The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People—and the Fight for Our Future

The world needs a book that explains the car crash at the intersection of business, government, and everyday people. THE RAGING 2020s: Companies, Countries, People—and the Fight for Our Future, is that book.

For 150 years, there has been a social contract. Companies hold the power to shape our daily lives. Governments hold the power to make them fall in line. And the people hold the power to choose their leaders. But now, this balance has shaken loose. Today’s global companies are as powerful as countries and on issues ranging from privacy to sustainability to diversity and workers’ rights, we are more governed by companies than we are by governments. Whether the future looks more like Star Trek or more like Mad Max comes down to a very human question that we cannot outsource to algorithms: will we come together to rewrite our social contract? As the world rages amidst pandemic, rising inequality and increasingly frequent climate disasters, Alec Ross—New York Times bestselling author, former senior advisor to the secretary of state and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Bologna Business School—offers a path forward in THE RAGING 2020s.

Through interviews with the world’s most influential thinkers and stories of corporate activism and malfeasance, government failure and renewal, THE RAGING 2020s examines the economic and political forces that brought us to where we are today and looks at the trends shaping the decade to come.

An essential blueprint for the modern era, THE RAGING 2020s is a prescient, evidence-based, and wildly innovative accounting of what’s gone awry and what can be done.