RSA Talk MP3

The talk I gave at the RSA earlier this month is now available for download. You can find it here on their web site.

You were dying to ask, I know

What books have I worked on as an editor? Well in a career in books publishing that stretches all the way back to the Autumn of 1998, I have edited and helped publish some terrific books, most of which you won't have heard of, in all likelihood. Because that is how it is with books, I am afraid. Still, a partial list of books I've worked on might look something like this -

Democracy in Europe - Larry Siedentop (still the most exciting book about European federalism I've ever read. I was only an editorial assistant on this one, but since I was going to get the blame if it didn't work, I still think of it as my first foray into the wacky world of non-fiction editing)
Rebel Code - Glyn Moody (still the most comprehensive history of the open source software movement I've ever read)
Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser (woo-hoo, junk food isn't the best idea anyone ever had. This is the book that, indirectly, saved Jamie Oliver's career)
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - Greg Palast (paperback only - Pluto commissioned the book and published it in hardback)
Weapons of Mass Deception - Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (In the UK, that is. Penguin Tarcher published the book in the US. I also published their Toxic Sludge is Good for You and Banana Republicans. WMD was published in the late summer of 2003 and is still the ... well, we here in England haven't yet got round to nailing the 2002-2003 propaganda with anything like the skill these two managed to bring to bear on the US situation. And they wrote this more or less in real time)
Love All the People - Bill Hicks (because you have to laugh sometimes - and, besides, Hicks knew how put the pieces together, ifyouknowwhatimean)
The Corporation - Joel Bakan (probably the best-written polemic of the last decade)
The Next Gulf - Andy Rowell, James Marriott, Lorne Stockman (a good book about Nigeria's oil politics)

Sure, I have edited some other stuff, of course, some good stuff too. But that's what I am willing to put my hand up for right now.

Oh, and this year Verso published my first book, The Threat to Reason. It is still the best book-length attempt to prise the Enlightenment from the grasp of Richard Dawkins, Dick Taverne and Christopher Hitchens.