Reading list

Radical Happiness: A Reading List

A call for collective joy.

Verso Books20 November 2022

Radical Happiness: A Reading List

In an era of increasing individualism and compounding crises, misery is abundant. And endless commodification, where problems and their solutions pop up on an ever-accelerating conveyor belt of lotions and potions, does little to tackle the underlying problems of alienation. In the face of it all, we call for a radical happiness. A happiness rooted in collective joy that celebrates interdependence, care for the natural world, and bringing the good life to all. 

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A passionate call to rediscover the political and emotional joy that emerges when we share our lives.

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A plan to save the earth and bring the good life to all. We must humbly accept that humanity cannot fully understand or control the earth—but we can plan new energy systems, large-scale rewilding, and food production for the common good.

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A novel about getting by and having fun in a system that wants you to do neither. Happy Hour is a wonderful, hilarious, pleasurably exhausting reminder of what it is to be young in a big city.

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A vision for a truly caring world. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world in which each and every one of us can not only live but thrive.

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Emma Dowling charts the multifaceted nature of care in the modern world, from the mantras of self-care and what they tell us about our anxieties to the state of the social care system.
Read an excerpt here!

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At a time when work-related stress and exhaustion are endemic, it is clear that a new approach to employment is required — one based on collective freedom and human potential, providing scope for the many to achieve a happier, more fulfilling life.

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Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.

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Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into this concise and tightly argued manifesto: analyzing the varieties of anticapitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and an unparalleled guide to help us get there.

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Five hundred years since its first publication, Thomas More’s Utopia remains astonishingly radical and provocative. In this quincentenary edition, More’s text is introduced by multi-award-winning author China Miéville and accompanied by four essays from Ursula K. Le Guin, today’s most distinguished utopian writer and thinker.

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The acclaimed exploration of the women who revolutionized American and British life.

Radical Happiness
Why are we so obsessed by the pursuit of happiness? With new ways to measure contentment we are told that we have a right to individual joy. But at what cost? In an age of increasing individualis...
Half-Earth Socialism
Over the next generation, humanity will confront a dystopian future of climate disaster and mass extinction. Yet the only "solutions" on offer are toothless cap-and-trade programs, catastrophic geo...
Happy Hour
With the verve and bite of Ottessa Moshfegh and the barbed charm of Nancy Mitford, Marlowe Granados’s stunning début brilliantly captures a summer of striving in New York CityRefreshing and wry in ...
The Care Manifesto
The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care—childcare, healthcare, elder care—to care for the natural world. We live in a world where careless...
Overtime
Overtime is about the politics of time, and specifically the amount of time that we spend labouring within capitalist society. It argues that reactivating the longstanding demand for shorter workin...
Mutual Aid
Around the world, people are faced with crisis after crisis, from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, brutal imm...
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century
Capitalism has transformed the world and increased our productivity, but at the cost of enormous human suffering. Our shared values equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solid...
Utopia
Five hundred years since its first publication, Thomas More’s Utopia remains astonishingly radical and provocative. More imagines an island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and...
Dreamers of a New Day
From the 1880s to the 1920s, a profound social awakening among women extended the possibilities of change far beyond the struggle for the vote. Amid the growth of globalized trade, mass production,...

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