Fiction & Nonfiction to Understand Brexit

A brilliant, of-the-moment political satire like no other: here is Ian McEwan’s Brexit-era take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, centered on a cockroach transformed into the prime minister of England.

In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, Meek meets farmers and fishermen intent on exiting the EU despite the loss of protections they will incur. He reports on a Cadbury’s factory shut down and moved to Poland in the name of free market economics, exploring the impact on the local community left behind. Dreams of Leaving and Remaining is urgent reporting from one of Britain’s finest journalists.

Beginning nine years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by chain retail, and London, where both frenzied riots and Olympic fever plague the streets, Middle England tracks a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through the transformation of their society. Through all these lives we see this very tentatively united kingdom itself: a place of nostalgia and delusion, bewilderment and barely suppressed rage.

Written when Engels was only twenty-four, and inspired in particular by his time living among the poor in Manchester, this forceful polemic explores the staggering human cost of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England.

In the last six years, authoritarianism has creeped from east to west as nationalism inflames Europe, abetted by Russian propaganda and cyberwarfare. While countries like Poland and Hungary have made hard turns towards authoritarianism, the electoral upsets of 2016 revealed the citizens of the US and UK in revolt against their countries’ longstanding policies and values. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy.

In this remarkable book, Ian Kershaw has created a grand panorama of the world we live in and where it came from. Drawing on examples from all across Europe, The Global Age is an endlessly fascinating portrait of the recent past and present, and a cautious look into our future.

The Parliament of Man is the first definitive history of the United Nations, from one of America’s greatest living historians. Distinguished scholar Paul Kennedy, author of the bestselling The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, gives us a thorough and timely account that explains the UN’s roots and functions while also casting an objective eye on its effectiveness and its prospects for success in meeting the challenges that lie ahead.