Every book

Science & engineering·Thomas Levenson · Penguin Random House · 2026

In his latest book, Levenson searches for the origins of the most common arguments against vaccines: that they are unnatural; that they are more dangerous than the illnesses they claim to prevent; and that they are an affront to freedom. "A Pox on Fools" explores the human impulse to question and wonder, sometimes past the point at which the very act of questioning turns deadly.

Culture, humanities & social science·Edward Schiappa · Routledge · 2026

In this book, Schiappa delves into the identification and analysis of fallacies, the evaluation of evidence, and the crucial roles of context, audience adaptation, and argumentative style. It explores the ethical dimensions of argument, the impact of cognitive bias, and the influence of cultural and discourse communities.

Technology & society·Karrie G. Karahalios · MIT Press · 2026

This book serves as a first-of-its-kind roadmap for auditing artificial intelligence systems to prevent decision-making failures in health care, policing, and employment. Using canonical examples of AI gone wrong, from misidentified facial recognition to biased hiring algorithms, this book explains why robust audits are essential and how they drive concrete policy and corporate change.

Education, work, finance & impact·Erin L. Scott · MIT Press · 2026

This edited volume introduces and explores the concept of Bayesian entrepreneurship, a novel framework for understanding entrepreneurial decision-making under uncertainty. It brings together contributions from leading scholars to examine how entrepreneurs form beliefs about opportunities, learn through experimentation, and make strategic decisions.

Science & engineering·Lorna J. Gibson · MIT Press · 2026

A renowned engineer and lifelong birder, Gibson explores the hidden microscopic structures and engineering principles that keep birds aloft and alive, how an egg forms, how a bird generates lift, how woodpeckers safely drill their holes, and much more. She also considers the longer view of birds in their habitats and natural history. Her up-close look at avian mysteries provides a perspective like no other, for the expert ornithologist and curious observer alike.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Rosalyn Shieh · Park Books / University of Chicago Press · 2026

Based on the work and vision of their architecture firm Schaum/Shieh, this book shares what is said and what can be heard in a studio. So much of architectural thinking and knowledge is presented, formulated, and traded in spoken words: pinups, meetings, walkthroughs. Those exchanges inform this book, in which ideas and knowledge that are usually only spoken are made accessible to readers.

Science & engineering·Libby Hsu · Springer Nature · 2026

In her chapter, "Drinking Water Status Around the World and Its Effect on Health," Hsu discusses the Earth's water resources, which are found in a variety of settings. In her chapter, "Waterless and Low-Water Sanitation Technologies that Improve Quality of Life and Conserve Water Resources," she shares her experience with sanitation challenges in the Global South and how that has reinforced the value of waterless and low-water sanitation technologies that are suitable for scaling around the world.

Technology & society·Dwaipayan Banerjee · Princeton University Press · 2026

In this book, Banerjee examines India's pursuit of technological self-sufficiency, and the global forces that prevailed against this vision. He describes why the nation is "the world's leading provider of inexpensive outsourcing and offshoring services, yet enjoys minimal benefits from more profitable advances in research, manufacturing, and development."

Culture, humanities & social science·Jason Jackson · Cambridge University Press · 2026

Conventional approaches cite India's leftist "socialism" and Brazil's right-wing authoritarianism to explain why India resisted foreign direct investment (FDI) while Brazil welcomed foreign firms. However, this ignores puzzling industry-level variation: India restricted FDI in auto manufacturing but allowed multinationals in oil, while Brazil welcomed foreign auto companies but prohibited FDI in oil. This book argues that FDI policies were shaped by contrasting colonial experiences that generated distinct economic nationalisms and patterns of industrialization in both countries.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Miho Mazereeuw · University of Virginia Press · 2026

Few countries have faced as many environmental disasters as Japan, which has endured typhoons, cyclones, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. Japanese residents have responded to their precarious circumstances by developing a unique culture of disaster preparedness, equipping the island nation to plan for future emergencies and to greatly reduce their impact. Mazereeuw offers a detailed framework to design and prepare for anticipated disasters and describes effective interventions in urban landscape and architecture.

Fiction & poetry·Scott Austin Tirrell · Self-published · 2026

Abandoned by her father and raised by the streets of Grafton Notch, Jezelle survives by trusting no one. When a strange magic awakens within her, it offers more than escape, it offers power. But in a city that preys on broken children, power makes her valuable, dangerous, and hunted. To claim the life stolen from her, Jezelle must decide what she is willing to become.

Education, work, finance & impact·Lita Nelsen · MIT Press · 2026

"Launching from the Lab" provides a much-needed framework for new entrepreneurs who are founding companies based on "deep technology", groundbreaking innovations rising from new discoveries in fundamental research. Nelsen and Stancik Boyce cover the steps to launch and fund such companies, beginning with emergence from the laboratory and acquiring intellectual property through the intensive research of customer needs, building a team, and raising capital.

Technology & society·Elisabeth B. Reynolds · MIT Press · 2026

A new world order is emerging, and within it, U.S. priorities are shifting. For the country to flourish as well as defend and secure its interests, it must build on its decades of experience in developing frontier technologies and globally competitive industries through investments into priority technologies for the 21st century. This volume presents an introduction to some of the key areas where the U.S. must lead in order to ensure both national and economic security: critical minerals, semiconductors, biomanufacturing, quantum computing, drones, and advanced manufacturing.

Technology & society·Nick Montfort · Printed Matter · 2026

This work is based on a text generator that produces French and English news items that imagine some of the ways technology will impact us in the near future. Most of the generated news involves people getting struck by autonomous vehicles or even aircraft. Others describe labor disputes, hostile takeover attempts, inventions, and the termination of online services. What is imagined in "RT/TS" is not apocalyptic or discontinuous but actually features many of the same problems we face today; the methods of producing the texts are today's as well.

Education, work, finance & impact·Kristin J. Forbes · MIT Press · 2026

Central banks are navigating a world of higher debt, tightly interconnected markets, and rising geopolitical tensions. How might they respond effectively? In "The Art of Monetary Policy," Forbes draws on the writings of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu to suggest modern principles for central banks, including preparing for the next financial battle, establishing a strong tactical position, combining weapons and methods, and modifying and varying tactics to maintain flexibility.

Culture, humanities & social science·Benjamin A. Olken · MIT Press · 2026

Over the past several decades, social protection programs that provide financial assistance to the poor and insure against shocks for the vulnerable have become widespread in low- and middle-income countries. These programs can play a critical role in society. This book provides an overview of what we know about the differing aspects of social protection and highlights the open questions for research for the future.

Culture, humanities & social science·Joshua Bennett · Little, Brown, and Company · 2026

In this work, Bennett offers a series of profiles, carefully wrought to see how some prominent figures were able to flourish from childhood forward. He closely reads their works for indications about how they understood the shape of their own lives. In so doing, Bennett underscores the significance of the social settings that prodigious talents grow up in. He also offers reflections on his own career trajectory and encounters with these artists, driving home their influence and meaning.

Fiction & poetry·Sarah C. Beckmann · Finishing Line Press · 2026

A poetry collection structured as a crew race exploring girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood through the experiences of a rower and writer. These poems subvert the historical dominance of male heroes by celebrating ordinary female heroism, while examining love, home, and what it means to be an American woman today.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Kate Brown · W.W. Norton · 2026

Nurturing health, hope, and community, gardeners in cities and suburbs are reclaiming lost commons, transforming vacant lots into vibrant plots, turning waste into compost, and recreating what was once the most productive agriculture in recorded human history. In a book with global scope, ranging from Estonia to Amsterdam and Washington, Brown contends that urban gardening has many positive spillover effects, from health and environmental benefits to community-building, apart from periods of pushback when others are trying to eliminate it.

Fiction & poetry·Joshua Bennett · Penguin Books · 2026

Bennett marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. with a book-length work of poetry about the country and some of its distinctive figures. The piece features remarkable people or inventions from each of the 50 states, meditating on their place in the nation's cultural fabric.

Culture, humanities & social science·Brad Skow · Pentameter Press · 2025

"American Independence in verse," published by Pentameter Press, traces a story of America's origins through a collection of vignettes featuring some well-known characters, like politician and orator Patrick Henry, alongside some lesser-known but no less important ones, like royalist and former chief justice of North Carolina Martin Howard. Each is rendered in blank verse, a nursery-style rhyme, or free verse.

Science & engineering·Howard J. Herzog · MIT Press · 2025

In "Carbon Removal," Herzog and MacDowell discuss how technology and policy can come together to help us reach "net-zero" climate targets. The authors explore the rapidly evolving world of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), presenting the technological pathways of enhancing the land sink, biomass-based carbon capture and storage, engineered removal methods, and ocean-based carbon removal. They also discuss barriers facing CDR as well as ethical implications of this process.

Education, work, finance & impact·Ben Soltoff · Wiley · 2025

Climate and energy entrepreneurs face challenges that traditional startup playbooks don't address. Their ventures can require massive capital and take years to reach market, all while striving to achieve a positive impact on people, planet, and profit. This book adapts the MIT-born "Disciplined Entrepreneurship" framework specifically for climate and energy ventures, recognizing that founders in this space need their own approach.

Science & engineering·Felice Frankel · Candlewick Press · 2025

Enlisting readers to "be the scientist" through vivid fine-art photographs, science photographer Felice Frankel zooms in and out on beautiful and brilliant moments all around us to reveal the chemical, natural, or physical processes, from viscosity and venation to chlorophyll and capillary action, behind scientific phenomena.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Nasser Rabbat · American University in Cairo Press · 2025

This book delves into the complex interplay of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, challenging the traditionally held dichotomy between the end of violence and the commencement of rebuilding. The contributors to this volume, architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians, employ critical concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and "civilian crisis architecture" to argue against the conventional theoretical frameworks that support a neat separation of phases.

Culture, humanities & social science·Charles L. Glaser · Cornell University Press · 2025

Many believe China's ascent will drive it to war with the United States. Yet this is far from inevitable; geography and nuclear weapons should ensure U.S. security. The real danger, Glaser contends, lies in East Asia's territorial disputes, especially over Taiwan. To reduce the risk of war, Glaser makes a bold case for ending U.S. security commitments to Taiwan and carefully calibrating its policies on protecting South China Sea maritime features.

Culture, humanities & social science·Delia Wendel · Duke University Press · 2025

Drawing from oral histories and a visual archive of memory work after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Wendel explores the human rights and government priorities that preserved killing sites and victims' remains for public display. Rwanda's genocide memorials exemplify a global phenomenon that Wendel terms "trauma heritage," wherein hidden or unrecognized violence is made visible in public space to demand justice and recognition. Wendel argues that trauma heritage innovates on the form histories take by "writing" them into landscapes, constituting a reparative historiography from the Global South.

Technology & society·Sotirios Kotsopoulos SM '00 · Springer Nature · 2025

chapter by Terry W. Knight, the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Design and Computation in the Department of Architecture This book provides a panorama of "shape computation" and "shape grammars," a computational theory that has, from its inception 50 years ago, been directed toward the "how" of design. Knight's chapter, "How is that? Computing the Temporality of Drawing," describes how process and time are key to studying, appreciating, designing, and making things. She notes that in creative production it is not only important to ask, "What is that?" but also "How is that?", in other words, how did or how can a thing come to be? As a process carried out over time, computation offers a means for rethinking, representing, and elevating the "how" in designing and making activities.

Technology & society·Alex "Sandy" Pentland · MIT Press · 2025

How can we build a flourishing society by using human nature to design technology rather than letting technology shape society? Pentland explores how cultural inventions, from civilizations to the Enlightenment, accelerated innovation and collective wisdom. He argues that understanding these key factors in cultural evolution is essential for solving global challenges like climate change and pandemics, and shows how AI and digital media can aid rather than replace human deliberation.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Brent D. Ryan · Springer Nature · 2025

This book explores the transformative power of digitization in rural regions, where technology isn't just a tool, but a lifeline for local culture, economic resilience, and future development. Born from a unique research collaboration between the MIT and Politecnico di Milano, this book brings together scholarly work on shrinking towns, economic development, and digital innovation. The project tackled some of the most pressing challenges facing rural Italy, from population decline to economic stagnation, through the lens of digital transformation.

Science & engineering·Edward A. F. Gibson · MIT Press · 2025

This book lays out the grammar of a language from the perspective of a cognitive scientist, outlining the components of language structure and the model of syntax that Gibson advocates: dependency grammar, in which a word is connected to another word via a dependency arc to form a larger compositional meaning. This formalism can explain numerous aspects of word order universals across languages.

Culture, humanities & social science·Malick W. Ghachem · Princeton University Press · 2025

Many things account for Haiti's modern troubles. A good perspective on them comes from going back in time to 1715 or so, and grappling with a far-flung narrative involving the French monarchy, a financial speculator named John Law, and a stock-market crash called the "Mississippi Bubble." In "The Colony and the Company," Ghachem examines the economic transformations and multi-sided power struggles of that time.

Technology & society·Benjamin Mangrum · Stanford University Press · 2025

We often deal with our doubts and fears about computing through humor, whether reconciling ourselves to machines or critiquing them. In fact, this dynamic turns up throughout modern culture, in movies, television, fiction, and the theater. Mangrum analyzes this phenomenon in "The Comedy of Computation," digging into several facets of modern culture and technology.

Culture, humanities & social science·Gary Gensler · Centre for Economic Policy Research · 2025

How might the economic and geopolitical positions of the Trump administration affect growth, trade, investment, inflation, stability, and the role of the U.S. dollar? This volume offers evidence-based, expert analysis to help decision makers understand the impact of tariffs, breaks in global alliances, government downsizing, deregulation, threats to the rule of law, and more.

Science & engineering·Tom Zeller Jr. · Harper Collins · 2025

Undark , published by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT From blinding migraines to severe headache disorders known as "clusters," chronic head pain affects 40 percent of the population, many of them suffering in silence. Finally, "The Headache" reveals the science behind a group of disorders that is as much a curse as a cultural punchline, and leads to key insights into the nature of pain itself. Guided by his own decades-long struggle with cluster headaches, Zeller's journey into headache science is at once intimate and panoramic.

Education, work, finance & impact·Emilio J. Castilla · Columbia University Press · 2025

Organizations often hail meritocracy as a fair and efficient way to identify, advance, and reward talent. But efforts to create a level playing field can be held back by talent management systems that confer rewards based on individual performance evaluations. In practice, these merit-based systems "may actually reinforce or create advantages for certain groups," Castilla contends.

Technology & society·Erik Lin-Greenberg · Cornell University Press · 2025

In "The Remote Revolution," Erik Lin-Greenberg shows that drones are rewriting the rules of international security, but not in ways one would expect. Leveraging diverse types of evidence from original wargames, survey experiments, and cases of U.S. and Israeli drone operations, Lin-Greenberg explores how drone operations lower risks of escalation.

Science & engineering·Alan Lightman · Penguin Random House · 2025

Lightman and Rees pull back the curtain on the field of science, revealing that scientists are driven by the same sense of curiosity, wonder, and responsibility toward a future that shapes us all. They guide us through the fascinating lives and minds of scientists around the world and throughout time, and provide an inside peek at what makes scientists tick, their daily lives, passions, and concerns about the societies they live in.

Education, work, finance & impact·Nelson Repenning · Hachette · 2025

The chaos of everyday business forces people into an exhausting, ineffective, seemingly never-ending cycle of work-arounds, firefighting, and Whac-a-Mole. The irritatingly urgent crowds out the lastingly important. In this book, Repenning and Kieffer describe the game-changing discipline of dynamic work design, which improves productivity, reduces costs, and increases efficiency, ensuring that all parts of a company can work in concert.

Culture, humanities & social science·Francis J. Gavin · Yale University Press · 2025

It seems obvious that we should use history to improve policy. If we have a good understanding of the past, it should enable better decisions in the present, especially in the highly consequential worlds of statecraft and strategy. But how do we gain that knowledge? How should history be used? In this book, Gavin explains the many ways historical knowledge can help us understand and navigate the complex, often confusing world around us.

Culture, humanities & social science·Mariya Grinberg · Cornell University Press · 2025

"Trade in War" is an urgent, insightful study of a puzzling wartime phenomenon: states doing business with their enemies. To explain why states trade with their enemies, Grinberg examines the wartime commercial policies of major powers during the Crimean War, the two World Wars, and several post-1989 wars.

Culture, humanities & social science·Jason Jackson · Harvard University Press · 2025

Is foreign capital an agent of economic growth in developing countries or a vehicle of extraction? Examining how Indian elites wrestled with this question in the late colonial and postcolonial periods, Jackson argues that it reflects a false binary. Instead of simply choosing between domestic and foreign capital, Indian policymakers have long considered the business ethics of individual firms. Indian economic nationalism, in other words, has never been characterized by a straightforward preference for domestic over foreign capital.

Science & engineering·Jennifer Morris · Springer Nature · 2025

Understanding future emissions scenarios is essential for preparing for climate change. The chapter "Emissions and Concentration Scenarios" examines how socioeconomic uncertainty contributes to overall climate change projections, and identifies key drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. It reviews the history of emissions scenarios and compares various approaches, including IPCC methods and formal uncertainty analysis techniques. The chapter concludes with lessons learned from over 40 years of socioeconomic scenario development for climate research.

For young readers·Kaija Langley · Denene Millner Books / Simon and Schuster · 2025

A great-grandma imparts the wisdom gained over her 100 years to an eager little girl in this tender picture book tribute to family and living a long, purposeful, beautiful life.

Education, work, finance & impact·Phil Budden · MIT Press · 2025

Leaders in large organizations face continuous pressure to innovate, and few possess the internal resources needed to keep up with rapid advances in science and technology. But looking beyond their own organizations, most face a bewildering landscape of external resources. In "Accelerating Innovation," leaders will find a practical guide to this external landscape. Budden and Murray provide directions for navigating innovation ecosystems - those hotspots worldwide where researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors congregate.

Culture, humanities & social science·Kathleen Thelen · Princeton University Press · 2025

This book traces the evolution of U.S. retailing from the late 19th century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet. Thelen reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper's paradise built on cheap labor.

Culture, humanities & social science·Arthur Bahr · University of Chicago Press · 2025

In this book, Bahr explores the four poems and 12 illustrations of the "Pearl-Manuscript," the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: "Pearl" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." He explores how the physical manuscript enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances that show it to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the text's intricate language, Bahr suggests new ways to understand the power of poetry.

Technology & society·Munther Dahleh · Cambridge University Press · 2025

Harnessing the power of data and artificial intelligence (Al) methods to tackle complex societal challenges requires transdisciplinary collaborations across academia, industry, and government. In this book, Dahleh, founder of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), offers a blueprint for researchers, professionals, and institutions to create approaches to problems of high societal value using innovative, holistic, data-driven methods.

Culture, humanities & social science·Ian Kumekawa · Penguin Random House · 2025

What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany have in common? The Balder Scapa: a single barge that served all three roles. Through this one vessel, Kumekawa illustrates many currents: globalization, the transience of economic activity, and the hazy world of transactions many call "the offshore," the lightly regulated sphere of economic activity that encourages short-term actions.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Marissa Friedman · Alliance for Jewish Theater · 2025

Produced by the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, this guide was created to help non-Jewish theaters produce Jewish plays with authenticity, cultural awareness, and care. Friedman contributes a chapter on dramaturgy, exploring how the primary role of a dramaturg is to support a playwright and production team in articulating their artistic vision, and setting forth an ideal model for the dramaturgy of a Jewish play, with both a theatrical dramaturg and a Jewish dramaturg.

Culture, humanities & social science·Jana Dambrogio · MIT Press · 2025

Before the invention of the gummed envelope in the 1830s, how did people secure their private letters? The answer is letterlocking - the ingenious process of securing a letter using a combination of folds, tucks, slits, or adhesives such as sealing wax, so that it becomes its own envelope. In this book, Dambrogio and Starza Smith, experts who have pioneered the field over the last 10 years, tell the fascinating story of letterlocking within epistolary history, drawing on real historical examples from all over the world.

Culture, humanities & social science·Jonathan Gruber · University of Chicago Press · 2025

As formal long-term care becomes unaffordable for seniors in many countries, public systems and unpaid caregivers increasingly bear the burden of supporting the world's aging population. "Long-Term Care around the World" is a comparative analysis of long-term care in 10 wealthy countries that considers the social costs of both formal and informal care -which is critical, given that informal unpaid care is estimated to account for one-third of all long-term care spending.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Samuel Jay Keyser · MIT Press · 2025

Leonard Bernstein, in his famous Norton Lectures, extolled repetition, saying that it gave poetry its musical qualities and that music theorists' refusal to take it seriously did so at their peril. "Play It Again, Sam" takes Bernstein seriously. In this book, Keyser explores why we enjoy works of poetry, music, and painting, and how repetition plays a central part in the pleasure.

Education, work, finance & impact·Lotte Bailyn · Routledge · 2025

Whether they're one of the 73 million baby boomers reaching their full retirement benefit age or zoomers just entering the workforce, at some point most working Americans will retire. The optimal approach to retirement is unique to each person, but this book offers wisdom and anecdotes from more than 120 people and detailed interviews with 14 "stars" regarding their retirement transitions.

Science & engineering·Thomas Levenson · Penguin Random House · 2025

For centuries, people in the West, believing themselves to hold God-given dominion over nature, thought too much of humanity and too little of microbes. Nineteenth-century scientists finally made the connection. Life-saving methods to control infections and contain outbreaks soon followed. Next came the antibiotic era in the 1930s. Yet, less than a century later, the promise of that revolution is receding due to years of overuse. Is our self-confidence getting the better of us again?

Culture, humanities & social science·Bruno Perreau · MIT Press · 2025

How can the rights of minorities be protected in democracies? The question has been front and center in the U.S. since the Supreme Court's repeal of affirmative action. In Europe too, minority politics are being challenged. The very notion of "minority" is being questioned, while the notion of a "protected class" risks encouraging competition among minorities. In "Spheres of Injustice," Perreau demonstrates how we can make the fight against discrimination beneficial for all.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Natalie Bell · MIT Press · 2025

Accompanying the related exhibition at MIT List Visual Arts Center and Buffalo AKG Art Museum, "Steina" brings renewed recognition to Steina (b. 1940, Iceland), tracing her oeuvre from early collaborative works with her partner Woody Vasulka to her independent explorations of optics and a liberated, non-anthropocentric subjectivity.

Technology & society·Ja-Naé Duane · Wiley · 2025

This book describes how we're at the end of one 200-year arc and embarking on another. With this new age of intelligence, Duane and Fisher highlight the catalysts for change currently affecting individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. They also provide a model for transformation that utilizes a holistic view of making radical change through three lenses: you as a leader, your organization, and society.

Culture, humanities & social science·Andrea Campbell · Princeton University Press · 2025

Most Americans want the rich to pay more to fund government, yet favor regressive over progressive taxes. Why this policy-preference gap? In this book, Campbell describes how convoluted tax code confuses the public about who pays and who benefits, so tax preferences do not turn on principles, interests, or even party. Instead, race and racism play large roles, and tax skepticism among Americans of all stripes helps the rich and anti-tax forces undermine progressivity.

Technology & society·Dimitris Bertsimas · Dynamic Ideas · 2025

Analytics is transforming health care operations, empowering medical professionals and administrators to leverage data and models to make better decisions. This book provides a practical introduction to this exciting field. The first part establishes the technical foundations of health care analytics, spanning machine learning and optimization. The second part presents integrated case studies that cover a wide range of clinical specialties and problem types using descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics.

Culture, humanities & social science·Ruth Perry · Oxford University Press · 2025

In "The Ballad World of Anna Gordon, Mrs. Brown of Falkland," Ruth Perry details what we know about the ways folk ballads were created and transmitted; how Anna Gordon came to know so many; the social and political climate in which they existed; and why these songs meant so much in Scotland and elsewhere in the Atlantic world.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Peter B. Kaufman · MIT Press · 2025

Video is today's most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world's internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. "The Moving Image" is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.

Technology & society·David Mindell · MIT Press · 2025

Climate change, global disruption, and labor scarcity are forcing us to rethink the underlying principles of industrial society. In this book, Mindell envisions this new industrialism from the fundamentals, drawing on the 18th century when first principles were formed at the founding of the Industrial Revolution. While outlining the new industrialism, he tells the story of the Lunar Society, a group of engineers, scientists, and industrialists who came together to apply the principles of the Enlightenment to industrial processes.

Fiction & poetry·Scott Austin Tirrell · Satirrell Publishing · 2025

A fantasy novel that follows 11-year-old Mishal, a gifted yet troubled boy inducted into the secretive Order of Thanatos. Set in the grim and mystic realm of Lucardia, the story is framed as a first-person memoir chronicling Mishal's initiation as a novice psychopomp - one who guides the dead across the Threshold into the afterlife. As Mishal navigates the Order's rigid hierarchy, academic rigor, and spiritual mysteries, he begins to uncover unsettling truths about death, the soul, and the hidden agendas of those in power. Haunted by a spirit he cannot abandon and burdened by a forbidden artifact, Mishal must decide whom to trust and what to believe as his abilities grow - and as the line between duty and damnation begins to blur.

Culture, humanities & social science·David Thesmar · University of Chicago Press · 2025

Two economists examine the interplay between our desire to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the point at which people abandon goodness due to its costs. Aided by the results of two surveys, they find that the answers to modern moral dilemmas are economic, and often highly predictable. Our values may guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Henry Lieberman · Springer · 2025

Lieberman's chapter, "Citizen Centered Cities: User Centered Design for Cooperative Cities," explores user-centered design principles for creating cooperative cities that prioritize citizen needs. The work demonstrates how design-focused approaches can address urban challenges by placing residents at the center of city planning and development processes.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Judith Barry · MIT Press · 2024

This collection of essays reveals the depth and complexity of the sculpture of American modernist Tony Smith, placing his multifaceted practice in dialogue with contemporary voices. Barry's chapter, "New Piece: Elective Geometries," describes the transformation of Smith's sculpture into the form of a flipbook and centerpiece "pop-up."

For young readers·Taylor Perron · Penguin Random House · 2024

It's no secret that children love rocks: They appear in jacket pockets, on windowsills, in the car, in their hiding places, and most often, in little grips. This book is an appreciation of rocks' versatility and appeal, paired with the presentation of real types of rocks and their play-worthy attributes.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Raafat Majzoub SM '17 · ArchiTangle · 2024

This book explores the renovation of modern architecture in the Global South as a tool for self-determination and community-building. Focusing on the Oscar Niemeyer Guest House in Tripoli, Lebanon, Majzoub and Fayad examine heritage as a political and material process. Through case studies, visual essays, and conversations with architects, artists, and theorists, the book addresses challenges of preservation, gaps in archiving, and the need for new forms of architectural practice.

Culture, humanities & social science·Fotini Christia · Cambridge University Press · 2024

How can societies reduce crime without exacerbating adversarial relationships between the police and citizens? Through field experiments in a variety of political contexts, this book presents the outcome of a major research initiative into the efficacy of community policing. Scholars uncover whether, and under what conditions, this influential strategy for tackling crime and insecurity is effective. With its highly innovative approach to cumulative learning, this writing represents a new frontier in the study of police reform.

Education, work, finance & impact·Erin L. Scott · Norton Economics · 2024

Building on more than two decades of academic research with thousands of companies and MIT students, Scott, Stern, and Gans have developed a systematic approach for startup leadership. They detail four key choices entrepreneurs must make, and "four strategic approaches to find and frame opportunities."

Education, work, finance & impact·Georg Rilinger · University of Chicago · 2024

The California electricity crisis in 2000 caused billions in losses and led to bankruptcy for one of the state's largest utilities. More than 20 years later, the question remains: Why did the newly created electricity markets fail? In "Failure by Design," Rilinger explores practical obstacles to market design to offer a new explanation for the crisis - one that moves beyond previous interpretations that have primarily blamed incompetent politicians or corrupt energy sellers.

For young readers·Lindsay Bartholomew · Stillwater River Publications · 2024

How much can you love someone? Higher than you can reach? Longer than a river? Bigger than the sky? The real answer - bigger than everything that's big!

Technology & society·Joseph F. Coughlin · MIT Press · 2024

Populations around the world are aging, and older adults' economic influence stands to grow markedly in future decades. This volume brings together entrepreneurs, researchers, designers, public servants, and others to address the multifaceted concerns of aging societies and to explore the possibility that certain regions will distinguish themselves as longevity hubs: home to disproportionate economic and innovative activity for older populations.

Technology & society·Nick Montfort · MIT Press · 2024

The discussion of computer-generated text has recently reached a fever pitch but largely omits the long history of work in this area - text generation, as it happens, was not invented yesterday in Silicon Valley. This anthology aims to correct that omission by gathering seven decades of English-language texts produced by generation systems and software, long before ChatGPT and Claude.

Culture, humanities & social science·Danielle R. Wood · Routledge · 2024

In her chapter, "The Expanding Sphere of Human Responsibility for Sustainability on Earth and in Space," Wood proposes a multifaceted definition of sustainability and explores how the definition can be exercised as humans expand activity in space. Building on the tradition of consensus building on concepts of sustainable development through United Nations initiatives, Wood asserts that sustainability for human activity in space requires consideration of three types of responsibility: economic, social, and environmental.

Technology & society·Greg Epstein · MIT Press · 2024

Today's technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on 21st-century life and community. In "Tech Agnostic," Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of "tech," this book argues for tech agnosticism - not worship - as a way of life.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Lawrence J. Vale · MIT Press · 2024

Too often the places most vulnerable to climate change are those that are home to people with the fewest economic and political resources. And while some leaders are starting to take action to reduce climate risks, many early adaptation schemes have actually made preexisting inequalities worse. In this book, Vale and Lamb ask how cities can adapt to climate change and other threats while also doing right by disadvantaged residents.

