Book cover for The Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow

The Lost Cause

2023 Released
368 Pages
7-8 Hours
★ 3.49 927 ratings
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Tor BooksISBN 9781250865953

It’s thirty years from now. We’re making progress, mitigating climate change, slowly but surely. But what about all the angry old people who can’t let go?

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam.

And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.

The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is co-editor of BoingBoing.net and the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He writes columns for Make, Information Week, the Guardian online and Locus. He has won the Locus Award for his fiction three times, been nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula, won the Campbell Award and was named one of the internet’s top 25 influencers by Forbes magazine and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He hopes you’ll use technology to change the world.

More by Cory Doctorow

Why Readwise Books?

Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →