Politically we are at a time when despair seems like the default setting, and people, particularly on the left, are habituated to looking for the worst-case scenarios, the gloomy prophesy, the reasons to be cheerless. What we struggle to imagine - or fail to try to imagine - is the route out of this deadlocked position. But there are many, and our best vision of the future can come from the collaborative, creative, improvisational ways of achieving progress that have already been tried and have sometimes succeeded.
This book encourages us to look away from the brightly lit stage and the tragedy being acted on it, and to see into the shadows, to an alternate understanding of how power plays out. It is an incitement to activism, a manifesto for realising how we can achieve change - it is filled with hope.