Science & engineering·Alan Lightman · Penguin Random House · 2024

Nature is capable of extraordinary phenomena. Standing in awe of those phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to the cosmos. For Lightman, just as remarkable is that all of what we see around us - soap bubbles, scarlet ibises, shooting stars - are made out of the same material stuff and obey the same rules and laws. Pairing 36 full-color photos evoking some of nature's most awe-inspiring phenomena with personal essays, "The Miraculous from the Material" explores the fascinating science underlying the natural world.

Culture, humanities & social science·Volha Charnysh · Cambridge University Press · 2024

Each year, millions of people are uprooted from their homes by wars, repression, natural disasters, and climate change. In "Uprooted," Charnysh presents a fresh perspective on the consequences of mass displacement, arguing that accommodating the displaced population can strengthen receiving states and benefit local economies. With rich insights and compelling evidence, the book challenges common assumptions about the costs of forced displacement and cultural diversity and proposes a novel mechanism linking wars to state-building.

Culture, humanities & social science·Ned Wolfe · Chronicle Books · 2024

"Victorian Parlour Games" is a beautifully designed and compact hardcover volume full of the classic, often silly, games played in the late 19th century. The Victorians loved fun and played hundreds and hundreds of party games. This endlessly delightful party games book collects some of the very best for your reference and pleasure.

Education, work, finance & impact·Jovi R. S. Nazareno · Teachers College Press · 2024

Writing is the highest form of thinking, as evidenced by neuroimaging that shows how more neural networks are activated simultaneously during writing than during any other cognitive activity. This book will help teachers understand how the brain learns to write by unveiling 15 stages of thinking that underpin the writing process, along with targeted ways to stimulate them to maximize each individual's writing potential.

Technology & society·Catherine D'Ignazio · MIT Press · 2024

"Counting Feminicide" brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting feminicide, and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. D'Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account.

Culture, humanities & social science·Roger Petersen · Oxford University Press · 2024

"Death, Dominance, and State-Building" provides the first comprehensive analytic history of post-invasion Iraq. Although the war is almost universally derided as one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the post-Cold War era, Petersen argues that the course and conduct of the conflict is poorly understood. The book applies an accessible framework to a variety of case studies across time and region. It concludes by drawing lessons relevant to future American military interventions.

Education, work, finance & impact·Paul Cheek · Wiley · 2024

Cheek provides a hands-on, practical roadmap to get from great idea to successful company with his actionable field guide to transforming your one great idea into a functional, funded, and staffed startup. Readers will find ground-level, down-and-dirty entrepreneurial tactics - like how to conduct advanced primary market research, market and sell to your first customers, and take a scrappy approach to building your first products - that keep young firms growing. These tactics maximize impact with limited resources.

Education, work, finance & impact·Malia Lazu · MIT Press · 2024

In her new book, Lazu draws on her background as a community organizer, her corporate career as a bank president, and now her experience as a leading consultant to explain what has been holding organizations back and what they can do to become more inclusive and equitable. "From Intention to Impact" goes beyond "feel good" PR-centric actions to showcase the real work that must be done to create true and lasting change.

Technology & society·Jacob Lehrer · Parametric Architecture · 2024

In his chapter, "Garbage In, Garbage Out: How Language Models Can Reinforce Biases," Lehrer discusses how inherent bias is baked into large data sets, like those used to train massive AI algorithms, and how society will need to reconcile with the inherent biases built into systems of power. He also attempts to reconcile with it himself, delving into the mathematics behind these systems.

Culture, humanities & social science·Erica Caple James · University of California Press · 2024

In "Life at the Center," James traces how faith-based and secular institutions in Boston have helped Haitian refugees and immigrants attain economic independence, health, security, and citizenship in the United States. The culmination of more than a decade of advocacy and research on behalf of the Haitians in Boston, this groundbreaking work exposes how Catholic corporations have strengthened - but also eroded - Haitians' civic power.

Technology & society·Tod Machover · Penguin Random House · 2024

In their chapter, "Composing the Future of Health," the co-authors discuss their approach to combining scientific research, technology innovation, and new composing strategies to create evidence-based, emotionally potent music that can delight and heal.

Education, work, finance & impact·Annie Thompson · Oxford University Press · 2024

In their chapter, "What Causes Residential Mortgage Defaults?" the authors assess the voluminous research investigating why households default on their residential mortgages. A particular focus is oriented towards critically evaluating the recent application of causal statistical inference to residential defaults on mortgages.

Culture, humanities & social science·Paloma Duong · University of Texas Press · 2024

Why does Cuban socialism endure as an object of international political desire, while images of capitalist markets consume Cuba's national imagination? "Portable Postsocialisms" calls on a vast multimedia archive to offer a groundbreaking cultural interpretation of Cuban postsocialism. Duong examines songs, artworks, advertisements, memes, literature, jokes, and networks that refuse exceptionalist and exoticizing visions of Cuba.

Education, work, finance & impact·James Rhee · HarperCollins · 2024

Is it possible to be successful and kind? To lead a company or organization with precision and compassion? To honor who we are in all areas of our lives? While eloquently sharing a story of personal and professional success, Rhee presents a comforting yet bold solution to the dissatisfaction and worry we all feel in a chaotic and sometimes terrifying world.

Technology & society·R. David Edelman · Oxford University Press · 2024

Fifteen years into the era of "cyber warfare," are we any closer to understanding the role a major cyberattack would play in international relations - or to preventing one? Uniquely spanning disciplines and enriched by the insights of a leading practitioner, Edelman provides a fresh understanding of the role that digital disruption plays in contemporary international security.

Education, work, finance & impact·Ben Ross Schneider · Oxford University Press · 2024

In "Routes to Reform," Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning - especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political - are possible. He demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, and more on micro-level factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

Fiction & poetry·Kevin McLellan · Yas Press · 2024

In this book of poetry, physical and emotional qualities free-range between the animate and inanimate as though the world is written with dotted lines. With chiseled line breaks, intriguing meta-poetic levels, and punctuation like seed pods, McLellan's poems, if we look twice, might flourish outside the book's margin, past the grow light of the screen, even (especially) other borderlines we haven't begun to imagine.

Science & engineering·Susan Solomon · University of Chicago Press · 2024

We solved planet-threatening problems before, Solomon argues, and we can do it again. She knows firsthand what those solutions entail, as she gained international fame as the leader of a 1986 expedition to Antarctica, making discoveries that were key to healing the damaged ozone layer. She saw a path from scientific and public awareness to political engagement, international agreement, industry involvement, and effective action. Solomon connects this triumph to the stories of other past environmental victories - against ozone depletion, smog, pesticides, and lead - to extract the essential elements of what makes change possible.

Education, work, finance & impact·Jacques Gordon · Afire and McGraw Hill · 2024

In his chapter, "The Broker and the Investment Advisor: A wide range of options," Gordon discusses important financial topics including information for lenders and borrowers, joint ventures, loans and debt, comingled funds, bankruptcy, and Islamic finance.

Technology & society·Daniela Rus · W. W. Norton and Company · 2024

In "The Heart and the Chip," Rus and Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren't going to steal our jobs, they argue; they're going to make us more capable, productive, and precise.

Culture, humanities & social science·Alex Byrne · Polity · 2024

MIT philosopher Alex Byrne knows that within his field, he's very much in the minority when it comes to his views on sex and gender. In "Trouble with Gender," Byrne suggests that some ideas regarding sex and gender have not been properly examined by philosophers, and he argues for a reasoned and civil conversation on the topic.

Science & engineering·Stefan Helmreich · Duke University Press · 2023

In this book, Helmreich examines ocean waves as forms of media that carry ecological, geopolitical, and climatological news about our planet. Drawing on ethnographic work with oceanographers and coastal engineers in the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Bangladesh, he details how scientists at sea and in the lab apprehend waves' materiality through abstractions, seeking to capture in technical language these avatars of nature at once periodic and irreversible, wild and pacific, ephemeral and eternal.

Science & engineering·Nancy G. Leveson · MIT Press · 2023

Preventing accidents and losses in complex systems requires a holistic perspective that can accommodate unprecedented types of technology and design. Leveson's book covers the history of safety engineering; explores risk, ethics, legal frameworks, and policy implications; and explains why accidents happen and how to mitigate risks in modern, software-intensive systems. It includes accounts of well-known accidents like the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, examining their causes and how to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Culture, humanities & social science·Michael M. J. Fischer · Duke University Press · 2023

In his latest book, Fischer examines documentary filmmaking and literature from Southeast Asia and Singapore for their para-ethnographic insights into politics, culture, and aesthetics. Continuing his project of applying anthropological thinking to the creative arts, Fischer exemplifies how art and fiction trace the ways in which taken-for-granted common sense changes over time speak to the transnational present and track signals of the future before they surface in public awareness.

Technology & society·Héctor Beltrán · Princeton University Press · 2023

In this book, Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders' personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the coding world to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coupling, iterative processing (looping), hacking, prototyping, and full-stack development in their daily social interactions - at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics.

Culture, humanities & social science·Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga · MIT Press · 2023

In this provocative book - the first in a trilogy - Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara's most inspirational speeches, "Dare to Invent the Future" looks for moments in Africa's story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system.

Education, work, finance & impact·Barbara H. Wixom · MIT Press · 2023

In "Data Is Everybody's Business," the authors offer a clear and engaging way for people across the entire organization to understand data monetization and make it happen. The authors identify three viable ways to convert data into money - improving work with data, wrapping products with data, and selling information offerings - and explain when to pursue each and how to succeed.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Gearoid Dolan · Ugly Duckling Press · 2023

This "bible of performance art activity" documents performance projects from around the world. Dolan's chapter describes "Protest ReEmbodied," a performance that took place online during Covid-19 lockdown. The performance was a live version of the ongoing "Protest ReEmbodied" project, an app that individuals can download and run on their computer to be able to perform on camera, inserted into protest footage.

