83 Books Like The Revolt Against Humanity

This book was absolutely amazing. The author interviewed many Soviet citizens in the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s collapse. I loved this book because it showed how people dealt with the massive change of the fall of the Soviet Union.

I also happened to be doing research in the Soviet Union in 1990 and then in 1995. So, I had an idea or two about before and after, but what about the people themselves? It shocked me to learn how many people believed in Stalin and how they thought they were changing the world even as it went far astray.

I also learned in the wonderful stories how they struggled to survive, some more, some less. The stories were heartbreaking but also illuminating and even encouraging.

I’d read the reviews, so I was prepared for a great book. I wasn’t prepared to be thrown out of my comfort zone—but in the best possible way.

Mandel made me sit with what it really means to lose everything and still create something beautiful. It’s not about saving the world; it’s about creating a new dream and making it your home. I loved how it celebrates art, memory, and the strange persistence of humanity even when everything else is gone.

This book reminded me that hope is often raw, painful, and ultimately necessary.

This is a lovely book about a Siberian Tiger that stocked and killed hunters who had been hunting tigers. Vaillant situates this fascinating story into the collapse of the Soviet Union. People on the far eastern edge of Russian Siberia, the Amur River area, were desperate to survive as the economy collapsed.

At the same time, China is taking off, and the affluent will buy tiger parts at great cost to increase their sexual stamina. Thus, desperate Russian hunters arrive. Vaillant does a great job following a game warden as he tries to solve the crime of a tiger seemingly bent on revenge.

I think he shows that good people are still out there trying to do right, no matter the cost.

I think Cline does a wonderful job explaining how civilizations can and do collapse or survive, but also bringing the distant past to life. The work takes on the tremendous change that happened around 1177 B.C. Yes, climate change, but volcanic explosions also helped push societies off course.

That may well have started the whole series of cataclysmic events, such as extended drought. Empires such as Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Israel all had to come to terms with massive change not of their own choosing.

I loved how Cline wrestles with how some survived, and others didn’t. Was geography, military, economics, or some level of hierarchy better than another? There is much to think about.

Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future (the title is drawn from a declaration by Leon Trotsky), stands out as a manifesto of socialist humanism that takes on neoliberal ideology and the cyberworld of contemporary capitalism. The book also delivers a withering critique not only of their basic anti-humanism but also the anti-humanism of the academic left, still too much in the shadow of postmodernism, which Mason charges with helping to open the road toward the present state of affairs.

There is surprisingly little research literature dealing specifically with dehumanization outside of academic papers by social psychologists. But this state of affairs is changing, as more and more scholars recognize that understanding this harrowing phenomenon is crucial for the future of humanity. This unique volume, with contributions from thirty scholars from a whole range of academic disciplines, provides an excellent snapshot of the vibrant state of dehumanization studies today.

The Trouble with Being Born is, in my opinion, Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran’s swan song.

Cioran presents a bleak worldview in which history is simply a long string of failures. Paradoxically, however, it’s almost life-affirming. Personally, I can hardly stand the creep of New Age philosophies and attitudes into mental health discussion, part of which inspired my book.

Constant lectures on how I ought to view life, how I ought to cope, and how I ought to “heal,” a word that’s been beaten to death, pretty much had the opposite effect on me. Instead of feeling understood, I felt alone. Contrarily, Cioran offers no such platitudes.

Through his bleak reflections, he offers reassurances that no matter how difficult life can become, we ought to stay our course—or, at least, that it’s too late to do anything about it.

I love the perspective of a philosopher on the profound love between a wolf and a man.

It includes the funny details about what it’s like to live with a destructive wolf in a home! The author’s lessons about love, death, and the meaning of life resonated with me. I love that they taught each other, and they respected each other.

If you, like me, have to consciously choose to read more poetry, this is a fascinating book to add to your collection. The poems’ subjects range from pop culture to body horror to the titular implications of algorithms and AI, and every one of them is a well-structured look at an apocalypse, large or small. Chances are excellent that you will encounter an English word you can’t readily define. Many of the poems are illustrated with haunting and/or humorous line art which even the ebook format renders well. Everything ends, but not every description of those endings are as beautiful as the ones in this book.

This book is simultaneously so exhilarating and creepy that it had me yelling at my car’s sound system as I listened to it! O’Gieblyn uses biography, history, and current events to ask why humans are pursuing artificial intelligence and what it means for the value of being human.

She weaves her life story, including losing her fundamentalist faith and spiraling into addiction, into a riveting analysis of artificial intelligence with all its promise and peril. I loved that she gave historical background about our search for artificial intelligence while also explaining what is at stake as AI infiltrates our very understanding of what it is to be human.

I finished the book feeling better informed about AI and better grounded in why being human is valuable, no matter what technology does next.