MG

In the near-future world of Drive A, people can sell up to 49 percent of themselves in IPOs to cover expenses like tuition, medical insurance and housing payments—all of which have become largely unaffordable for the middle and working classes. Cable Rostenfarm did so when he was twelve to escape a deteriorating, nightmarish public school system, and now works as an analyst for a human capital hedge fund, Navarium, that buys and short sells other people.

Aaron Sheridan doesn’t want to live anymore. His family just died in a shuttle crash and he’d been the one flying it. The Transit Authority ruled it "instrumentation error", but he knows his mind was drifting. He knows a few millimeters wouldn't have made a difference. And unable to handle the guilt, he signs up for the Fleet expecting a fatal deployment to the Rim War...but is instead assigned to their most prestigious command school, Corinth Station.

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.