Education, work, finance & impact·Justin Reich · Teaching Systems Lab · 2023

In "Iterate, " Reich delivers an insightful bridge between contemporary educational research and classroom teaching, showing readers how to leverage the cycle of experiment and experience to create a compelling and engaging learning environment. Readers learn how to employ a process of continuous improvement and tinkering to develop exciting new programs, activities, processes, and designs.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Caroline Murphy · Brill · 2023

"Land Air Sea" positions the long Renaissance and 18th century as being vital for understanding how many of the concerns present in contemporary debates on climate change and sustainability originated in earlier centuries. Murphy's chapter examines how Girolamo di Pace da Prato, a state engineer in the Duchy of Florence, understood and sought to mitigate the problems of alluvial flooding in the mid-sixteenth century, an era of exceptional aquatic and environmental volatility.

Culture, humanities & social science·Tristan Brown · Princeton University Press · 2023

In "Laws of the Land," Brown tells the story of the important roles - especially legal ones - played by fengshui in Chinese society during China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644-1912). Employing archives from Mainland China and Taiwan that have only recently become available, this is the first book to document fengshui's invocations in Chinese law during the Qing dynasty.

Culture, humanities & social science·Mary Fuller · McGill-Queen's University Press · 2023

Around 1600, English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt published a 2,000-page collection of travel narratives, royal letters, ships' logs, maps, and more from over 200 voyages. In "Lines Drawn across the Globe," Fuller traces the history of the book's compilation and gives order and meaning to its diverse contents. From Sierra Leone to Iceland, from Spanish narratives of New Mexico to French accounts of the Saint Lawrence and Portuguese accounts of China, Hakluyt's shaping of the book provides a conceptual map of the world's regions and of England's real and imagined relations to them.

Miscellany·Robin Zhang · Send Chinatown Love · 2023

In their chapter, "Flushing: The Melting Pot's Melting Pot," the authors explore how Flushing, New York - whose Chinatown is the largest and fastest growing in the world - earned the title of the "melting pot's melting pot" through its cultural history. Readers will walk down its streets past its snack stalls, fabric stores, language schools, hair salons, churches, and shrines, and you will hear English interspersed with Korean, several dialects of Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and hundreds of other fibers that make up Flushing's complex ethnolinguistic fabric.

Technology & society·Richard Larson · INFORMS · 2023

Decisions are a part of everyday life, whether simple or complex. It's all too easy to jump to Google for the answers, but where does that take us? We're losing the ability to think critically and decide for ourselves. In this book, Larson asks readers to undertake a major mind shift in our everyday thought processes. Model thinking develops our critical thinking skills, using a framework of conceptual and mathematical tools to help guide us to full comprehension, and better decisions.

Education, work, finance & impact·Jenny Li Fowler · KoganPage · 2023

In "Organic Social Media," Fowler outlines the important steps that social media managers need to take to enhance an organization's broader growth objectives. Fowler breaks down the key questions to help readers determine the best platforms to invest in, how they can streamline approval processes, and other essential strategic steps to create an organic following on social platforms.

Culture, humanities & social science·Adam Berinsky · Princeton University Press · 2023

Political rumors pollute the political landscape. But if misinformation crowds out the truth, how can democracy survive? Berinsky examines why political rumors exist and persist despite their unsubstantiated and refuted claims, who is most likely to believe them, and how to combat them. He shows that a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and vehement partisan attachment fuel belief in rumors. Moreover, in fighting misinformation, it is as important to target the undecided and the uncertain as it is the true believers.

Fiction & poetry·Laura Beretsky · Haley's · 2023

Beretsky's memoir, "Seizing Control," details her journey with epilepsy, discrimination, and a major surgical procedure to reduce her seizures. After two surgical interventions, she has been seizure-free for eight years, though she notes she will always live with epilepsy.

Education, work, finance & impact·Andrew McAfee · Hachette Book Group · 2023

The geek way of management delivers excellent performance while offering employees a work environment that features high levels of autonomy and empowerment. In what Eric Schmidt calls a "handbook for disruptors," "The Geek Way" reveals a new way to get big things done. It will change the way readers think about work, teams, projects, and culture, and give them the insight and tools to harness our human superpowers of learning and cooperation.

Culture, humanities & social science·Mark Jarzombek · Routledge · 2023

Jarzombek's book argues that long-distance trade in luxury items - such as diamonds, gold, cinnamon, scented woods, ivory, and pearls, all of which require little overhead in their acquisition and were relatively easy to transport - played a foundational role in the creation of what we would call "global trade" in the first millennium CE. The book coins the term "dark matter economy" to better describe this complex - though mostly invisible - relationship to normative realities. "The Long Millennium" will appeal to students, scholars, and anyone interested in the effect of trade on medieval society.

Culture, humanities & social science·Yasheng Huang · Yale University Press · 2023

According to Huang, the world is seeing a repeat of Chinese history during which restrictions on economic and political freedom created economic stagnation. The bottom line: "Without academic collaboration, without business collaboration, without technological collaborations, the pace of Chinese technological progress is going to slow down dramatically."

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Laura Anderson Barbata · Routledge · 2023

This book provides an examination of death, dying, and human remains in museums and heritage sites around the world. In her chapter, "Julia Pastrana's Long Journey Home," Barbata describes the case of Julia Pastrana (1834-1860), an indigenous Mexican opera singer who suffered from hypertrichosis terminalis and hyperplasia gingival. Due to her appearance, Pastrana was exploited and exhibited for over 150 years, during her lifetime and after her early death in an embalmed state. Barbata sheds light on the ways in which the systems that justified Pastrana's exploitation continue to operate today.

Culture, humanities & social science·Lerna Ekmekcioglu · University of Chicago Press · 2023

In her chapter, Ekmekcioglu contends that the Treaty of Lausanne, which followed the first world war, is an often-overlooked event of great historical significance for Armenians. The treaty became the "birth certificate" of modern Turkey, but there was no redress for Armenians. The chapter uses new research to reconstruct the dynamics of the treaty negotiations, illuminating both Armenians' struggles as well as the international community's struggles to deliver consistent support for multiethnic, multireligious states.

Technology & society·Joy Buolamwini SM '17 · Penguin Random House · 2023

Director's Circle To many it may seem like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Buolamwini, this moment has been a long time in the making. "Unmasking AI" is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls "the coded gaze" - evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products. She shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity "excoded" and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools.

Culture, humanities & social science·Amy Finkelstein · Portfolio · 2023

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many existing proposals miss the point, focusing on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. As Finkelstein and Einav point out, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant. The result is a sprawling, arbitrary, and inadequate mess that has left 30 million Americans without formal insurance. It's time, the authors argue, to tear it all down and rebuild, sensibly and deliberately.

Education, work, finance & impact·Steven J. Spear · IT Revolution · 2023

Organizations succeed when they design their processes, routines, and procedures to encourage employees to problem-solve and contribute to a common purpose. DevOps, Lean, and Agile got us part of the way. Now with "Wiring the Winning Organization," Spear and Kim introduce a new theory of organizational management: Organizations win by using three mechanisms to slowify, simplify, and amplify, which systematically moves problem-solving from high-risk danger zones to low-risk winning zones.

Culture, humanities & social science·Maria Khotimsky · Academic Studies Press · 2023

Khotimsky's chapter, "The Treasure Trove of World Literature: Shaping the Concept of World Literature in Post-Revolutionary Russia," examines Vsemirnaia Literatura (World Literature), an early Soviet publishing house founded in 1919 in Petersburg that advanced an innovative canon of world literature beyond the European tradition. It analyzes the publishing house's views on translation, focusing on book prefaces that reveal a search for a new evaluative system, adaptation to changing socio-cultural norms and reassessing the roles of readers, critics, and the very endeavor of translation.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Mark Jarzombek · Bloomsbury Visual Arts · 2023

This book argues that the architecture/contractor divide is a "construction" with a particular history and theoretical problematic that impacts not just the history of the discipline, but also the history of labor that haunts the very understanding of contemporary architecture. The book looks at issues relating to preservation theory and the Library of Congress ordering systems, as well as to the tragic dualisms of "theory and practice," mind and body, design and craft, and architect and builder that belay any attempt to ever get out from under its particular falsifications.

Technology & society·Carlo Ratti · Yale University Press · 2023

This book explores how the growth of digital mapping, spurred by sensing technologies, is affecting cities and daily lives. It examines how new cartographic possibilities aid urban planners, technicians, politicians, and administrators; how digitally mapped cities could reveal ways to make cities smarter and more efficient; how monitoring urbanites has political and social repercussions; and how the proliferation of open-source maps and collaborative platforms can aid activists and vulnerable populations.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Rania Ghosn · Actar Publishers · 2023

The speculative design research publication reckons with the complexity of "heritage" and "world" in the Anthropocene. The impacts of climate change on heritage sites - from Venice flooding to extinction in the Galápagos Islands - have garnered empathetic attention in a media landscape that has otherwise mostly failed to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. In a strategic subversion of the media aura of heritage, World Heritage sites are cast as narrative figures to visualize pervasive climate risks all while situating the present emergency within the wreckages of other ends of worlds, replete with the salvages of extractivism, racism, and settler colonialism. The harms and possibilities of such inheritances are narrated in drawing triptychs and mythologies to bequeath other worlds and values.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Rafi Segal · Columbia University Press · 2023

The authors converse about the transformative potential of mutualism and design with leading thinkers and practitioners. Together, they consider how design inspires, invigorates, and sustains contemporary forms of mutualism - including platform cooperatives, digital-first communities, emerging currencies, mutual aid, care networks, social-change movements, and more. From these dialogues emerge powerful visions of futures guided by communal self-determination and collective well-being.

Culture, humanities & social science·Heather Paxson · Duke University Press · 2023

"Eating beside Ourselves" examines eating as a site of transfer and transformation across bodies and selves. The contributors show that by turning organic substance into food, acts of eating create interconnected food webs organized by relative conditions of edibility through which eaters may in turn become eaten.

Education, work, finance & impact·Olivier Blanchard · MIT Press · 2023

Policy makers in advanced economies find themselves in an unusual fiscal environment: debt ratios are historically high, and - once the fight against inflation is won - real interest rates will likely be very low again. This combination calls for a rethinking of the role of fiscal and monetary policy - and this is just what Blanchard proposes in this work. His conclusions hold practical implications for economic and fiscal policymakers, bankers, and politicians around the world.

