'The Artificial State is the factory farming of humans, the sorting and segmenting, the isolation and alienation, the destruction of both human community and the capacity for self-government', writes the prizewinning historian Jill Lepore in her astounding, Orwellian account of how technology has undermined democracy around the world. Tracing the rise and fall of what she calls the 'Artificial State' over more than a century, Lepore examines how political campaigns have been reduced to the digital manipulation of attention-mining algorithms, how multinational corporations control public discourse, and how the era of the liberal nation-state is coming to an end, replaced by the rule of artificially intelligent machines. In a luminous, anguished rumination on everything from robot rights and Elon Musk’s origins to what data centres cost wildlife, Lepore offers a vantage and a history wholly missing from the debate about the decay of democracy, the destruction of the natural world, and the future of humanity.

Jill Lepore writes history like a poet -- Dan Snow
A person can’t help but feel inspired by the riveting intelligence and joyful curiosity of Jill Lepore. Knowing that there is a mind like hers in the world is a hope-inducing thing -- George Saunders
Lepore is a brilliant historian with an eye for unusual and revealing stories -- James Gleick
Jill Lepore is unquestionably one of America’s best historians; it’s fair to say she’s one of its best writers too * Los Angeles Times *
Lepore is a sophisticated and original thinker and an ensnaring, witty, and provocative storyteller * Booklist *
As both a Jeremiah and a troubadour, Jill Lepore has one of the most distinctive voices in American literary life -- David W. Blight

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.