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How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back
Random House
June 2009
On Sale: June 2, 2009
304 pages
ISBN: 1400066891
EAN: 9781400066896
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
This didnβt just happen. In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that theyβre no longer even aware of it. This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpaceβthe corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business. Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six- hundred-year-old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes. Corporatism didnβt evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are livingβthe operating system on which we are now running our social softwareβwas invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory. Rushkoff illuminates both how weβve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.
 Media BuzzOn Point - November 2, 2010
Colbert Report - July 15, 2009
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