A prescient book that looks at how we have, over the centuries, inflicted oppression on others for our own advantage over history, right up to the present day.

An eye-opening book about how societies are designed to support the status of those in power at the destructive expense of those without it. Read it and take responsibility.

ECOLOGICAL OPPRESSION
In 1958, China declared war on sparrows, destroying its own crops and contributing to the deaths of more than 10 million people.

ECONOMIC OPPRESSION
In the nineteenth century, the Shuar people of Ecuador were driven by economic necessity to procure shrunken heads for the Western curio market. The bloody wars that ensued nearly destroyed their society.

EDUCATIONAL OPPRESSION
There have been fifty-five prime ministers of Great Britain, of whom forty-eight have been privately educated, creating a society built by and for the privileged.

These are just some of the stories in this remarkable book that illustrate the key factors that allow societies to create and sustain oppressive systems. Some are historical. Others have played out right before our eyes over the last decade. All are rooted in the systems in which we all participate.

Together they represent the layers of systematic, often insidious oppression that make up the world today.

'You could not ask for a more eloquent guide than this book. Essential' Sathnam Sanghera An eye-opening book about how societies are designed to support those in power, at the expense of those without it. COLONIAL POWER In the 1950s, over 10,000 Kenyans were killed by the British during the Mau Mau uprising against a government determined to install a sympathetic post-independence regime and continue to exploit the resources of its former colonies. PATRIARCHAL POWER After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic systematically removed freedoms from women, relegating them to second-class citizens in the name of religious teachings. EDUCATIONAL POWER There have been fifty-seven prime ministers of the United Kingdom, of whom forty-three have been privately educated, creating a society built by and for the privileged. These are just some of the stories through which Dr Jack Davy illustrates the key factors that allow societies to create and sustain oppressive systems. Some are historical. Others have played out right before our eyes over the last decade. All are rooted in the systems in which we all participate. Read this book, and take action. 'Sharp and insightful. Jack Davy makes complex ideas accessible in this powerful book about the roots of inequality' Caroline Dodds Pennock, author of On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe 'A deeply humane book with true hope in its message' Ray Mattinson, Blackwells