A slate of books that read the systems producing ordinary life.

These titles are in development under The Means of Production and its imprint, The Worst Words Worth the Work. They span business and leadership, media and cultural criticism, fiction, and hybrid writing — but they share a single method: take the machinery seriously, and refuse to mistake the backdrop for the subject.

Dates are deliberately unannounced. The work earns its difficulty before it earns a release. To ask about rights, review copies, or a particular title, write to the press.

Forthcoming, by department of attention

Grouped by the field each book interrogates. All titles are in progress; none has a fixed publication date.

Business & Leadership
01

Stakeholder Capitalism: Who Are We Fooling?

Forthcoming — C.E. Harrow

A critical examination of stakeholder capitalism and the narratives organizations use to reconcile profit, responsibility, and public trust. Through case studies and institutional analysis, Harrow investigates how modern corporations manufacture legitimacy and moral authority.

02

Operational Risk Villains

Forthcoming — C.E. Harrow

A practical field guide to the recurring characters, behaviors, and organizational pathologies that emerge inside complex institutions. Combining systems thinking, risk management, and sharp observation, this volume explores how seemingly rational systems generate their own monsters.

Media Criticism
03

Red Screen Reader, Volume I: Television

Forthcoming — The Red Screen

A collection of essays examining contemporary television as cultural infrastructure. Through close readings of popular series, this volume investigates how entertainment shapes ideas about work, identity, power, technology, and belonging.

04

Red Screen Reader, Volume II: Film

Forthcoming — The Red Screen

Extending the Red Screen project into cinema, this volume explores the stories, assumptions, and ideological frameworks embedded within contemporary film culture.

05

Red Screen Reader, Volume III: Capital Cults

Forthcoming — The Red Screen

An investigation of organizations, brands, movements, and institutions that function as modern systems of belief. This volume examines the intersection of power, ritual, myth, and economic life.

06

Broadcast Programming

Forthcoming — Media theory & criticism

A study of narrative transmission and cultural conditioning in the age of mass media. Blending media theory, mythology, and criticism, the book explores how societies teach people what to desire, fear, remember, and forget.

Cultural Criticism
07

The Capitalist Culture Myth Index

Forthcoming — Illustrated catalogue

An illustrated catalogue of the foundational myths that organize contemporary life. Each entry traces the origins, functions, and consequences of the stories modern societies tell about work, success, identity, freedom, and value.

08

Hollywood's Myths: A Mythic Tarot of Actresses, Gods, Monsters, and Archetypes

Forthcoming — Tarot & cultural analysis

Part tarot deck, part cultural analysis, part mythological reference work. This volume maps recurring archetypes within popular culture and explores the symbolic roles actresses occupy within the modern imagination.

09

The Baby Name Book

Forthcoming — Cultural archaeology

Less a naming guide than a cultural archaeology of aspiration. Through names, symbols, trends, and traditions, this volume examines what societies reveal about themselves when they attempt to name the future.

Fiction
10

Handbook for the Recently Deceased

Forthcoming — Victoria Mansberger Schoen

A bureaucratic survival manual for the newly dead. Combining dark humor, administrative absurdity, and speculative fiction, the book offers practical guidance for navigating memory, paperwork, unfinished business, and the afterlife.

11

Quiet Program: Attendance

Forthcoming — Young adult novel

A young adult novel about observation, compliance, friendship, and resistance. As systems of monitoring expand around them, a group of young people must decide what parts of themselves can be recorded and what must remain their own.

Hybrid Poetry, Memoir & Experimental Writing
12

Audit of Lien and Limb / Stars That May Already Be Dead

Forthcoming — Hybrid poetry & memoir

A hybrid work of poetry, memoir, and literary experimentation exploring grief, labor, debt, memory, family history, and the long shadow cast by vanished things. Moving between personal narrative and cultural inquiry, the book examines what remains after loss and what continues despite it.

For advance interest, rights, and review copies of any forthcoming title.

info@themeansofproduction.press