Culture, humanities & social science·Steven Simon · Penguin · 2023

The culmination of almost 40 years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, "Grand Delusion" offers a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. This story, while episodically impressive, was too often tragic and at times dishonorable. As we enter a new era in foreign policy, this is an essential book, a cautionary history that illuminates American's propensity for self-deception and misadventure at a moment when the nation is redefining its engagement with a world in crisis.

Technology & society·Olivier de Weck and Jeffrey Hoffman · Springer · 2023

This book covers the latest understandings of space resources, including mission concepts, exploration approaches, mining and extraction technologies, commercial potential, and regulation. In their chapter, "Lifetime Embodied Energy: A Theory of Value for the New Space Economy," adapted from Lordos' MIT master's thesis, the authors advance a method based on embodied energy to objectively value space systems that utilize space resources.

Culture, humanities & social science·Catherine J. Turco · Columbia University Press · 2023

In this book, Turco explores the history, impact, and future of street-level markets through her own experience visiting the iconic Cambridge, Massachusetts, neighborhood as a young girl, living there as a university student, and later advocating for the community as a resident.

For young readers·Sally O. Lee · Self-published · 2023

Who hasn't been left out at one point or another? Were you ever not invited to a party, or left out of an occasion? What do you do about it? How do you feel? Who do you talk to? This book follows a kitty as he navigates through his feelings and thoughts and decides what to do next.

Culture, humanities & social science·Larry Susskind · Anthem Press · 2023

Concerned about the role of the courts, particularly judges, in guaranteeing justice, and impressed with the success of Canadian courts that are using judicial dispute resolution (JDR), the authors describe similar efforts in other parts of the world where the use of JDR helps parties resolve their differences in a timely way. The judges who use this practice mediate rather than adjudicate; they do not decide who is right or wrong but assist the parties in resolving their differences and mending their relationships. The authors can tell this unique story after being granted exclusive access to the parties, judges, and records in nine carefully selected cases.

Culture, humanities & social science·Mary C. Fuller · McGill-Queen's University Press · 2023

Around 1600, the English geographer and cleric Richard Hakluyt sought to honor his nation by publishing a compilation of every document he could find relating to its voyages and trade beyond the boundaries of Europe. Fuller traces the history of the book's compilation and gives order and meaning to its famously diverse contents: from Sierra Leone to Iceland, from Spanish narratives of New Mexico to French accounts of the Saint Lawrence and Portuguese accounts of China.

Culture, humanities & social science·Mikael Jakobsson · MIT Press · 2023

In "Playing Oppression," Jakobsson and Flanagan apply incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism. The work deftly analyzes this insidious violence and proposes a path forward with board games that challenge colonialist thinking and embrace a much broader cultural imagination.

Fiction & poetry·Helen Elaine Lee · Atria Books · 2023

This novel from Helen Elaine Lee focuses on a queer Black woman working to stay clean, pull her life together, and heal after being released from prison. In lyrical and precise prose, Lee paints a humane and unflinching portrait of the devastating effects of incarceration and addiction, and of one woman's determination to tell her story.

Technology & society·Daron Acemoglu · PublicAffairs · 2023

In their new book, Acemoglu and Johnson detail the ways that artificial intelligence and other digital technologies have mesmerized the business elite while threatening to undermine jobs and democracy. The authors decry the economic and social damage caused by excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance, and offer a counter vision whereby the tremendous computing advances of the past half century can become empowering and democratizing tools.

Culture, humanities & social science·Michael M. J. Fischer · Duke University Press · 2023

In this book, Fischer calls for a new anthropology of the arts that attends to the materialities and technologies of the world as it exists today. He examines the work of key Southeast and East Asian artists within the crucibles of unequal access, geopolitics, reverberating past traumas, and emergent socialities. Throughout Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, Fischer argues that these artists' theoretical discourses should be privileged over those of the curators, historians, critics, and other gatekeepers who protect and claim art worlds for themselves.

Technology & society·Danielle Wood · Oxford University Press · 2023

"Reclaiming Space" is an innovative study of space travel's history, legitimacy, and future. Wood's chapter, "Opportunities to Pursue Liberatory, Anticolonial, and Antiracist Designs for Human Societies Beyond Earth," is one of 27 original essays seeking to incubate, illuminate, and illustrate a more diverse and inclusive conversation about space exploration.

Science & engineering·Henry Jacoby · Springer Cham · 2023

Four veteran climate experts present our current understanding of the climate threat and what can be done about it, in lay language ― without losing critical aspects of the natural and social science. In a series of essays, they explain the essential components of the challenge, countering the forces of distrust of the science and opposition to a vigorous national response.

Culture, humanities & social science·Joshua Bennett · Knopf · 2023

A celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative, who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined what - and whom - the mainstream would include, Bennett's book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard, from Broadway to academia, from the podiums of political protest to cafés, schools, and rooms full of strangers all across the world.

Education, work, finance & impact·Zeynep Ton · Harvard Business Review Press · 2023

This book serves as a leadership guide for choosing excellence and providing good jobs that offer a living wage, dignity, and opportunities for growth. From health care facilities to call centers, fulfillment centers to factories, and restaurants to retail stores, companies are struggling to find or keep workers, because the jobs they offer are low-paying, stressful, and provide little chance for growth and success. Ton outlines the importance of investing in employees, and the four operational choices managers must make if they want to prioritize customers and maximize employees' productivity, motivation, and contributions.

Education, work, finance & impact·Yossi Sheffi · MIT CTL Media · 2023

In this book, Sheffi takes a close look at "the underlying structure, unavoidable complexity, and massive scale of modern supply chains." He also explores how automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence are changing and augmenting jobs held by workers and how they will change supply chains of the future.

For young readers·Kaija Langley · Nancy Paulsen Books · 2023

"The Order of Things" is a heart-rending and layered novel-in-verse for middle-grade readers. Eleven-year-old April Jackson loves playing the drums, almost as much as she loves her best friend, Zee, a violin prodigy. They both dream of becoming professional musicians one day. When the unthinkable happens and Zee suddenly passes away, April is crushed by grief but begins to learn it is possible to go on even after a great loss.

Culture, humanities & social science·Noah L. Nathan · Cambridge University Press · 2023

The formal state often appears absent in the rural periphery in developing countries. Yet these states are not as weak as many believe. In a multi-method study of historical development in Ghana, Nathan rethinks the process of state-building in hinterlands, demonstrating how even seemingly absent states still change the underlying nature of their societies, with implications for better understanding the governance challenges that these regions face.

Science & engineering·Alan Lightman · Pantheon · 2023

Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience.

Education, work, finance & impact·William F. Pounds · Self-published · 2023

In this collection of short essays on management and corporate governance, Pounds shares practical, down-to-Earth wisdom and insight on topics rarely touched on in the typical MBA curriculum, gleaned from his decades of experience across a wide variety of boards. CEOs, corporate directors, and anyone interested in how organizations function and perform in the mysterious realm beyond the executive suite will find these timeless ideas a thought-provoking and sometimes irreverent complement to more traditional academic and legal treatments of these important subjects.

Education, work, finance & impact·David Kiron · MIT Press · 2023

MIT Sloan Management Review ; Elizabeth J. Altman; Jeff Schwartz; and Robin Jones "Workforce Ecosystems" is a research-driven framework for leading complex, interconnected workforces. Drawing on case studies, worldwide surveys, and extensive interviews with C-suite executives and senior leaders from Amazon, IBM, Mayo Clinic, NASA, Nike, Roche, Unilever, the US Army, Walmart, and others, the authors explore what workforce ecosystems are and how to navigate their unique challenges and opportunities.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Franca Alexandra Sonntag · Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Press · 2022

In 2019 two Siamese workshops were organized by Aula Coopera [Spain/in/India], under the same research topic, Urban Condensers. Updating heritage areas, the workshops took place in two different cities: Madrid and Ahmedabad; two countries in two continents. With the participation of 14 professors, eight conferences, previous trips visiting paradigmatic architectures, walking through the intervention sites in contact with their inhabitants; 50 students of various levels and seven nationalities produced different proposals for the re-activation of public space in both cities among 17 working groups. This book describes the workshops, including the immense experiences of participants living in situ together.

Culture, humanities & social science·Wyn Kelley · Wiley · 2022

Building on the success of the first Blackwell "Companion to Herman Melville," and offering a variety of tools for reading, writing, and teaching Melville, "A New Companion to Herman Melville" delivers an insightful examination of Melville for the 21st century. Editors Kelley and Ohge create a framework that reflects a pluralistic model for humanities teaching and research offering critical, technological, and aesthetic practices that can be employed to read Melville in exciting and revelatory ways.

Culture, humanities & social science·Manduhai Buyandelger · University of Chicago · 2022

This book traces how the complicated, contradictory paths to political representation that women in Mongolia must walk mirror those the world over. Buyandelger shows how successful women candidates use strategies of self-polishing to cultivate charisma and a reputation for being oyunlag, or intellectual. By tracing the complicated, contradictory paths to representation that women in Mongolia must walk, "A Thousand Steps to Parliament" holds a mirror up to democracies the world over, revealing an urgent need to grapple with the encroaching effects of neoliberalism in our global political systems.

Science & engineering·Robert S. Pindyck · Oxford University Press · 2022

Climate change initiatives typically focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions - but what happens if these efforts fall short? In his latest book, Pindyck, an environmental economist, contends that most countries will not come close to meeting their CO2 reduction goals. He recommends adaptations such as sea walls and dykes, hybrid crops, and large-scale geoengineering.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Kristel Smentek · Yale University Press · 2022

Are volcanoes punishment from God? During the Enlightenment, questions such as this were brought to life through an astonishing array of prints and drawings, helping shape public opinion and stir political change. This book overturns common assumptions about the Age of Enlightenment, using the era's proliferation of works on paper to tell a more nuanced story. With a multidisciplinary approach, the book probes developments in the natural sciences, technology, economics, and more - all through the lens of the graphic arts.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Gabriella Carolini · Oxford University Press · 2022

In this book, Carolini emphasizes that equitable partnership on the ground delivers the best results in the Global South. In her view, the best development projects involve close cooperation between proximate peers: the sharing of information among partners, a consistent presence on the ground, nonhierarchical governance, and a drive toward "equity," in many forms, as a key project goal.

