What do 19th-century whaling, the Vietnam War, and the genocide in Gaza have in common? Why is the population living in favelas continuously increasing? How are refugee internment camps connected to landfills? What is the red line that leads from fertilizer production to millions of deaths? Why do we waste one-third of the food we produce while the number of hungry people rises? What does it mean that politics is the management of energy surplus? Was Walter Benjamin right in claiming that revolution will be the brake and not the steam engine of history?

Through twelve chapters weaving personal stories from travels around the world, with notes from fifteen travel notebooks, scientific thought, and political-economic analysis, the author puts many seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces in place. In doing so, he reconstructs how modern capitalism and the dictatorship of “business as usual” shape a world that systematically produces waste peoples and individuals, as well as mountains of waste.

From professional bone collectors in “Mad Max capitalism,” from landfills to death bonds, from Chaplin’s Modern Times to the Titanic shipwreck, from Konstantinos Konofagos to Fritz Haber, the book maps the social and political roots of the generalized crisis we live in and outlines a possible path out.

The author does not provide easy answers but carefully and analytically poses critical questions, overturning many established certainties. It is a collage-like book that reads like a travel narrative and leaves a bittersweet yet persistently optimistic aftertaste. It is written for those who believe that understanding the world is the first prerequisite to changing it.