Reimagining transparency and secrecy in the era of digital data When total data surveillance delimits agency and revelations of political wrongdoing fail to have consequences, is transparency the social panacea liberal democracies purport it to be? This book sets forth the provocative argument that progressive social goals would be better served by a radical form of secrecy, at least while state and corporate forces hold an asymmetrical advantage over the less powerful in data control. Clare Birchall asks: How might transparency actually serve agendas that are far from transparent? Can we imagine a secrecy that could act in the service of, rather than against, a progressive politics? To move beyond atomizing calls for privacy and to interrupt the perennial tension between state security and the public’s right to know, Birchall adapts Édouard Glissant’s thinking to propose a digital “right to opacity.” As a crucial element of radical secrecy, she argues, this would eventually give rise to a “postsecret” society, offering an understanding and experience of the political that is free from the false choice between secrecy and transparency. She grounds her arresting story in case studies including the varied presidential styles of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump; the Snowden revelations; conspiracy theories espoused or endorsed by Trump; WikiLeaks and guerrilla transparency; and the opening of the state through data portals. Postsecrecy is the necessary condition for imagining, finally, an alternative vision of “the good,” of equality, as neither shaped by neoliberal incarnations of transparency nor undermined by secret state surveillance. Not least, postsecrecy reimagines collective resistance in the era of digital data.

'A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves.' Caroline Criado-Perez, Guardian Almost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't confine themselves to grand houses and they were not written just for readers' enjoyment. She writes about serious subjects and her books are deeply subversive. We just don't read her properly - we haven't been reading her properly for 200 years. Jane Austen, The Secret Radical puts that right. In her first, brilliantly original book, Austen expert Helena Kelly introduces the reader to a passionate woman living in an age of revolution; to a writer who used what was regarded as the lightest of literary genres, the novel, to grapple with the weightiest of subjects – feminism, slavery, abuse, the treatment of the poor, the power of the Church, even evolution – at a time, and in a place, when to write about such things directly was seen as akin to treason. Uncovering a radical, spirited and political engaged Austen, Jane Austen, The Secret Radical will encourage you to read Jane, all over again.

“An exuberant tour through the world of scientists behaving badly” (The New York Times). They may have a public image as cool, logical, levelheaded types. But in reality, scientists will do pretty much anything—take drugs, follow mystical visions, lie, and even cheat—to make a discovery. In Free Radicals, physicist and journalist Michael Brooks seamlessly weaves together true stories of the “mad, bad and dangerous” men and women who have revolutionized the scientific world, and offers a fast-paced and thrilling exploration of the real process behind discovery (The Times, London). Brooks also traces the cover-up back to its source: the scientific establishment’s reaction to the public fear of science after World War II. He argues that it its high time for science to come clean about just how bold and daring scientists really are. “Not all scientists are nerds. In Free Radicals, physicist Michael Brooks tries to dispel the notion that scientists are stuffy, pen-protector-polishing bookworms.” —The Washington Post “Insightful . . . A page-turning, unvarnished look at the all-too-human side of science.” —Kirkus Reviews

Originally published: London: Icon Books Ltd., 2016.

In the transatlantic world of the late eighteenth century, easterly winds blew radical thought to America. Thomas Paine had already arrived on these shores in 1774 and made his mark as a radical pamphleteer during the Revolution. In his wake followed more than 200 other radical exiles—English Dissenters, Whigs, and Painites; Scottish "lads o'parts"; and Irish patriots—who became influential newspaper writers and editors and helped change the nature of political discourse in a young nation. Michael Durey has written the first full-scale analysis of these radicals, evaluating the long-term influence their ideas have had on American political thought. Transatlantic Radicals uncovers the roots of their radicalism in the Old World and tells the story of how these men came to be exiled, how they emigrated, and how they participated in the politics of their adopted country. Nearly all of these radicals looked to Paine as their spiritual leader and to Thomas Jefferson as their political champion. They held egalitarian, anti-federalist values and promoted an extreme form of participatory democracy that found a niche in the radical wing of Jefferson's Republican Party. Their divided views on slavery, however, reveal that democratic republicanism was unable to cope with the realities of that institution. As political activists during the 1790s, they proved crucial to Jefferson's 1800 presidential victory; then, after his views moderated and their influence waned, many repatriated, others drifted into anonymity, and a few managed to find success in the New World. Although many of these men are known to us through other histories, their influence as a group has never before been so closely examined. Durey persuasively demonstrates that the intellectual ferment in Britain did indeed have tremendous influence on American politics. His account of that influence sheds considerable light on transatlantic political history and differences in religious, political, and economic freedoms. Skillfully balancing a large cast of characters, Transatlantic Radicals depicts the diversity of their experiences and shows how crucial these reluctant émigrés were to shaping our republic in its formative years.

This updated edition of Secret Affairs covers the momentous events of the past year in the Middle East and at home in the UK. It reveals the unreported attempts by Britain to cultivate relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak, the military intervention on the side of Libyan rebel forces which include pro-al-Qaeda elements, and the ongoing reliance on the region's ultimate fundamentalist state, Saudi Arabia, to safeguard its interest in the Middle East. It illuminates path of Salman Abedi, the bomber who attacked Manchester in May 2017, and his terror network: how he fought in Libya in 2011 as part of a group of fighters which the UK allowed to leave the country to go and battle against Gadafi to topple him. In this ground-breaking book, Mark Curtis reveals the covert history of British collusion with radical Islamic and terrorist groups. Secret Affairs shows how governments since the 1940s have connived with militant forces to control oil resources and overthrow governments. The story of how Britain has helped nurture the rise of global terrorism has never been told.

K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology—the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment. Already, scientists have constructed prototypes for circuit boards built of millions of precisely arranged atoms. The advent of this kind of atomic precision promises to change the way we make things—cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale. It allows us to imagine a world where solar arrays cost no more than cardboard and aluminum foil, and laptops cost about the same. A provocative tour of cutting edge science and its implications by the field's founder and master, Radical Abundance offers a mind-expanding vision of a world hurtling toward an unexpected future.