What we're reading in June

Lots of our favourite books are out now in paperback – and 30% off when you buy through our site! See our June reading list below.

A toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism has come to dominate our world. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better future. Here, award winning journalist George Monbiot, shows us how we can create a new political narrative – a restoration story that will trigger the imagination and create a politics of belonging.

Acclaimed fantasy author China Miéville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down. 

Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future.

In this accessible, brilliantly argued book, leading political economist Ann Pettifor explains in straightforward terms history’s most misunderstood invention: the money system. Pettifor argues that democracies can, and indeed must, reclaim control over money production and restrain the out-of-control finance sector so that it serves the interests of society, as well as the needs of the ecosystem.

A devastating analysis of what is happening to our academia.

In The Dilemmas of Lenin, Ali provides an insightful portrait of Lenin’s deepest preoccupations and underlines the clarity and vigour of his theoretical and political formulations.

In The Amateur, thinker Andy Merrifield shows us how the many spheres of our lives—work, knowledge, home, politics—have fallen into the hands of box tickers, bean counters and pedants. In response, he corrals a team of independent thinkers, wayward poets, dabblers and square pegs who challenge accepted wisdom.

Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.

Since 1989, politics has been a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wideranging case for the prosecution, Tariq Ali looks at the people and events that have informed this development across the world. 

A major account of the failings of the European Union—and why it has to go.

Out of the Wreckage

by George Monbiot

Today, our lives are dominated by an ideology of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. But we cannot replace it without a positiv...

October

by China Miéville

In February of 1917 Russia was a backward, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world’s first workers’ state, straining t...

Radical Technologies

by Adam Greenfield

Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Gree...

The Production of Money

by Ann Pettifor

According to leading economist Ann Pettifor, one of the few people to predict the 2008 financial crisis, money is not a commodity but a promise. This radical reconsideration of the power of money m...

Speaking of Universities

by Stefan Collini

In recent decades there has been an immense global surge in the numbers both of universities and of students. In the UK alone there are now over 140 institutions teaching more subjects than ever to...

The Dilemmas of Lenin

by Tariq Ali

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the October 1917 uprising, is one of the most misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In his own time, there were many, even among his enemies, who acknowle...

The Amateur

by Andy Merrifield

Modern life is being destroyed by experts and professionals. We have lost our amateur spirit and need to rediscover the radical and liberating pleasure of doing things we love.In The Amateur, think...

Vertical

by Stephen Graham

Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map...

The Extreme Centre

by Tariq Ali

In this fully updated edition of his coruscating polemic, Tariq Ali shows how, since 1989, politics has become a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wide-r...

The EU

by John R. Gillingham III

With Britain leaving the EU, now is the time for an obituary for the EU as an institution. In this short, rigorously argued book, updated after Brexit, John R. Gillingham tells the history of an id...