In this illuminating book, Stephen Barber redefines the Fourth Industrial Revolution for our politics, our societies and those who seek to lead. The book argues that this is a rare opportunity to reappraise how we organise our economy, how we make decisions and how our leaders behave. Told through a series of extraordinary adventures stretching from the past and reaching into our future, the book demonstrates that the most important determinant of what comes next is not so much digital cha...

After the Battle of the Lys in April 1918, Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig said of the 147th (Territorial) Brigade:'I desire to express my appreciation of the very valuable and gallant services performed by troops of the 49th (West Riding) Division since the entry of the 147th Brigade into the Battle of Armentires. The courage and determination showed by this division has played no small part in checking the enemys advance and I wish to convey to General Cameron and all the officers and men...

Offering a critical analysis of the UK political system, Tragedy of Riches argues that politicians over the past twenty years have changed our economic destiny for the worse. The corresponding demise of ideology means that there can be no great improvement in the British economy without fundamental political change.Stephen Barber introduces the concept of the ‘mixed economic settlement’; the argument that the policy mix in which Europe and the United States operates is for...

“Only the wastelands can save us now.”An urban investigator has been commissioned by a global corporation to determine how cities worldwide are being engulfed and destroyed by the wastelands that are mysteriously appearing at their heart. They are being "wastelanded," generating turmoil and catastrophic technological meltdown in every global megalopolis. Throughout his inquiries he discovers that the world’s cities are becoming apocalyptic, experiencing ecocide. Th...

Are you fascinated by the Aeneid, puzzled by the poetry of Catullus, or intrigued by Ovid's mythic transformations? Whether you're a student, a teacher, or a lifelong learner, Aeneas in the Underworld and Other Essays offers a deeply informed yet highly readable guide through some of Latin literature's greatest masterpieces.In this engaging and scholarly collection, Stephen Barber, a longtime student of English and Latin literature, addresses the questions that many readers have an...

'The word glory, to English ears, usually means no more than a kind of mazy bright blur. But the maze should be, though it generally is not, exact, and the brightness should be that of a geometrical pattern.' —Charles WilliamsCharles Williams was one of the most versatile writers of his time, being a poet, novelist, dramatist, theologian and biographer. As a member of the Inklings group in Oxford during the Second World War he was friends with C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. Enthusiasts f...

Storm is increasingly the default setting for our lives. It is as if the next environmental, medical, social or political calamity is mere moments away. Of course, Storm is the dramatic expression of nature's wild side, yet it is also the defining characteristic of our age. We are constantly reminded that the precious ecosystems of our fragile planet are under threat as never before. At the same time our social and political systems are fracturing - in the famously prophe...

The world has the right to know the truth. Did Jesus really come to lead everyone into the presence of God; will those who fail to follow Jesus see eternal life? This book examines the spiritual fitness of Jesus. What were his qualifications? Was he God? Was he capable of leading?The Resurrection of Life hinges upon trusting in the work of Christ; the Resurrection of Death hinges upon rejecting his work. Everyone needs to be aware of just how different these two resurrections will b...

"Beginning in 1993 with Artaud: Blows and Bombs, Stephen Barber has quietly, independently forged one of the most singular and enriching bodies of work in contemporary writing." -David Peace Over the three decades since 1990, Stephen Barber has written many essays and experimental writings around film and digital arts. For the first time, this collection in two parts assembles all of those writings, many otherwise unavailable, over seventy in all. Many of those writings explore unknown ele...

Drawing on a vast range of material – from the first films of Berlin in the 1890s, to the city's impact on contemporary digital art – WALLS OF BERLIN examines how Berlin's walls form apertures that mediate their preoccupations and manias, damage and scars, non-erasable inscriptions and outlandish markings, fractures and fissures, strata and outgrowths, veerings and oscillations across time, corporeal traces and residues, sexual obsessions, and revelatory urban vanishings. In a rich cu...

Pierre Guyotat's work is a legendary presence within, and at the periphery of, experimental writing and art, from the 1960s to the contemporary moment. From his novels of the 1960s – "Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers" and "Eden, Eden, Eden" – to his recent books on his own corporeal history, notably "Coma", Guyotat has undertaken a relentless exploration of the human body, conflict, sex and social disintegration, which appears unprecedented. At the same time, it exudes the aura of being final wo...

Following England's future corporate and digital disintegration, and the fall of its cities, a hallucinatory conflict – inspired and propelled by the history and traces of 1970s punk rock and the spectres of Jimmy Savile and Peter Sutcliffe, the “Kings of Leeds†– erupts between the South and the North, so virulent and all-engulfing that only fragments of its memory can survive. A contemporary myth of text and image, England's Darkness explores a near-future culture on its precipice.