LoveReading Says
If you have read, or heard of No Logo by by Naomi Klein then this is for you. Subtitled Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life it’s thought provoking and optimistic.
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Authenticity Synopsis
The charms of the global and virtual future we were all brought up to expect, where meals would be eaten in the form of pills and machines would do all our work, have worn rather thin. It's not that we don't want all the advantages of progress, we just want a future that manages to be local and real too.
Tracking the struggle for reality from Japanese theme parks to mock-Tudor villas and from Byron to Big Brother, Authenticity explains where our reactions against spin and fakeness come from – and where they are going. The current revival of real food, real business, real culture flies in the face of expert opinion from politicians, economists, advertisers and big business – and they're having to run to keep up as our hype attention-span gets ever shorter.
Optimistic, witty, highly thought-provoking and packed with fascinating stories, Boyle's search asks whether coolness is dead, how real reality is and whether realpolitik can ever change into real politics. He puts authenticity firmly on the map, lifting the lid on all the other symptoms of this powerful new phenomenon – revealing the unexpected force that looks set to change all our lives.
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David Boyle Press Reviews
‘A beguiling vision of hope for the future.’ Time Out
‘Authenticity has always been seeping out of our lives…and yet.. [it] has a habit of fighting back. David Boyle walks the front lines of the way between real and fake.’ Financial Times
‘Boyle joins a long line, from Plato to Keynes, who argue that our view of reality, whether the figurative shadows on a cave wall, or the numbers called on a trading floor, is a speculative froth that distracts us from a superior reality.’ Telegraph
‘An insightful, ambitious argument.’ Independent
‘A book beginning here could easily be another polemic against consumer capitalism, superficial politics and the influence of a cynical media. Though Boyle criticises all three, his argument is subtler than bestselling broadsides like Naomi Klein's No Logo or Michael Moore's Stupid White Men… The guts of the argument are that we need to find a new set of relationships between democracy, individualism and capitalism… its wide range, well-written examples and lively style offer something for us all.’ Management Today
‘A bold attempt to pull together a thousand strands of modern nostalgia and unease and present them as a unified whole.’ Scotsman
About David Boyle
David Boyle, author of ‘Funny Money’ (Jan 1999) is a writer and journalist specializing in economics, cities, business and the environment.
He has been pioneering the idea of parallel currencies, introducing over 20 time banks to the UK (using time as a kind of money,) after the publication of his last book, ‘Funny Money’ : In Search of Alternative Cash. He has written about the future of money all over the world and is the author of the Financial Times management report Virtual Currencies (FT 1999) and the recent pamphlet Why London Needs its own Currency (New Economics Foundation, 2000).
As a Senior Associate at the New Economics Foundation, he has been at the forefront of new thinking in economics, volunteering and the environment – and has been advising the government on the future of volunteering.
He is former editor of New Economics, Town & Country Planning magazine, Liberal Democrat News and a range of other magazines, and his book on the future of cities (Building Futures) was published by WH Allen in 1989. He is also a member of the national policy committee of the Liberal Democrats, and used to write speeches for opinion formers such as Paddy Ashdown and Anita Roddick.
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