I am a product of Sputnik and the threat of nuclear war. Both turned me into a long-time reader of science fiction and a perpetual student in trying to understand how the world works and why? If we have free will, why do so many things seem to be predetermined? If we are rational beings, why do so many of our choices seem so absurd? And if a new world is possible, why can’t we bring it into existence? I was a professor of politics for 30 years (and I was respected! See “Soylent Green.”) and most of my research and writing try to answer these questions.
I wrote
Political Economy, Capitalism, and Popular Culture
Some critics argue that Polanyi got 19th-century English history wrong, but his argument that the capitalist economy is “disembedded” from the social system and is focused only on growth and more capital seems spot on.
The attempt to turn everything into a commodity will mean the wrack and ruin of the earth and its inhabitants. Not quite Polanyi’s words but, 80 years later, ever closer to what is happening.
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
This book was and is widely thought to be a warning against the tyranny of English “socialism,” others against the Soviet Union.
At least one person argues that it was a satire of American society. Perhaps 1984 was published too soon; every day, Orwell’s world appears to look more and more like the one in which we live.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
Harris Maloub, a killer with an erased official past, now in his fifties, is visited by someone who could not be alive and given an assignment. In Aarhus, Denmark, Jens Erik, police officer on pre-retirement leave, somehow cannot forget the body of a Black man recovered from the sea some…
Callenbach’s tale of ecological secession by Washington, Oregon, and Northern California remains an inspiration to those who believe another world is possible.
Callenbach imagined cheap solar electricity and newspapers being delivered through what was, essentially, street corner fax machines. Right on the first, wrong on the second. Unfortunately, Callenbach’s novel is sexist and even a little racist in places, and its utopian vision is unlikely to ever materialize.
Twenty years have passed since Northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States to create a new nation, Ecotopia. Rumors abound of barbaric war games, tree worship, revolutionary politics, sexual extravagance. Now, this mysterious country admits its first American visitor: investigative reporter Will Weston, whose dispatches alternate between shock and admiration. But Ecotopia gradually unravels everything Weston knows to be true about government and human nature itself, forcing him to choose between two competing views of civilization.Since it was first published in 1975, Ecotopia has inspired readers throughout the world with its vision of an ecologically and socially…
Did it ever occur to you that economics might be theological, even a form of religious idolatry?
This is not, by the way, about the Worship of Mammon; it is about capitalism as a system of beliefs and practices.
Nelson carefully maps out the genealogy of modern economics, showing that its underlying foundation can be traced back to competing Greek philosophies as filtered through Catholicism and Protestantism. We have never been secular!
this is the most profound book on the boundary of theology and economics in the past couple of decades. It has a depth of perspective, a scope of scholarship and a discernment that is rare in this field.-CHRISTIAN CENTURY
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
Snow Crashwas written as the Cold War came to an end and imagines how globalization and cyberspace might develop across the United States.
There is not much left of the U.S. besides the “Feds,” who can barely keep their act together. There are only four things the United States can do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery.
The country is littered with FOQNEs, Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities, and Burbclaves, which are thematic near-sovereign, gated communities. And, by the way, this is where Zuckerberg got the term “Metaverse.” Stephenson should sue.
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30…
Political Economy, Capitalism and Popular Culture (PECPC) dissects films and novels in an effort to explain the mysteries of capitalism and the world it makes. Most economic textbooks are deadly dull as well as very orthodox and make claims to predicting human behavior. PECPC blows apart many economics myths and stories and does so through examples drawn from the books and films with which we are very familiar and can be read without the help of an economist. I wrote PECPC as a textbook for students who were uncomfortable with math and statistics, but economists can read it, too.
A dystopian tale about Tayler's brush with deadly augmented reality players who are out to kill him, and a wise cracking robot keen to take over the world.
As reviewer Joseph Sullivan from Aurealis magazine wrote, “Virtual Insanity will resonate with readers who enjoy modern takes on science fiction…
A test of leadership, loyalty, and legacy. Rylie Addison faces the greatest leadership challenge of her life. As climate change ravages the world, leaving millions displaced, Rylie is handpicked by the enigmatic Maja Garcia of Gaia Enterprises to govern Terra Blanca, an unprecedented man-made island community for climate refugees.
