Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth
Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth
2 Rating(s)
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Against the Machine
On the Unmaking of Humanity

Bestseller

Author: Paul Kingsnorth

Narrator: Sebastian Humphreys

Unabridged: 11 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 09/23/2025

Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

How a force that’s hard to name, but which we all feel, is reshaping what it means to be human

In Against the Machine, “furiously gifted” (The Washington Post) novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original—and terrifying—account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With masterful insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image. From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, he shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how your very soul is at stake.

It takes effort to remain truly human in the age of the Machine. Writing in the tradition of Wendell Berry, Jacques Ellul and Simone Weil, Kingsnorth reminds us what humanity requires: a healthy suspicion of entrenched power; connection to land, nature and heritage; and a deep attention to matters of the spirit. Prophetic, poetic, and erudite, Against the Machine is the spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.

About The Author

Paul Kingsnorth is an English writer and thinker living in the west of Ireland. He is the author of ten books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including the novel The Wake, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cindy on October 31, 2025

While maybe not a perfect book, a positively perfect conversation! It reminded me of all the ways I had stood against the machine in the past and how those things felt like failures sometimes but maybe, maybe they weren’t after all. It also gave me courage to make other choices like sitting on my po......more

Goodreads review by Scott on October 16, 2025

Paul Kingsnorth’s new book is a fitting, prophetic, essential follow-up to Carl Truman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. It focuses on technology, the “western machine”, the demonic dangers of Ai, our psychological epidemic, transgenderism’s next step toward tranhumanism, and the good of a sacr......more

Goodreads review by Samuel on October 20, 2025

5 stars definitely do not mean an absolute endorsement. I think Kingsnorth is wrong on several points, and I have a sneaking suspicion that too many things are implicated under the umbrella of "the machine" (which sometimes feels like a blanket term to describe all things Kingsnorth finds personally......more

Goodreads review by Scott on October 08, 2025

A prescient critique of modernity, albeit a sprawling and unfocused one. I wanted to love this book, as I agree with much of it. However, it felt like a messy letdown. Kingsnorth doesn’t make many new arguments, nor does he deepen any old ones. And, for a book on the distorting of humanity, there is......more

Goodreads review by Robin on October 13, 2025

This is a beautifully written and presented book, but it often comes across as an old man howling at the moon. Kingsnorth makes some on-point critiques of Western life but the solutions feel ill-considered and half-baked if you are not in the position of having a successful writing career behind you......more

Quotes

“The most powerful and important book I have read in years. This book should be required reading not only for politicians, technocrats, teachers and all who help shape our world, but for every still-living soul in this terrifying age of the Machine.” —Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary

“Something in our common life has long seemed bewildering, even ominous, and Paul Kingsnorth makes it finally clear what we're up against. The gears clanking around us are not working at random, but with increasingly inhuman intent. Now I see what I must do. Now I understand.” —Frederica Mathewes-Green, author of Facing East

“Against the Machine is an eloquent and erudite critique of the perils of modern technology. But it’s much more than that. It’s a searching, moving meditation on the fate of humanity in a world where money and mechanism have displaced meaning.” —Nicholas Carr, author of Superbloom and The Shallows

“Thank God for Paul Kingsnorth! Serious, furious, and always consistent, this is a Christian thinker who does not sugarcoat his convictions.” —Justin Smith-Riui, author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is

“Kingsnorth has done something extraordinary: he has captured the spiritual crisis of our time in language so compelling I could not put the book down. The vision he paints is a bleak one: a post-human, machinic future. But as long as our world still has space for voices this vivid, I dare hope we have not yet succumbed to the Machine.”—Mary Harrington, author of Feminism Against Progress

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