Education, work, finance & impact·Stephanie L. Woerner · Harvard Business Review · 2022

Companies that undergo digital transformation have significantly higher financial performance. In "Future Ready," the authors offer a playbook for leaders who want to help their companies leverage digital capabilities to innovate, satisfy customers, and reduce costs. The book provides board members and top management teams leading a digital transformation journey with a coherent framework and a common language to guide, motivate, and focus employees. It is based on more than 50 interviews with executives and surveys with over 2,000 respondents, and was field-tested in multiple workshops with boards and senior management teams in firms around the world.

Technology & society·Daniel Frey · Edward Elgar Publishing · 2022

This book highlights innovations and appropriate technologies helpful for the development of people around the world and across economic backgrounds. An illuminating and informative look into more sustainable global technological development, the handbook presents new disruptive forms of innovation-producing technologies and origin stories about pathbreaking practitioners and organizations. And it provides both the traditional socioeconomic and political frameworks for appropriate technologies and alternative solutions for sustainable development.

Culture, humanities & social science·Kieran Setiya · Riverhead Books · 2022

There is no cure for the human condition: Life is hard. But Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world. In this profound and personal book, he shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya's own experience, "Life Is Hard" is a book for this moment - a work of solace and compassion.

Education, work, finance & impact·Amy Finkelstein · Yale University Press · 2022

Why is dental insurance so crummy? Why is pet insurance so expensive? Why does your auto insurer ask for your credit score? The answer to these questions lies in understanding how insurance works. Unraveling the mysteries of insurance markets, the authors explore such issues as why insurers want to know so much about us and whether we should let them obtain this information; why insurance entrepreneurs often fail (and some tricks that may help them succeed); and whether we'd be better off with government-mandated health insurance instead of letting businesses, customers, and markets decide who gets coverage and at what price.

Culture, humanities & social science·Bettina Stoetzer · Duke University Press · 2022

In "Ruderal City," Stoetzer traces relationships among people, plants, and animals in contemporary Berlin as they make their lives in the ruins of European nationalism and capitalism. She develops the notion of the ruderal - originally an ecological designation for the unruly life that inhabits inhospitable environments such as rubble, roadsides, train tracks, and sidewalk cracks - to theorize Berlin as a "ruderal city."

Arts, design, architecture & planning·George Stiny · MIT Press · 2022

In this book, Stiny runs visual calculating in shape grammars through art and design - incorporating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetic imagination and Oscar Wilde's corollary to see things as they aren't. Many assume that calculating limits art and design to suit computers, but shape grammars rely on seeing to prove otherwise. Rules that change what they see extend calculating to overtake what computers can do, in logic and with data and learning. Shape grammars bridge the divide between seeing and combinatoric play.

Fiction & poetry·Joshua Bennett · Penguin · 2022

In this deeply personal book, Bennett, a visiting professor who joins the MIT faculty this summer, recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth. The central section features an alternate history where Malcolm X is resurrected from the dead, as is a young Black man shot by police some 50 years later. The final section includes poems about fatherhood, on the heels of Bennett's first child being born.

Culture, humanities & social science·Nasser Rabbat · Edinburgh University Press · 2022

Although al-Maqrizi is recognized as the most influential historian of premodern Egypt, he has never received the probing historical treatment warranted by his standing and scholarly output. This book fills that gap. Arranged in three sections, it tells al-Maqrizi's life story; weaves it with historiographical, textual, and methodological analysis of his oeuvre; and reconstructs the afterlife of the author and his work down to the present.

Science & engineering·Deborah Blum · Oxford University Press · 2022

Undark, the digital science magazine published by KSJ Drawing on insights from writers based at publications including The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post, Science, The New Yorker, National Geographic and more, this book serves as an essential survey of the best in science reporting today - and a testament to the importance of independent journalistic inquiry in understanding research and building trust with audiences.

Fiction & poetry·Maia Weinstock · MIT Press · 2022

In "Carbon Queen," Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus (1930-2017) defied expectations and forged a career as a leading scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus, who made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials, helped reshape our world in countless ways - from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague.

Education, work, finance & impact·Harold Abelson · MIT Press · 2022

This book offers an overview of computational thinking and its importance in K-12 education. Topics include the rationale for teaching computational thinking, programming as a general problem-solving skill, the "phenomenon-based learning" approach, and the educational implications of the explosion in artificial intelligence research, discussing, among other things, the importance of teaching children to be conscientious designers and consumers of AI.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Gabriella Y. Carolini · Oxford University Press · 2022

Based on a close examination of international cooperation projects in the water-and-sanitation sector in Maputo, Mozambique, this book describes the factors that shape equity in development practice. It also provides a framework for how project evaluations, as a key narrative instrument, can promote distributive, procedural, and epistemic justice.

Culture, humanities & social science·Erez Yoeli · Basic Books · 2022

We like to think of ourselves as rational. But as behavioral economics shows, most behavior doesn't seem rational at all - which, unfortunately, casts doubt on game theory's real-world credibility. In "Hidden Games," Yoeli and Hoffman find a surprising middle ground between the hyperrationality of classical economics and the hyper-irrationality of behavioral economics. They call it "hidden games."

Fiction & poetry·D. Fox Harrell · Wizards of the Coast · 2022

"Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel" is an anthology of 13 stand-alone adventures set in wondrous lands for the roleplaying game "Dungeons & Dragons." Harrell's chapter, "The Nightsea's Succor," is inspired by the diverse historical continuities, innovations, and kindred futures shared across African American people, roots, and ancestors.

Culture, humanities & social science·Eugenie Brinkema · Duke University Press · 2022

In "Life-Destroying Diagrams," Brinkema brings the insights of her radical formalism to bear on supremely risky terrain: the ethical extremes of horror and love. Through close readings of works of film, literature, and philosophy, she explores how diagrams, grids, charts, lists, abecedaria, toroids, tempos, patterns, colors, negative space, lengths, increments, and thresholds attest to formal logics of torture and cruelty, violence and finitude, friendship and eros, debt, and care.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Eran Ben-Joseph · Taylor and Francis Group · 2022

This open-access book explores the evolving and future relationships between cities and sites of production, focusing on the spatial implications and physical design of integrating contemporary manufacturing into the city. It provides lessons from cases around the world and calls to reconsider the ways in which industry creates places, sustains jobs, and supports environmental sustainability in our cities.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Miro Kazakoff · MIT Press · 2022

"Persuading with Data" provides a guide to data visualization, strategic communication, and delivery best practices. This is the first book that combines explanatory visualization and communication strategy, showing how to use visuals to create effective communications that convince others to accept and act on data. It explains how our brains make sense of graphs, how to design effective graphs and slides that support ideas, how to create a compelling presentation, and how to deliver and defend data to an audience.

Culture, humanities & social science·John Tirman · Johns Hopkins University Press · 2022

Iran and the United States have been at odds for 40 years. In "Republics of Myth," Tirman, Banai, and Byrne argue that a major contributing factor to the enmity between the two nations is how each views itself. They have differing interests and grievances about each other, but their often-deadly confrontation derives from the very different national narratives that shape their politics, actions, and vision of their own destiny in the world.

Culture, humanities & social science·Vipin Narang · Princeton University Press · 2022

Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how they do so has received little attention - until now. In "Seeking the Bomb," Narang develops a new typology of proliferation strategies: hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Narang delves into the implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security.

Culture, humanities & social science·Shigeru Miyagawa · MIT Press · 2022

"Syntax in the Treetops" proposes that syntax extends into the domain of discourse by making linkages between core syntax and the conversational participants. Miyagawa draws on evidence for this extended syntactic structure from a variety of languages, as well as the language of autistic children. His proposal for what happens at the highest level of the tree structure used by linguists offers a unique contribution to the new discipline sometimes known as "syntacticization of discourse."

Education, work, finance & impact·Alex Amouyel · Mango · 2022

In "The Answer is You," Amouyel describes how being a change agent starts with doing good deeds and being a community helper. Everyone can do something with the skills and resources they already have - they just need ideas for how, she argues. "The Answer is You" attempts to inspire every person to think critically about the problems we face and the solutions they might be able to offer to enact change.

Technology & society·Paul Roquet · Columbia University Press · 2022

Roquet's analysis of virtual reality uncovers how it is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation. He examines how VR in Japan diverged from American militarism and techno-utopian visions, becoming a tool for renegotiating personal space. When digital platforms continue encroaching on everyday life, "The Immersive Enclosure" takes a critical look at attempts to jettison existing social realities and offers a bold new approach for understanding the media environments to come.

Education, work, finance & impact·David Autor · MIT Press · 2022

"The Work of the Future" describes why the U.S. trails other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers, and explores how we can remedy the problem. Building on the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the authors argue that to create better jobs, we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change.

Fiction & poetry·Isabelle de Courtivron · Iconoclaste · 2022

De Courtivron was born after World War II in Paris, into a family with conservative values. When her family moved to the United States, she discovered another culture: its dress codes, its language, and especially its protest movements. In this memoir, written in French, de Courtivron evokes the feminist struggles in which she took part in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and the impact they had on her life.

Culture, humanities & social science·Tanalís Padilla · Duke University Press · 2022

In "Unintended Lessons of Revolution," Padilla traces the history of the rural normales, boarding schools that trained teachers in a new nation-building project, showing how they became sites of radical politics. Crafting a story of struggle and state repression, Padilla illuminates education's radical possibilities and the nature of political consciousness for youths whose changing identity speaks to Mexico's 20th-century transformations.

