Published: 04/08/2020
ISBN: 9781925700879
Genre: Politics
Pages: 320
RRP: $32.99
Glimpses of Utopia
Jess Scully
Shortlisted, ABIA Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year, 2021
‘Jess Scully has scoured the world for the best ideas to fix this mess we’re in.’ — Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do
‘Glimpses of Utopia provided me the rarest thing in these grim times: hope.’ — Benjamin Law
It’s hard to be excited about the future right now. Climate change is accelerating; inequality is growing; politics is polarised; institutions designed to protect us are strained; technology is disrupting the world of work. We need to upgrade the operating systems of our society. Jess Scully asks, What can we do? The answer is: plenty! All over the world, people are refusing the business-as-usual mindset and putting humans back into the civic equation, reimagining work and care, finance and government, urban planning and communication, to make them better and fairer for all.
Meet the care workers reclaiming control in India and Lebanon, the people turning slums into safe havens in Kenya and Bangladesh, and champions of people-powered digital democracy in Iceland and Taiwan. There are radical bankers funding renewable energy in the USA and architects redesigning real estate in Australia, new payment systems in Italy and the Philippines that keep money in local communities, and innovators redesigning taxation to cut pollution and incentivise creative solutions.
Glimpses of Utopia is a call for optimism. Humans everywhere are rising up to confront our challenges with creativity, resilience and compassion. Harnessing technology and imagination, we can reshape our world to be fair and sustainable. This book shows us how.
‘Whoever you are, wherever you’re at, this book will make you feel better about the world and everyone in it.’ — Jan Fran
‘The kind of compelling vision we need.’ — Christiana Figueres, The Future We Choose
‘We need utopian options that offer the optimism needed to create fairer futures.Jess offers proposals to discuss, explore and design our way out of the current mess!’ — Eva Cox AO
‘What a wonderful and inspiring book of concrete ideas when we need inspiration the most.’ — Blair Palese, founder of 350.org Australia
‘Remarkably invigorating – a collection of eminently practical ideas, from a writer who has done the nitty gritty work of making change herself.’ — Bill McKibben, author, educator and environmentalist
Jess Scully
“Arresting from the very first sentence…[Glimpses of Utopia is] an optimistic, evidence-based vision for the future that reads more like a real-world drama where we all write the ending.” 5* Stars
Good Reading Magazine (September, 2020)
“Shows hope is not dead by a long shot.”