Data Empire: How Information Shaped Human History by Roopika Risam

BARACK OBAMA’S 2026 SUMMER READING PICK

An NPR, New Scientist, Nautilus, and Next Big Idea Club Best Book of the Month

“Here is the new history of mankind demanded by our times.” —Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future?

“A must-read.”—NPR, “15 Books Our Critics Can’t Wait to Read This Summer”

“Essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world.” —Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis

From clay tablets to the algorithmic state, a groundbreaking new lens on human history arguing that information has always been the seed of power, for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia, rulers pressed marks into clay to keep track of land, people and grain. To rule, they had to keep count. It is no accident, then, that the first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant.

As ships and navigation expanded our horizons, a new age of European empires took control of more than 80 percent of the world’s surface using censuses, maps and ledgers to decide who belonged, who owed, and who could be sacrificed. Today, we live in the third great era, when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable – yet from targeted advertising to border policing and mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives.

With our earliest tools like ancient cave markings and knotted strings, to colonial record-keeping and the algorithmic state, Data Empire reveals how data has always been the seed of power: a technology of control that has shaped civilizations and upheld empires. Empire was never just about weapons or ships. It was built on collecting information on us, to rule us. Both a sweeping history and a sharp critique, Data Empire is a call to recognize the power data holds—and to imagine what resistance looks like in an age defined by it. In looking at the history of data, readers will understand: