Almost four decades ago, Barry Jones foretold the future with his seminal book, Sleepers, Wake! Now, he is back, with new energy and insights. For those wanting to understand the confounding age in which we live, What Is To Be Done is essential reading. I hope it will galvanise the many debates we need to have if we are to shape a better future.” —Julia Gillard AC
“The author of this book is a genius. He irritates the hell out people of all political loyalties. He reads virtually everything that matters. In these pages we, his readers, are the beneficiaries. Forty years after his masterpiece Sleepers, Wake! he tackles the challenges of a new age: the digital world, climate change, COVID-19, and widespread political disillusionment. If any author can offer us thoughtful directions for what is to be done, it is Barry Jones.” —Michael Kirby AC CMG
“Honestly critical and generous judgements from Australia’s most knowledgeable mind, about threats to our civilisation and how we can conserve the best.” —Ross Garnaut AC
“Read Barry’s book. No one has ever thought longer, harder, and deeper about this country.” —Phillip Adams AO
“Some of the issues that Barry Jones addressed 40 years back in Sleepers, Wake! persist, while new problems have emerged. Now, in an even more challenged world, he asks the single most important question: ‘What’s to be done?’” —Professor Peter Doherty
“The hope for this book is that the young people who read it will respond to its scientifically sound and brilliant analyses of how our society needs to change post Covid. Their health and wellbeing, as well as that of the planet, depends on citizens being informed and challenging our undemocratic political culture.” —Professor Fiona Stanley
“If anyone has written a more precise distillation of the current issues and implications of climate change, I haven’t read or heard of it.” —Geoff Cousins AM
“[Barry Jones is an] irrepressible, hugely intelligent, always insightful and utterly unique man … What Is To Be Done blends an astonishing array of scholarly research with insights from history, philosophy and literature, coupled with biographical reflections and anecdotes, to assemble political and policy recommendations that make a persuasive case for a new way forward.” —Troy Bramston, The Australian
“What Is to Be Done picks up from where Sleepers, Wake! left off. Like that seminal 1982 work, What is to be Done is a clarion call for addressing the cultural, political and environmental challenges that we face today.” —Happy Magazine
“Intellectually conceived and yet highly accessible, Barry Jones’ book is a must-read for every concerned citizen.” —Mary Ann Elliott, The Chronicle
Praise for Sleepers, Wake!:
“[A]n extremely interesting and provocative book…The author is justified in claiming that its central message is relevant to all industrial societies and it deserves to be widely read in all of them…What makes this book a much better attempt than most is the breadth of the approach, the sense of history, and the sense of humor…it is strong on the political implications of the information revolution and has admirable things to say on the dangers of technological disfranchisement and technological determinism. The critique of the role of the automobile in urban societies has seldom been put better…[A] book which should not be missed.” —Chris Freeman, University of Sussex, Prometheus: critical studies in innovation
