Alone in a Crowd: How Empire Wired Us for Exhaustion

You know the feeling. You are surrounded by people, institutions, and systems, and somehow still carrying everything alone. You assumed it was a personal failure. It isn't.

Alone in a Crowd argues that the exhaustion, disconnection, and quiet despair so many people experience are not symptoms of individual weakness. They are the predictable results of a social order built on empire and colonial capitalism, one that systematically dismantled the collective care structures human beings depend on, then sold back private substitutes that were never designed to hold us.

Drawing on sociology, trauma research, decolonial theory, and the lived experience of communities working to survive and repair, Thomas Tijerina traces how we got here and what it actually takes to rebuild what empire dismantled. This book is a structural diagnosis with a human face, and a serious argument that the path forward runs through community rather than the market.

Written for community organizers, social workers, faith leaders, teachers, and anyone who has ever felt alone in a crowd, this book names what happened and what it would take to build something else.

Author: Thomas Tijerina
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Planet Tyler Press
Published: 09/01/2026
Pages: 202
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.46d
ISBN: 9798997448806