomers' transformation from hippy idealists in the late 1960s to careerists in the early 1980s, and details how marketers, the media, and politicians pivoted to appeal to this influential new group. Yuppie values had an undeniable impact on the worlds of fashion, food, and fitness, as well as affecting the broader culture--from gentrification and an obsession with career success to an indulgent materialism. Most significantly, the me-first mindset typical of Yuppieness helped create the largest income inequality in a century.
Tom McGrath's masterful cultural history reveals how Yuppies reshaped American society. It is a portrait of America just as it was beginning to come apart--and the origin story of the fractured country we live in today.

2017 Reprint of 1961 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. In 1937, Mao was in retreat after ten years of battling the Nationalist troops of Chiang Kai-shek. During this period, he wrote a succinct pamphlet that remains one of the most influential documents on warfare to this date. This treatise, the first systematic analysis of guerilla warfare, established Mao as the architect of a new method of warfare. The treatise is translated and introduced by General Samuel B. Griffith. USMC, a leading military strategist of the era.

The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies--vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.

In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar for his doctoral thesis on the island's politics and history of slavery and magic. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber's final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research and the culmination of ideas that he developed in his classic, bestselling works Debt and The Dawn of Everything (written with the archaeologist David Wengrow). In this lively, incisive exploration, Graeber considers how the protodemocratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata came to shape the Enlightenment project, which for too long has been defined as distinctly European. He illuminates the non-European origins of what we consider to be Western thought and endeavors to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future.

Authoritarian populist parties have advanced in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Even small parties can still shift the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP's role in catalyzing Brexit. Drawing on new evidence, this book advances a general theory why the silent revolution in values triggered a backlash fuelling support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the US and Europe. The conclusion highlights the dangers of this development and what could be done to mitigate the risks to liberal democracy.

Populism is a central concept in the current media debates about politics and elections. However, like most political buzzwords, the term often floats from one meaning to another, and both social scientists and journalists use it to denote diverse phenomena. What is populism really? Who are the populist leaders? And what is the relationship between populism and democracy? This book answers these questions in a simple and persuasive way, offering a swift guide to populism in theory and practice.

Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser present populism as an ideology that divides society into two antagonistic camps, the pure people versus the corrupt elite, and that privileges the general will of the people above all else. They illustrate the practical power of this ideology through a survey of representative populist movements of the modern era: European right-wing parties, left-wing presidents in Latin America, and the Tea Party movement in the United States. The authors delve into the ambivalent personalities of charismatic populist leaders such as Juan Domingo Péron, H. Ross Perot, Jean-Marie le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi, and Hugo Chávez. If the strong male leader embodies the mainstream form of populism, many resolute women, such as Eva Péron, Pauline Hanson, and Sarah Palin, have also succeeded in building a populist status, often by exploiting gendered notions of society.

Although populism is ultimately part of democracy, populist movements constitute an increasing challenge to democratic politics. Comparing political trends across different countries, this compelling book debates what the long-term consequences of this challenge could be, as it turns the spotlight on the bewildering effect of populism on today's political and social life.

Statism and Anarchy is a complete English translation of the last work by the great Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin. It was written in 1873, in the aftermath of the rise of the German Empire and the clash between Bakunin and Karl Marx in the first International. Bakunin assesses the strength of a European state system dominated by Bismarck. Then, in the most remarkable part of the book, he assails the Marxist alternative, predicting that a dictatorship of the proletariat will in fact be a dictatorship over the proletariat, and will produce a new class of socialist rulers. Instead, he outlines his vision of an anarchist society and identifies the social forces he believes will achieve an ananarchist revolution. Statism and Anarchy had an immediate influence on the to the people movement of Russian populism, and Bakunin's ideas inspired other anarchist movements. This is the only complete and reliable rendition of Statism and Anarchy in English, and in a lucid introduction Marshall Shatz locates Bakunin in his immediate historical and intellectual context, and assesses the impact of his ideas on the wider development of European radical thought. A guide to further reading and a chronology of events are appended as aids to students encountering Bakunin's thought for the first time.

Our understanding of how the world works was fundamentally altered when the mechanical model of closed, linear systems was replaced with cybernetics and complexity theory. Sociocracy is a governance method that uses these new sciences to design organizations that are as powerful, self-organizing, and self-correcting as the natural world, including the honeybees.

