What Is To Be Done:
political engagement and saving the planet
Overview
A follow-up to the author’s prescient bestseller about the emergence of a post-industrial society.
When Sleepers, Wake! was released in 1982, it immediately became influential worldwide: it was read by Deng Xiaoping and Bill Gates; was published in China, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden; and led to the author being the first Australian minister to address a G-7 summit meeting, in Canada in 1985.
Now its author, the polymath and former politician Barry Jones, turns his attention to what has happened since — especially to politics and the climate in the digital age — and to the challenges faced by increasingly fragile democracies and public institutions.
Jones sees climate change as the greatest problem of our time, especially because political leaders are incapable of dealing with complex, long-term issues of such magnitude. Meanwhile, technologies such as the smartphone and the ubiquity of social media have destroyed our sense of being members of broad, inclusive groups. The COVID-19 threat, which was immediate and personal, has shown that some leaders could respond courageously, while others denied the evidence.
In the post-truth era, politicians invent ‘facts’ and ignore or deny the obvious, while business and the media are obsessed with marketing and consumption for the short term. What Is to Be Done is a long-awaited work from Jones on the challenges of modernity and what must be done to meet them.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Paperback
- 234mm x 153mm
- 400 pages
- 9781913348038
- GBP£16.99
- 12 November 2020
Categories
Awards
- Longlisted for the 2021 ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year
Praise
‘Almost four decades ago, Barry Jones foretold the future with his seminal book, Sleepers, Wake! Now, he is back, with new energy and insights. For those wanting to understand the confounding age in which we live, What Is To Be Done is essential reading. I hope it will galvanise the many debates we need to have if we are to shape a better future.’
‘The author of this book is a genius. He irritates the hell out of people of all political loyalties. He reads virtually everything that matters. In these pages we, his readers, are the beneficiaries. Forty years after his masterpiece Sleepers, Wake! he tackles the challenges of a new age: the digital world, climate change, COVID-19, and widespread political disillusionment. If any author can offer us thoughtful directions for what is to be done, it is Barry Jones.’
About the Author
Barry Jones was a Labor member of the Victorian and Commonwealth parliaments, led the campaign to abolish the death penalty, and became Australia’s longest-serving minister for science from 1983 to 1990. His books include Sleepers, Wake!, A Thinking Reed, Dictionary of World Biography, The Shock of Recognition, and, most recently, What is to be Done: political engagement and saving the planet. He received a Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia’s highest award, in 2014, and, at the age of 89, is a ‘living national treasure’.
