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 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. Here 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 and poetic, Against the Machine is a spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age. This title will be released on September 23, 2025.

Three decades of work finally comes together:

Above, you can see an interview with me that was recorded three years ago, when I was in the thick of writing the essays that would become this book, and also when I was in the thick of my facial hair. Perhaps I might not say everything in quite the same way now (or perhaps I would: it’s hard to know until the camera starts rolling) but this is a good enough distillation of the story I’m trying to tell. If you don’t want to buy a 300-page book, you can just watch this instead. Or you can do both, which of course is strongly encouraged.

My main emotion today is probably relief. I’ve said before that this book, at least in terms of my non-fiction work, is in some ways my magnum opus. It’s a distillation of all the themes that have obsessed me since I was a naive young road protester in the early 1990s. In some ways, much of my life since then, including my spate editing The Ecologist in the late 1990s, my time running the Dark Mountain Project in the 2010s and in much of my freelance writing, has involved trying to work out what was really going on out there, and what I actually thought about it. I asked these questions in many of my previous books, such as One No, Many Yeses, Real England, Uncivilisation and Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist.

This book draws all those themes together in as cohesive and coherent a way as I can manage. I won’t be writing anything like it again: as far as I’m concerned, this is it for me and the Machine. We’ve been dancing this strange, mutually hostile tango for three decades now, and while some I’m sure of these themes will continue to make an appearance here, there will be no more great non-fiction tomes on the subject from me. I’m over it, as the kids say. I’ve done my best, and this is it. Everything – well, most things – that I want to say about the tightening net that surrounds us is in here. From now on, if anyone asks me about this ‘Machine’, I’m just going to point them to this book.

What comes next? Well, I’ll have more to say on that later in the year after my whirl of book promotional events is over. For now, I just want to want to say thank you to all of the readers who supported this work by subscribing to the Abbey, reading my ramblings, commenting on them, challenging me when I’m wrong, pointing me towards things I should read, and encouraging me to keep going when I felt lost in the weeds. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this book would not have happened without this Substack and its readers, especially those of you who have been with me from the early days – and even more especially, my super-generous Founder Members. Thank you all. I mean it.

And with that, I’m off on the first stop of a three-week American speaking tour. Tonight I’ll be launching the book at a live event at the UnHerd Club in London before heading off to the US. If you can’t make it, you can watch it live here at 7pm UK time (I don’t know if you have to be an UnHerd subscriber to watch, but it doesn’t look like it). Details of all my public events over the next two months can be found here.

If any of you feel inclined to pray for my health and safety along the way, I’d be very grateful. It’ll be a gruelling trip, but hopefully rewarding one. Perhaps I’ll meet some of you on the road.