The United States Declaration of Independence asserts that all human beings are created equally and endowed with the unquestionable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In practice, however, these rights exist only for the majority, the rich, or property owners. We the People explains how sociocracy ensures these rights to everyone. Sociocracy shares the values of democracy, but designs more inclusive and efficient organizations. It makes profit-making businesses more profitable, and non-profit organizations more effective. And everyone happier.

The text includes history and theory; essential principles; relationship to traditional management theory; implementation methods; classic readings; examples of bylaws for businesses and nonprofits; short guides for meetings and decison-making; a glossary; bibliography; and index. It also includes photographs, diagrams, charts, and tables. It is a comprehensive handbook for understanding and implementing the sociocratic circle method of organization.

Rome and Jerusalem is a book published by Moses Hess in 1862 in Leipzig. It gave impetus to the Labor Zionism movement. In his magnum opus, Hess argued for the Jews to return to Palestine, and proposed a socialist country in which the Jews would become agrarianised through a process of redemption of the soil.

Translated as The Book of the Soul this is the manifesto of Saparmyrat Niyazov Turkmenbasy - the leader of the Turkemen. In this book, volume one of Ruhnama, Turkmenbasy lays out the history and the expected conduct of the Turkmen people. This book had become a cult book in Turkmenistan, leading daily life from schools to job interviews. Dive into the mind of the Turkmen people under the rule of Niyazov in the book- Ruhnama

Are we confronting a new culture--global, online, individualistic? Or is our existing concept of culture in crisis, as explicit, normative systems replace implicit, social values?

Olivier Roy's new book explains today's fractures via the extension of individual political and sexual freedoms from the 1960s. For Roy, twentieth-century youth culture disconnected traditional political protest from class, region or ethnicity, fashioning an identity premised on repudiation rather than inheritance of shared history or values. Having spread across generations under neoliberalism and the internet, youth culture is now individualized, ersatz.
Without a shared culture, everything becomes an explicit code of how to speak and act, often online. Identities are now defined by socially fragmenting personal traits, creating affinity-based sub-cultures seeking safe spaces: universities for the left, gated communities and hard borders for the right.

Increased left- and right-wing references to identity fail to confront this deeper crisis of culture and community. Our only option, Roy argues, is to restore social bonds at the grassroots or citizenship level.

'Has the world gone mad?'...this is a question that we've heard time and again during the last years. Everyone is convinced that something is wrong with politics, the culture, and our society, but what exactly is the problem and how can we overcome it?

This book will guide the reader through a journey that will connect the dots on the various fronts of the culture wars. There is a thread that links together the various expressions of group and identity conflicts in today's West: from Left to Right, from Social Justice Warriors to Trumpites, from feminism to the manosphere, and from critical race theorists to white nationalists.

By the end of this book, readers will understand not only the root problem poisoning our culture and society, but also how to rise above it both in our private lives and as citizens.

Amidst discontent over America's growing diversity, many white Americans now view the political world through the lens of a racial identity. Whiteness was once thought to be invisible because of whites' dominant position and ability to claim the mainstream, but today a large portion of whites actively identify with their racial group and support policies and candidates that they view as protecting whites' power and status. In White Identity Politics, Ashley Jardina offers a landmark analysis of emerging patterns of white identity and collective political behavior, drawing on sweeping data. Where past research on whites' racial attitudes emphasized out-group hostility, Jardina brings into focus the significance of in-group identity and favoritism. White Identity Politics shows that disaffected whites are not just found among the working class; they make up a broad proportion of the American public - with profound implications for political behavior and the future of racial conflict in America.

The Spirit of Laws, first published in 1750, is a detailed treatise on the structures and theory of government by French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu. Unlike his well-loved Persian Letters, The Spirit of Laws scandalized the French-it was even banned by the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that it is hardly dated to modern readers is a testament to how revolutionary it must have seemed 250 years ago. Among its comparisons of different forms of governments, such as monarchies, despotic regimes, and republics, is the now-famous section on Montesquieu's concept of the separation of powers, dividing the ruling body into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Also included is the author's thinking on slavery, religion in government, families and censuses, the influence of climate on politics and culture, and the making of laws. A powerful influence on the framers of the U.S. Constitution, this classic work will appeal to history buffs and anyone interested in the roots of modern political theory and government. CHARLES-LOUIS DE SECONDAT, BARON DE MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755), born in the South of France and often known simply as Montesquieu, was a political philosopher and social commentator known for his influential political views, especially for his separation of power theory, still used today in constitutions around the world. Some of his best-known work, the satirical Persian Letters, which made fun of life in Paris under Louis XIV, delighted France in the 1720s.

