Fallow

Sarah Anderson

Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind. Natalie knows one truth: there is no such thing as a good job. As the clock ticks away at the call center where she logs complaints of workplace harassment, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled. Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot program, pitched as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity. She will be their in-house surrogate, delivering seven babies in ten years and enabling their executives to have motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated. For years, her every need is met: stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock health care. Between deliveries, she takes time off—a fallow period, with no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free. But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything. Natalie is pulled into an entirely different kind of social experiment, one that raises new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, what she can expect from the world, and what she can offer to it. Woundingly funny and genuinely moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.

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No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

Rachel Louise Snyder

In No Visible Bruises, journalist Rachel Louise Snyder frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence in our country around key stories that explode the common myths: That if things were bad enough, victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; that violence inside the home is separate from other forms of violence like mass shootings, gang violence, and sexual assault. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores not only the dark corners of private violence, but also its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

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Timbuktu

Paul Auster

Mr. Bones, the canine hero of Paul Auster's astonishing new book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts, Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in American fiction. Cover photograph by Ann Giordano

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Hunger Inc.: Building Solidarity Beyond the Food Bank

Kayleigh Garthwaite

Since 2020, we have seen a huge increase in the demand for charitable food aid, due to multiple political and economic crises. Initially seen as an emergency measure, corporate-backed food aid programs are now entrenched 'solutions' to hunger. But who really benefits from them? Kayleigh Garthwaite travelled across Britain, North America and Europe, working with food banks, co-ops, urban farms and food justice organisations. She documents the limitations of these programs, and how institutionalising charitable food aid absolves governments of their responsibility to ensure that people have a right to food. As hunger and inequality continue to rise within advanced capitalist countries, this issue is more urgent than ever. Kayleigh Garthwaite proposes radical key policies for governments and explores alternative community-led responses grounded in solidarity, not charity, to end the need for food aid before the indignity of food banks becomes completely normalised.

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Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles -- and All of Us

Rana Foroohar

A penetrating indictment of how today’s largest tech companies are hijacking our data, our livelihoods, our social fabric, and our minds—from an acclaimed Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst  SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY EVENING STANDARD“Don’t be evil” was enshrined as Google’s original corporate mantra back in its early days, when the company’s cheerful logo still conveyed the utopian vision for a future in which technology would inevitably make the world better, safer, and more prosperous. Unfortunately, it’s been quite a while since Google, or the majority of the Big Tech companies, lived up to this founding philosophy. Today, the utopia they sought to create is looking more dystopian than ever: from digital surveillance and the loss of privacy to the spreading of misinformation and hate speech to predatory algorithms targeting the weak and vulnerable to products that have been engineered to manipulate our desires. How did we get here? How did these once-scrappy and idealistic enterprises become rapacious monopolies with the power to corrupt our elections, co-opt all our data, and control the largest single chunk of corporate wealth—while evading all semblance of regulation and taxes?  In Don’t Be Evil, Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar tells the story of how Big Tech lost its soul—and ate our lunch. Through her skilled reporting and unparalleled access—won through nearly thirty years covering business and technology—she shows the true extent to which behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are monetizing both our data and our attention, without us seeing a penny of those exorbitant profits. Finally, Foroohar lays out a plan for how we can resist, by creating a framework that fosters innovation while also protecting us from the dark side of digital technology.Praise for Don’t Be Evil“At first sight, Don’t Be Evil looks like it’s doing for Google what muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell did for Standard Oil over a century ago. But this whip-smart, highly readable book’s scope turns out to be much broader. Worried about the monopolistic tendencies of big tech? The addictive apps on your iPhone? The role Facebook played in Donald Trump’s election? Foroohar will leave you even more worried, but a lot better informed.”—Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and author of The Square and the Tower

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