Crikey correspondent Bernard Keane explains capitalism, identity and Why Everything Is Awful

'A powerful and occasionally polemical appeal to reason in politics; if you're despairing in search of an antidote to the poison of "alternative facts", here's your book. Like any good political text, there's something here to offend everyone. You'll want to cheer, high-five and occasionally shout your disagreement, but what you won't want to do is put it down.' Former Senator Scott Ludlam

A tide of populism and xenophobia is sweeping the western world. Disillusioned voters are turning to political outsiders and increasingly rejecting the liberal economic solutions of out-of-touch elites. Despite having access to more information than at any time in human history, we are turning our backs on experts, evidence and facts themselves in a new Era of Electronic Ignorance. Many warn darkly of a repeat of the chaos, misery and war of the 1930s.

How did it all go so wrong? The Mess We're In explains how a perfect storm of historical developments has left us fearing that a Dark Age is fast approaching. How the triumphant economic philosophy of neoliberalism has failed us and provoked a backlash that is sweeping it aside. How the internet is rewiring our economies, our media, our culture and even our own brains. How politics has become a hollowed-out industry of self-interest rather than a public service. And how, together, they've unleashed a wave of anger and fear that has engulfed the world.

But don't panic, says Bernard Keane: things are also better than they seem to be. In this fascinating, entertaining and occasionally maddening book, he points to how we can fix things - and also how Australia can lead the way.