From bestselling Substack author and journalist Rosie Spinks, an exciting new look at how the key to our survival in a changing, chaotic world is to embrace an ancient piece of human infrastructure: the village.

You’ve likely heard the expression before: “it takes a village” to raise children, to sustain a life, to get things done. But in a time of unprecedented disconnection and loneliness, how exactly do we build the village we need?

For much of her adult life, journalist Rosie Spinks operated on a model of frictionless hyper-independence that fueled a generation. Anything that she needed, she could order; anything that needed to happen, she could find the most direct and seamless route to achieve it. But when she had her first child and confronted the work of caregiving for the first time, that model suddenly stopped working. She quickly realized that “the village” wasn’t just something that appeared the moment you needed it. It had to be built over time, throughout different stages of life.

Now, in How to Build a Village, Spinks blends reporting, personal experience, and practical tools to take a deeper look at how we lost "the village" in our modern world, and how new parents, single urbanites, elder folks, and young adults alike can reclaim it through a radical—but attainable—embrace of mutual reliance and care. Along the way, she explores how humans approach the project of sharing care, from around the world to her own backyard, and offers key takeaways for how we can create the networks of hands-on support we so desperately crave. The result is an eye-opening reframe in how we might view our role in the world, and a critical tool for building a better future for ourselves, and each other.