The 2010s have been a double-edged decade. Socioeconomic factors have led to the widespread and increased disenfranchisement of poorer people from the mainstream media and the institutions shaping it. This has coincided with a growing number of people from low income backgrounds also receiving better educations than ever before, and having the means at their disposal to both name and resent it. Steal as much as you can is the story of how this bright generation came to be, and what effective means are still at their disposal to challenge the establishment and ultimately win. By rejecting the established routines of achieving prosperity, and by stealing what you can from them on the way, this book offers hope to anyone who feels increasingly frustrated by our increasingly unequal society.
Nathalie Olah was born in Birmingham. After periods of time living in Germany and the Netherlands, she has been based as a freelance journalist and editor in London since 2015. Her writing focuses on the intersection between politics and contemporary culture, with an emphasis on marginalized and working class communities and includes essays, fiction and reviews which have been published widely in Five Dials, Dazed, AnOther, i-D, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement.
Title: Steal as Much as You Can: How to Win the Culture Wars in an Age of Austerity
Author: Nathalie Olah
ISBN: 9781912248568
Binding:
Publisher: Watkins Media
Publication Date: 2019-10-08
Number of Pages: 174
Weight: 0.1730 kg
A book of anger and resistance - we need more working-class voices like hers. A class book about class war.
A how-to guide for creating things of worth and truth when upper middle-class pop culture has dominated, and affected British politics in a very real way.
What makes Steal As Much As You Can so urgent isn't just that Olah diagnoses these problems, but that she offers a roadmap out of this stagnation. The book ends with a call to arms for a coarse, unapologetic, creative working class culture, and how to achieve it.
A stirring, spiky book that comes as a pertinent reminder that nothing is inevitable and that things can always get better.
This razor-sharp polemic exploring class, taste and culture, is one of the most insightful analyses of the British class system I've read in years.