Missive #719 Published 25 May 2026

By Kingsnorth’s lights, the origin of so much of the world’s current crisis is an “ongoing process of mass uprooting,” not just from one’s native place (as with China’s relocation of Tibetans and Uyghurs) but also our cultural uprooting from our traditions and our divorce from nature. Kingsnorth often paints with a brush that may be a few hairs too wide: He condemns science, for instance, as “an ideology posing as a method,” when science is likely the only thing that might rescue the world from the worst consequences of climate change, and his insistent view of cities as doomed and soulless places devoted only to profit too often slides into cant. Still, a little fire and brimstone never hurts an argument against things as they are, and if decrying the “the holy effort to which all human will, skill and energy is now bent: making money” gets a little shrill, his closing invocation of a culture in which “people, place, prayer, the past” are rediscovered resounds nicely.

Missive #717 Published 23 May 2026

Derrick Jensen takes no prisoners in The Culture of Make Believe , his brilliant and eagerly awaited follow-up to his powerful and lyrical A Language Older Than Words . What begins as an exploration of the lines of thought and experience that run between the massive lynchings in early twentieth-century America to today's death squads in South America soon explodes into an examination of the very heart of our civilization.

Missive #715 Published 19 May 2026

I should have known better. I almost never find a New York Times Bestseller to my liking. This book was no exception, the best part was it is reasonable short. In ePub it was 260 pages, or about 56% of the total book pages. The Notes make up 25% of the book which leads me to believe that the author had AI write the first draft. I do not recommend reading it.

Missive #712 Published 14 May 2026

In this major new book, the leading sociologist, historical anthropologist and demographer Emmanuel Todd sheds fresh light on our current predicament by reconstructing the historical dynamics of human societies from the Stone Age to the present. Eschewing the tendency to attribute special causal significance to the economy, Todd develops an anthropological account of history, focusing on the long-term dynamics of family systems and their links to religion and ideology - what he sees as the slow-moving, unconscious level of society, in contrast to the conscious level of the economy and politics. He also analyses the dramatic changes brought about by the spread of education. This enables him to explain the different historical trajectories of the advanced nations and the growing divergence between them, a divergence that can be observed in such phenomena as the rise of the Anglosphere in the modern period, the paradox of a Homo americanus who is both innovative and archaic, the startling electoral success of Donald Trump, the lack of realism in the will to power shown by Germany and China, the emergence of stable authoritarian democracy in Russia, the new introversion of Japan and the recent turbulent developments in Europe, including Brexit.

Missive #711 Published 11 May 2026

Whereas Volume 1 of Endgame presents the problem of civilization, Volume 2 of this pivotal work illustrates our means of resistance. Incensed and hopeful, impassioned and lucid, Endgame leapfrogs the environmental movement's deadlock over our willingness to change our conduct, focusing instead on our ability to adapt to the impending ecological revolution.