Trip to the Moon: Understanding the True Power of Story

To command narrative is to wield a sometimes frightening power. What is it that supercharges certain stories--and how can that potency be harnessed?

John Yorke's groundbreaking bestseller Into the Woods revolutionized our understanding of story structure. In Trip to the Moon, he goes further, exploring how that structure operates far beyond fiction and drama, shaping politics, religion, and non-Western narrative traditions. This ambitious book takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through global storytelling forms, examining the role story plays in all our lives--and how its principles can be used to create work that truly matters.

Yorke reveals the deep patterns and artful symmetry that connect summer beach reads to classical Chinese poetry, superhero blockbusters to Russian arthouse cinema, and ancient rhetoric to modern state propaganda. At a time when the world is awash with conspiracy theories and weaponized narratives, he also shows how understanding story can help us guard against its darker uses.

Dazzling in its scope and insight, Trip to the Moon demonstrates how stories transform chaos into meaning, restore equilibrium, and--at their most powerful--help remake the world.