Numb: The Politics of Overwhelm was published on June 1, 2026, by Baraka Books.
The publisher’s description of Numb:
“We are exhausted. We are overwhelmed. Worse, we are numb.
No matter what screen you’re getting your news and information from, the barrage is constant, horrific and always urgent: Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, climate change, ecological devastation, AI, toxic social media … and of course Donald Trump and all he represents.
Authoritarian leaders and genocidal regimes have always found numbness a desirable goal, as it narrows the possibilities for revolt. Shocked and awed into submission, we are at the mercy of tyrants, like captive animals in a zoo. What we see in zoo animals may be a ghostly image of ourselves. In this lucid, trenchant book, Mark Abley explores the idea of numbness in today’s political context.”
An early review from Bryn Robinson in The Seaboard Review of Books:
“A credit to the author, he manages to keep the reader engaged — without being relentless … in sharing numbing historical examples to make his point (e.g., pandemics, colonization, genocide, war), and without inducing the very state of withdrawal he is documenting … The book ends with this call to rise to the challenge of resistance.”
A review by Matthew Behrens in Quill & Quire:
“Abley’s title poses critical questions about how we can remember who we are as human beings and how we can lift our spirits without sequestering the truth. He seeks not to avoid the horrors of the world, but rather to find grounding mechanisms that sustain the role of active citizenship and responsible stewardship in response to the images and headlines bombarding our social feeds.
Towards that end, he raises the importance of connection to nature, avoiding social isolation, and finding joy in the modest acts of daily life and our warts-and-all family and friends. His understanding of kindness and goodness is not the Pollyanna pablum of greeting cards, but rather the notion of beloved community that opens the door to acts of resistance that generate hope, a process that cannot be undertaken while feeling discombobulated with numbness.”