This is the groundbreaking 11,000 year story of how data became the most powerful tool humans have ever created – and how we are sleepwalking into a future where the next global superpower is a tech company.

'The new history of mankind demanded by our times… This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something' Jaron Lanier, author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now

'Breathtaking in its scope and enormously fulfilling in its depth, this book is profoundly fascinating' Lewis Dartnell, author of Being Human

We live in an era when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable – yet from targeted advertising to mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives. How did it gain the power it now holds over us?

Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilisation in Mesopotamia, rulers pressed marks into clay to keep track of land, people and grain. To rule, they had to keep count. It is no accident, then, that the first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant. As ships and navigation expanded our horizons, a new age of European empires took control of more than 80 per cent of the world’s surface, using colonial censuses, maps and ledgers to decide who belonged, who owed, and who could be sacrificed. Today, a handful of private brokers increasingly define what we see and what is real.

Taking readers from ancient cave markings and knotted strings to the algorithmic state, Dartmouth professor Roopika Risam reveals how data has always been the seed of power: a technology of control that has shaped civilizations and upheld empires. Provocative, humane and sweeping in scope, Data Empire challenges us to decide whether we will allow a new set of data empires to hardwire inequality into the next century, or fight for systems that work for the benefit of all.

It’s time to decide. Will technology serve democracy or replace it? Perfect for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

'Essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world' Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis

'This brilliant, readable book offers a striking new historical perspective' Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories

'A thrilling story of how democracies can respond to the world’s most powerful industry, told by the woman who is leading the charge.' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation

'Kidron brings the insider knowledge of a legislator and the storytelling instincts of a filmmaker to one of the most urgent crises of our time.’ Tristan Harris, co-founder of Center for Humane Technology

A NEW SCIENTIST BEST NEW POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK OF JUNE 2026

—

WE ARE NOT USING TECHNOLOGY. TECHNOLOGY IS USING US.

In USERS, legislator and campaigner Beeban Kidron takes you on a journey from the halls of Parliament and the UN to the White House and Silicon Valley. Through her encounters with specialist police officers, bereaved parents, lobbyists and tech bros, you’ll witness the unchecked power of Big Tech, as they avoid rules and regulations, and capture governments that are meant to protect us.

You’ll see how the issue is not technology itself, but its use and abuse. How tools built to connect people are redeployed to divide, punish, distract, and control; while our tech overlords come to own everything – but continue to be held responsible for nothing. Now that we know their game, it's time to fight back.

This book will show you what went wrong, what is really going on, and what we can do about it.

Praise for USERS:

'Beeban has spent her life watching what Big Tech does to childhood. We fight the same battle. USERS is her reckoning and her roadmap: we must demand better – but only if we have the courage. Read it. Then join our fight!' Maria Ressa, journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

‘This book will help us understand how high the stakes are and how we can fight back.’ Sir Elton John and David Furnish

This is the story of the Global Positioning System, the network of U.S. government satellites that encircle the earth: a vast web that, in a matter of decades, has transformed the way we understand space and time, making us critically dependent on vulnerable technology we often forget is even there.

It is a system that was conceived of as a military product designed for war, but which has since evolved into a vital everyday tool that tells us where we are and when at any given point. But its use doesn’t stop there: GPS has transformed our navigation systems and our global trade, our farms and our supermarkets, our stop lights, banking networks, and our energy systems. It overturned online dating, exercise regimens, travel planning and takeaways. It reshaped our daily lives, and then it transformed us. When GPS took away our familiarity with getting lost, it also stripped us of our ability to hide – turning our place in the world into a mappable, knowable entity, and put us, a blinking blue dot on a screen, at its centre.

In this thrilling, page-turning work of narrative non-fiction that touches on tech, geopolitics, international relations and economics – Katherine Dunn explores the acute vulnerability of an essential global system that touches all our lives. With echoes of Kleptopia, The Fifth Risk and Prisoners of Geography, as well as echoes of Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flynn and Entangled Life by Merlion Sheldrake in the way it exposes a hidden, esoteric system that we all rely on – this is a book that lifts the lid on the invisible connections of the globe, from the space race to the phone in our pockets.

We live in a time of unprecedented technological change and uncertainty, from AI to transhumanism. Humankind is faced with the question of what the future will be like and – more burningly – should be like. We confront increasing dangers from geopolitical instability, war and the climate crisis that threaten to render these developments either irrelevant or deadly.

The answer can’t just be to call a halt.

A. C. Grayling asks the question no one else is asking. What do we wish to keep from yesterday that will help us decide today what we want and don't want tomorrow. How we might navigate the complexities to build a fairer, more equal, sustainable future.

From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, and argues that it is now in mortal danger.

In this sweeping history, acclaimed cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins takes readers on an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s – who declared that ‘the personal is political’ – to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age.

Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning: as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?

'You know how the best writers pinpoint something you’ve felt for ages but haven’t been able to articulate? This is like that. It’s so good. She should give Radio 4’s next Reith Lectures' Guardian

An electrifying, thought-provoking exploration of how the digital era is reshaping our world, by bestselling, Women's Prize-winning writer Naomi Alderman

From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Power

What’s the most useful thing you could know about your own life?

In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns to a question that affects us all: how do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we’re living through?

The internet has flooded us with more knowledge, opinions, ideas, opportunities, as well as verbal attacks and misinformation, than ever before. It lets us learn more quickly and also spread falsehood more quickly, it brings us together and also divides us in countless new ways. There is no going back. But we have been here before. In fact, this is humanity’s third information crisis.

The first, the invention of writing 5,000 years ago, and the second, the invention of the printing press 600 years ago, drastically reshaped our perceptions, interactions and mental landscapes in ways that feel acutely familiar. Overwhelmed by information, people become afraid and angry, unsettled and distressed, as well as more knowledgeable, educated and curious.

By looking at those previous information crises, both the turmoil and the advances, Alderman asks what we can learn from the past to better understand our present, and how this might help us chart a way forward (once again), through the turbulent seas of information overload.

'Alderman is one of our most surprising and delightful public intellectuals, and this book grapples wonderfully with our current schisms and their historical precedents' JON RONSON

When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces.

But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down.

In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.

‘An instantly useful guide to futureproofing your career.’ Adam Grant

‘Open to Work lays out a smart and clear path to the future of work’ Brené Brown

In a world where AI is transforming work at a rapid pace, Open to Work is your essential guide to thriving – no matter your role, industry or experience.

Written by Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn, and Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn’s Chief Economic Opportunity Officer, this book offers an unparalleled perspective from inside the world’s largest professional network. Drawing on LinkedIn data, Microsoft research, and stories from across a billion members, the authors reveal the real-time changes reshaping jobs, careers and companies in the AI era.

Open to Work shows why the future belongs not to those who resist change, but to those who adapt to it – by developing uniquely human skills like creativity, curiosity and communication. With practical frameworks, inspiring stories and a 90-day action plan, this book empowers you to use AI as a tool, not a threat, and to build a career that’s as dynamic as the technology transforming it.

Whether you’re a business leader, entrepreneur or simply open to new possibilities, this is the must-read playbook for anyone who wants to get ahead – and stay ahead – as work is reinvented.

From the world’s largest professional network. Your future starts here.

'Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject … expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents the most insightful portrait of Hassabis to date' Financial Times

A revelatory portrait of the visionary behind Google DeepMind, the race to control the future – and what it means to win

Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room.

For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago.

As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.