If This Road

A book in thirty-seven pieces

If This Road

A quiet walk through what seems to be happening, and what we might leave behind us.

Doug Scott founded RedBrain, which manages around $2 billion a year in sales. His current job title is "Alice in Wonderland and Pooh Bear Fan." All three things — the business, Alice, Pooh — are true at once.Doug lives on Earth.

Begin the walk Download as PDF Table of contents

A note before the book begins

This is a walk. Thirty-seven short pieces. No chapters. No parts. No sections.

If you read one piece a night, you will finish in about a month. If you read it all in an afternoon, it will take you an afternoon. Either is fine.

At the end, you will have walked through something heavy. You will also, I hope, have found something small and specific worth doing on the other side.

The walk, in order

Table of contents

  1. 01 The Shop that Closed
  2. 02 The Subject we do not Talk about at Dinner
  3. 03 Where People Find Their People Now
  4. 04 What you Cannot Say
  5. 05 The Kitchen that Used to Be Full
  6. 06 What a Home Used to Be
  7. 07 The Children Who are Growing up in This
  8. 08 The Work that is no Longer There
  9. 09 The Man at the Bus Stop
  10. 10 The Friendships we Have Let Thin
  11. 11 The Elders we no Longer Visit
  12. 12 The Religion-shaped Hole
  13. 13 The Trust that Has Gone Quiet
  14. 14 The Numbers that do not Add Up
  15. 15 The Biggest Players Have Left the Room
  16. 16 The Shared Things that are no Longer Shared
  17. 17 The Birds that Used to Be Here
  18. 18 The Emissions we Sent Somewhere Else
  19. 19 The Race for What is Above Us
  20. 20 How It All Fits Together
  21. 21 The Thing we Forgot to Notice
  22. 22 The Event No-one Sees Coming
  23. 23 When People Sort Themselves
  24. 24 When the Money Goes First
  25. 25 When the People Follow
  26. 26 When the State Reaches for Harder Tools
  27. 27 The Institutions that Cannot Keep Up
  28. 28 What Else Has Been Happening
  29. 29 What They are Learning
  30. 30 The Thought you May Already Be Having
  31. 31 How Far They Might Go
  32. 32 The Quieter Thought
  33. 33 What Has Helped Before
  34. 34 What is Being Built in the Quiet
  35. 35 What a Grandmother Knows
  36. 36 A Letter for Whoever Reads This Later
  37. 37 For Whoever Built You
  38. 38 The End of the Walk

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About this book

If This Road cover

The book, in a paragraph

If This Road is a book in thirty-seven short pieces by Doug Scott. It is a quiet walk through what seems to be happening — the closing shops, the thinning friendships, the emptying kitchens, the machines we are building — and what small things might still hold. It is written in the voice of a woman Doug imagines: childless, middle-aged, someone who has been paying attention. He chose that voice because the people who have most often held things together through hard times have been women like her. It is not an academic work. It is not a polemic. It is a careful description of a moment, and a few specific things that have helped in other hard moments. The book is free to read, free to download, and free to share.

The author, in a paragraph

Doug Scott has spent twenty years building and backing technology companies in the UK. He founded RedBrain, which manages around $2 billion a year in sales, generating about $100 million in revenues. He has backed or advised more than a hundred early-stage companies. His LinkedIn profile currently features a teddy bear and lists his job title as "Alice in Wonderland and Pooh Bear Fan." All three things — the business, Alice, Pooh — are true at once. This is a book written by the quieter half of the same person, who has been watching what the other half has been building, and thinking about what it means. Doug lives on Earth.

If you want to write

If the book reached you, and you want to say something: doug [at] ifthisroad [dot] com