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A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
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Injustice anywhere is Injustice everywhere
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Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.
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The Mushroom at the End of the World
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Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world - and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?
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From one of the most prominent voices on the American left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism in the US today. Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to health care, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities.
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Against the Grain
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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As a complete layman, this is very good
- By Donald Carroll on 09-13-18
-
Stuffed and Starved
- The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
- By: Raj Patel
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 12
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 12
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12
It's a perverse fact of modern life: There are more starving people in the world than ever before, while there are also more people who are overweight. To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. It took him from the colossal supermarkets of California to India's wrecked paddy-fields and Africa's bankrupt coffee farms, while along the way he ate genetically engineered soy beans and dodged flying objects in the protestor-packed streets of South Korea.
-
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
- Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
- By: Angela Y. Davis
- Narrated by: Angela Davis, Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 613
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 547
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 540
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles - from the black freedom movement to the South African antiapartheid movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Injustice anywhere is Injustice everywhere
- By Jarucia Jaycox on 05-05-17
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A Brief History of Neoliberalism
- By: David Harvey
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 151
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 128
Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Absolutely wonderful primer
- By Joseph E. Catenaci on 04-06-18
-
The Mushroom at the End of the World
- On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
- By: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world - and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tsing is brilliant
- By Richard B. on 07-16-19
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The Socialist Manifesto
- The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
- By: Bhaskar Sunkara
- Narrated by: Benjamin Isaac
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 108
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 95
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
From one of the most prominent voices on the American left, a galvanizing argument for why we need socialism in the US today. Bhaskar Sunkara explores socialism's history since the mid-1800s and presents a realistic vision for its future. Sunkara shows that socialism, though often seen primarily as an economic system, in fact offers the means to fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism. The ultimate goal is not Soviet-style planning, but to win rights to health care, education, and housing and to create new democratic institutions in workplaces and communities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal research
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This Changes Everything
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In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Didactic and preachy... and I agree with her
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Winners Take All
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,338
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,172
Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can - except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Profound.
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Fast Food Nation
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,793
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 602
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Story4 out of 5 stars 601
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Should be required reading for all
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The Uninhabitable Earth
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,189
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It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation.
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3 out of 5 stars
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I tried to like this one. I couldn't.
- By Steve on 06-24-19
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Seeing Like a State
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- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 98
Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Author James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not - and cannot - be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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James c Scott at his best
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Four Futures
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- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this postcapitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminism might actually entail.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A great read for futurists
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-17
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Gender Trouble
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- By: Judith Butler
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- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past 50 years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, "essential" notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category "woman" and continues in this vein with examinations of "the masculine" and "the feminine." Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Been wanting for a long time to read Gender Trouble
- By GayIsGreat on 03-22-18
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Discipline & Punish
- The Birth of the Prison
- By: Michel Foucault
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 263
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 259
This groundbreaking audiobook by Michel Foucault, the most influential philosopher since Sartre, compels us to reevaluate our assumptions about all the ensuing reforms in the penal institutions of the West. For as Foucault examines innovations that range from the abolition of torture to the institution of forced labor and the appearance of the modern penitentiary, he suggests that punishment has shifted its focus from the prisoner's body to his soul-and that our very concern with rehabilitation encourages and refines criminal activity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MORE FOUCAULT PLEASE!!
- By Maggie on 01-02-14
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How to Be an Antiracist
- By: Ibram X. Kendi
- Narrated by: Ibram X. Kendi
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes listeners through a widening circle of antiracist ideas - from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites - that will help listeners see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Marvelous and useful.
- By Jennifer Van Meter on 08-18-19
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How Fascism Works
- The Politics of Us and Them
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 308
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 270
As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Warning Too Clear to Ignore
- By Chip Auger on 10-30-18
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Socialism...Seriously
- A Brief Guide to Human Liberation
- By: Danny Katch
- Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics, and the potential of human beings to be something more than bomb-dropping, planet-destroying, racist fools.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Seriously Entertaining and Seriously Sincere
- By Susie on 04-20-16
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The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 405
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 360
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 356
In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
Publisher's Summary
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding - and reclaiming - the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century.
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- Rebecca
- 10-20-17
Brilliant!
Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Marx, Roland Barthes and so many other philosophers, activists, and revolutionaries are reading this from beyond the grave and applauding! Just fantastic!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Scott
- 02-10-18
A remarkable exposé & synthesis of the Ponzi scheme that capitalism is and always has been.
This book is an astounding and well organized synthesis of history - environmental & social (political, economic & cultural) - that exposes the unifying threads of unsustainable exploitation that has today brought us to a precipice. Nothing is really cheap; unacknowledged costs are often high. Where in the past, as resources are depleted, capitalists have increased the level of coercive force applied, or moved on to rape more virgin lands, the authors note that with climate change, the usurpation of the commons now extends to the very atmosphere upon which all life depends. And in the conclusion they offer some very initial ideas of alternative structures. A lot to ponder, a dramatic call to face our current reality honestly, as well as to develop alternatives immediately. Critical reading!
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Kristen Chaney
- 01-26-18
LOVE but different reader
LOVE THE CONTENT! His voice makes me sleepy though, so I had to hear it again.