Robert Petkoff

The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a democratic network of unbridled innovation. In the last decade, it has fallen under the control of a small number of monopolistic companies like Apple, Google and Facebook; companies that limit the creative potential of the internet while seizing its proceeds for themselves.

There is an alternative. Tech pioneer Chris Dixon has long advocated for a technology that can revive the dream of an open, entrepreneurial internet: blockchain networks. Often dismissed, sometimes vilified, these networks have until recently been dominated by amoral speculators and get-rich-quick schemes. But, more quietly, a group of visionaries have been using them to build the future.

In Read Write Own, Dixon draws on 25 years at the vanguard of tech innovation to explore how blockchains will change the internet.

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad-at himself and the people around him-and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?

And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear-and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

'Addicted to Succession? Well here's the real thing.' Hollywood Reporter The shocking inside story of how dysfunction misconduct and scandal almost brought down one of Hollywood's greatest companies. Unscripted is the inside story of the struggle to control one of the world's great entertainment empires. It is the story of the last great Hollywood mogul Sumner Redstone: the ninety-something founder of Paramount Global who well into his dotage and facing a scandalous lawsuit proves increasingly unable to run the sprawling company he has built. It is the story of his daughter Shari Redstone: Sumner's heir apparent who despite being groomed for power for six decades struggles to assert her authority over the company and her family's legacy. And it is the story of her challenger Leslie Moonves: the well-liked CEO of CBS who plots a coup to take control of the business - until news leaks that he is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct (allegations he has spent years trying to hush up).

The result is damning portrait of how money and power works in Hollywood now. It illuminates an industry struggling to adapt to the revolution brought by streaming #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. And it reveals the lengths people will go to in pursuit of power - and the carnage that ensues when they do.

A new type of Cold War is emerging between China and the West. The global order is being simultaneously shaken by climate change and the shale revolution in oil and gas. Controversial fracking technology has given America unprecedented leverage as the world's leading energy powerhouse, upending the chessboard of global politics and changing the psychology of the global economy.

Despite being weighed down by sanctions, Russia is pivoting east toward China as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping unite to challenge America and lay claim to almost all of the South China Sea, one of the world's most critical trade routes.

Elsewhere, the map of the Middle East created after World War I is being attacked by ISIS and Iran's Revolutionary Guards as the region struggles to come to grips with the recent oil price collapse caused by the rise of shale.

Since the early 20th century, Traditionalism has defined itself against modernity and Enlightenment values. Traditionalist thinkers such as René Guénon and Julius Evola celebrated hierarchy, denounced the idea of progress, and regarded liberal secularism, capitalism, and communism as aligned forces working to replace social, cultural and political norms.

Ethnographer Benjamin Teitelbaum had been studying Traditionalism for years as a sort of novelty, associated with a restless subsection of the right - too antisocial for activism and largely without influence. And yet when Steve Bannon entered the White House in 2017, reports suggested he was an avid reader of Traditionalist teachings. 

Through exclusive interviews and deep historical context, Teitelbaum reveals the radical worldview infusing the thinking of powerful actors and inspiring a renegade reinterpretation of humanity, geopolitics and history.

You are reading the blurb for an experimental novel by a debut author called Dann McDorman. It is book set sometime in the 1970s, in an exclusive US country club and if you read the book itself, you will very quickly meet the man you think will be the protagonist, private detective Adam McAnnis. You don't know who has hired him, but you do know from the very first line of the book that someone will die (maybe him? maybe the driver of the car he is a passenger in? maybe someone we are yet to meet?). But you can't imagine in what ways this story will unfold. We can absolutely promise you that.