Adam Lee

About the author Hi! I'm Adam Lee. I write the blog <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/">Daylight Atheism</a>, where I tackle religion, science and politics from a progressive, secular humanist perspective. I'm the author of several books including Daylight Atheism (Big Think, 2012) and most recently, with Andrew Murtagh, Meta: On God, the Big Questions, and the Just City (Cascade Books, 2017). Because I want to speak out against harmful and destructive atheism just as I want theists to speak out against harmful and destructive religion, several years ago I embarked on <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/">a marathon review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged</a>. It ended up becoming the most popular series I've ever written. The book that would become Commonwealth arose from those reviews. About the book Commonwealth is set in a near-future United States that's become a libertarian ruin: the plutocrats' paradise of Ayn Rand's dreams, the chasmic inequality of progressives' nightmares. It's a fading empire of neon and ash, where the rich live in glittering towers above the smog and the poor fight to scrounge a living in toxic slums, all while rising seas are lapping at the door. It's a world where selfishness rules from on high and the days when people worked together and helped each other are a distant memory. But in the darkest hours, there's still resistance, and joy, and a stubborn spark of hope that hasn't been snuffed out. The story follows a small group of dreamers and builders who haven't given up on the world, who have faith in humanity's potential to be better. Concealed among hunger and graffiti and sweat, behind the trash mounds and neon nights and crumbling seawalls, there's a hidden garden where their ideals are made manifest - but to find it, they'll have to go through hell. Commonwealth was born from the times we're living in, where every headline heralds some new outrage and where humanity heedlessly plunges toward self-destruction even as the vision of a better future hangs just beyond reach. It's a response to and a reversal of Atlas Shrugged, a hopepunk hymn, a stark portrait of how low humanity could fall and a philosophical blueprint of how high we could rise. About the Patreon I'm serializing Commonwealth through Patreon. Each Friday, I'll release a new installment to supporters. The book has three major sections, each consisting of 10 to 12 chapters, and I'm planning to publish at the rate of roughly one complete chapter per month.

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You'll get early access to new installments of the book as they're posted.

Reader

New chapter installments as they're posted, plus supporter-only posts with footnotes, tangential material, cutting-room-floor bits and explanations of the allusions, references and in-jokes.

Behind the scenes

New chapter installments and supporter-only posts, plus I'll do a monthly chat session on video or text.

All the lower tiers, plus I'll include you in the acknowledgements of the book.

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