This work provides an authoritative survey of America's long and turbulent history of rebellion, sedition, and treason against government authority and institutions.

Crimes against the State is an even-handed and illuminating one-stop resource for understanding acts of rebellion and sedition against government authorities and institutions throughout US history, as well as the motivations driving those actions. Special care is taken to differentiate between hostile acts and actors that seek to overthrow or otherwise damage the state and/or targeted demographic groups through violence and acts and actors that seek to defy, reform, or improve laws and institutions of the state through nonviolent action.

Within these pages, readers will 1) learn how to differentiate between sedition, insurrection, treason, domestic terrorism, espionage, and other acts meant to injure or overthrow the government; 2) gain a deeper understanding of laws, policies, and events that have aroused violent or nonviolent opposition; 3) gain insights into perspectives and motivations of individuals and organizations; and 4) learn about state responses to these challenges and threats, from martial law to criminal prosecutions to new laws and reforms.

Racism has historically been a taboo topic in Mexico. This is largely due to the nationalist project of mestizaje which contends that because all Mexicans are racially mixed, race is not a salient political issue. In recent years, however, race and racism have become important topics of debate in the country's public sphere and academia. This book introduces readers to a sample of these diverse and sometimes conflicting views that also intersect with discussions of class. The activists and scholars included in the volume come from fields such as anthropology, linguistics, history, sociology, and political science. Through these diverse epistemological frameworks, the authors show how people in contemporary Mexico interpret the world in racial terms and denounce racism.

For centuries, man has endeavored to lend credence and meaning to the Biblical references of The Antichrist and to find the answers to the questions inherent within those references: Who is he? Where will he come from? What will he look like? And how will we recognize him? In this definitive commentary on our current state of political affairs, Bible scholar and freelance writer, Lawrence Moelhauser will take you on an eye-opening and thought-provoking journey to attempt to answer those questions within the context of the attitudes, behaviors, and political aspirations of the Republican Presidential Nominee, Mr. Donald J. Trump. Mr. Moelhauser shows us how Donald Trump's lies and rhetoric feed off people's worst fears to spread hate, racism, misogyny, Islam-a-phobia, unabashed bigotry, and discrimination, and how that rhetoric coincides, point for point, with the prophesies regarding The Antichrist, with frightening accuracy. Through careful research, Mr. Moelhauser addresses the attributes of The Antichrist, as presented in the Bible, and then compares those attributes with examples from the Presidential Campaign trail and Mr. Trump's meteoric rise to the forefront of the US Political stage. By presenting clear and concise parallels, Mr. Moelhauser encourages readers to engage in conversation and further research, and to answer for themselves the question: Is Donald Trump The Antichrist?

Marxism and Smart Life is a compelling and thought-provoking examination of different aspects of human society. Comprised of two impressive volumes of philosophical, political, and economic thought-Is Karl Marx Right? and Modern Human Smart Life-author Nima Mazhari begins by exploring Marx's theory of capital and analyzing its validity, especially in terms of modern society. Although once a Marxist himself, Mazhari does not shy away from examining some fatal flaws in Marx's theory. These include Marx's denial of the use-value of commodity for the capitalist, his insistence that a capitalist society is made up of only two classes, and most importantly, his assertion that a capitalist society cannot be made to work.

In his second volume, Modern Human Smart Life, Mazhari assesses the components of modern society and the importance of having a realistic and genuine philosophical school of thought to guide human evolution. Even more importantly, Mazhari puts forward some implementable ideas on changes that can be made to executive, legislative, judicial, and treasurial structures and powers that will vastly improve modern society.

No matter what your philosophical background or political beliefs are, Marxism and Smart Life will challenge you to see Marxism in a new light, and leave you feeling invigorated about the possibilities for improving our modern capitalist society.