Culture, humanities & social science·Evan Lieberman · Princeton University Press · 2022

At a time when many democracies are under strain, Lieberman shines new light on the signal achievements of one of the most closely watched transitions away from minority rule. South Africa's democratic development has been messy, fiercely contested, and sometimes violent. But as Lieberman argues, it has also offered a voice to the voiceless, unprecedented levels of government accountability, and tangible improvements in quality of life.

Science & engineering·Stefan Helmreich · HKW · 2022

"What is life?" is a question that has haunted the life sciences since Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Gottfried Treviranus independently coined the word "biology" in 1802. The query has titled scores of texts, with Erwin Schrödinger's 1944 book and Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's 1995 volume only the most prominent. In this inventive art-and-science book, the editors curate and comment upon a collection of first pages of publications from 1829-2021 entitled "What Is Life?"

Culture, humanities & social science·Heather Hendershot · University of Chicago Press · 2022

Hendershot revisits TV coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention - the street violence and the tumultuous convention itself, where Black citizens challenged southern delegations that had excluded them, anti-Vietnam delegates sought to change the party's war policy, and journalists and delegates were bullied by Daley's security forces and party leaders. Hendershot reveals the convention as a pivotal moment in American political history when a mistaken notion of "liberal media bias" became mainstreamed and nationalized.

Technology & society·Tobias Macey · O'Reilly · 2021

In this book, contributors from notable companies including Twitter, Google, Stitch Fix, Microsoft, Capital One, and LinkedIn provide 97 concise and useful tips for cleaning, prepping, wrangling, storing, processing, and ingesting data. Current and aspiring engineers will learn powerful real-world best practices for managing data big and small.

Science & engineering·Yossi Sheffi · MIT CTL Media · 2021

In "A Shot in the Arm," Sheffi recounts the Covid-19 vaccines' extraordinary journey from scientific breakthroughs to coronavirus antidote and mass vaccination. He also explores how the mission could transform the fight against deadly diseases and other global-scale challenges.

For young readers·Alan Lightman · Candlewick Press/MIT Kids Press · 2021

Lightman and Pastuchiv, with help from the Hubble Space Telescope, light up the night sky for children, bringing galaxies close in a picture-book tribute to the interconnectedness of the natural world. Layering images taken by the Hubble telescope into charming and expressive art, Chapman zooms in on one child's experiences.

Technology & society·Ritu Raman · MIT Press · 2021

You are a biological machine whose movement is powered by skeletal muscle, just as a car is a machine whose movement is powered by an engine. If you can be built from the bottom up with biological materials, other machines can be as well. This is the idea driving biofabrication: building with living cells. Part of the MIT Press' Essential Knowledge series, "Biofabrication" offers an introduction to how materials and machines powered by cells can tackle challenges in medicine, agriculture, and global security.

Technology & society·Alex "Sandy" Pentland · MIT Press · 2021

Data are now central to the economy, government, and health systems - so why are data and the artificial intelligence systems that interpret data in the hands of so few? "Building the New Economy" argues that we need to think about data as a new type of capital, and that data trusts and distributed ledgers can empower people with user-centric data ownership, transparent and accountable algorithms, machine-learning fairness principles and methodologies, and secure digital transaction systems.

Science & engineering·Hale Bradt · Van Dorn Books · 2021

This is the story of the Rossi X ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), an Earth-orbiting NASA observatory built to study X-ray-emitting celestial objects. Bradt provides a personal account of the 20-year effort of his team at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research to bring about the RXTE mission. Technical and bureaucratic hurdles facing the mission are described with humor and wry personal anecdotes. The payoff: 16 years of successful observations resulting in critical new insights into black holes and neutron stars.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Azra Akšamija · MIT Press · 2021

"Design to Live" shows how refugees use art and design to transform their living environments, restoring humanity within circumstances that seem aimed at depriving them of it. Featuring more than 20 projects created by Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, this bilingual book in English and Arabic offers a new way of understanding design as a subversive worldmaking practice and as a tool for reclaiming agency in conditions of forced displacement.

Culture, humanities & social science·Bianca Rose · Self-published · 2021

"Fearless" explores variations of the Jamaican culture, from its people (i.e. Maroons, Rastafarians, and Jamaicans), to the militant language of Jamaican Patois, to the sound of Reggae music and impact of dance, and through the lessons from legendary freedom fights. Rose observes how Rastafarianism, music, sports, and other cultural aspects have influenced people across the African and non-African diaspora.

Education, work, finance & impact·Andrew W. Lo · Princeton University Press · 2021

Is there an ideal portfolio of investment assets, one that perfectly balances risk and reward? "In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio" examines this question by profiling and interviewing 10 of the most prominent figures in finance. In the process, readers come to understand how the science of modern investing came to be.

Technology & society·Ariel Ekblaw · MIT Press · 2021

In the Anthropocosmos - an era of space exploration in which we will expand humanity's horizons beyond our planet's bounds - humans have twin responsibilities, to Earth and to space, and we should neither abandon our own planet to environmental degradation nor litter the galaxy with space junk. This generously illustrated volume presents space technology for this new age: prototypes, artifacts, experiments, and habitats for an era of participatory space exploration.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Jeff Levine · Routledge · 2021

Community organizers like Jane Jacobs rightly blamed city planners for neighborhoods destroyed in the name of "progress," and determined that the field was flawed. Yet in this book, Levine argues that critical societal challenges, such as affordable housing, climate change, and racial disparities, need planners to lead the way more than ever. He presents ideas for how to provide planning leadership inclusively.

Fiction & poetry·Sarah C. Beckmann · Finishing Line Press · 2021

Beckmann's first collection of poetry, "Naiad Blood," describes a young woman who discovers herself in the sport of rowing. Although she grew up near the sea, she falls in love with boats and the water all over again, in a whole new way; crew not only provides her with an avenue for personal growth, but also alters her outlook on life. Taking creative inspiration from Greek myths and other cultural ideas around womanhood, "Naiad Blood" acknowledges social norms and issues that women face, and also directly challenges them.

Education, work, finance & impact·Diana E. Henderson · Bloomsbury · 2021

This international collection of fresh digital approaches for teaching Shakespeare describes 15 methodologies, resources, and tools recently developed, updated, and used by a diverse range of contributors in Great Britain, Australia, Asia, and the United States. Contributors explore how these digital resources meet classroom needs and help facilitate conversations about academic literacy, race and identity, local and global cultures, performance, and interdisciplinary thought.

Fiction & poetry·June L. Matthews · BookBaby · 2021

This is a memoir by astronomer Mildred Shapley Matthews, daughter of the well-known astronomer Harlow Shapley and mother of June Matthews. Based on recollections, correspondence, and conversations with her father and mother, Martha Betz Shapley, Shapley Matthews explores what it was like growing up with a science impresario and the longtime director of the Harvard Observatory. Matthews and Bogdan worked for several years after Shapley Matthews' death in 2016 to create this readable version of her manuscript.

Technology & society·Daniel Huttenlocher · Little, Brown & Co. · 2021

Artificial intelligence is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality. In "The Age of AI," three leading thinkers have come together to consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live.

Technology & society·Daniel Jackson · Princeton University Press · 2021

Software matters more than ever before. Why, then, is so much software flawed? Why isn't there a straightforward way to create software that is easy to use, robust, and secure? This book gives new answers to old questions, offering a fresh perspective on software design, with examples from over 100 familiar apps. It's accessible to anyone - strategist, marketer, manager, designer, or programmer - who wants software that is more empowering, dependable, and delightful to use.

Culture, humanities & social science·Edward Schiappa · Routledge · 2021

At no other point in human history have the definitions of "woman" and "man," "male" and "female," "masculine" and "feminine," been more contentious. This book advances a pragmatic approach to the act of defining and acknowledging the important ethical dimensions of our definitional practices. Schiappa's timely intervention examines sites of debate including schools, bathrooms, the military, sports, prisons, and feminism, drawing attention to the political, practical, and ethical dimensions of the act of defining itself.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Fábio Duarte · MIT Press · 2021

In "Urban Play," Duarte and Álvarez argue that technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them.

Culture, humanities & social science·Lily Tsai · Cambridge University Press · 2021

Why are some authoritarian regimes popular with their citizens, while many democratic regimes are mistrusted or held in contempt? In this book, Tsai provides a theory for understanding when ordinary people are more likely to favor illiberal and authoritarian leaders and provides a unified framework for understanding authoritarian resilience and democratic fragility.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Alan Berger · Island Press · 2021

Coastal adaptation is necessary if communities are to adequately protect themselves from increased tidal flooding and sea level rise. Planning is critical to their survival. "A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation" inspires innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local levels while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.

Culture, humanities & social science·Heather Paxson · Society for Cultural Anthropology · 2021

If the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol represents a return of fascism, when was it here before? Is fascism an appropriate category to understand this moment? The essays within this anthology provide some context for our current political moment; they are provocations for the future, and for the anthropological work that lies ahead.

Fiction & poetry·Renée Green · Primary Information · 2021

Green's debut novel is an homage to (and parody of) the historically male-dominated genre of the road novel. Set between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and combining the genres of road novel, countercultural memoir, travel journal, epistolary novel, and screenplay, it is the record of the mind of a young woman coming of age as an artist, traveling in Mexico, and exploring the bohemian milieu of 1980s New York.

Culture, humanities & social science·Olivier Blanchard · MIT Press · 2021

Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time. In this book, leading economists, many of them current or former policymakers, bring good news: We have the tools to reverse the rise in inequality. In their discussions, they consider which of these tools are the most effective at doing so.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Adesola Akinleye · Bloomsbury · 2021

Generated from a year of exchanges of movement ideas in cross-practice conversations and workshops with dancers, musicians, architects, and engineers, Akinleye engages with dance's offer of perspectives on being in place. Themes addressed include how dance and city-making cultures engage with female bodies and non-white bodies in today's era of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

Science & engineering·Frank Wilczek · Penguin · 2021

Wilczek offers a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. With clarity and joy, he guides readers through the essential concepts that form our understanding of what the world is and how it works. Through these pages, we come to see our reality in a new way - bigger, fuller, and stranger than it looked before.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Justin P. Steil · Temple University Press · 2021

The 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule was repealed by the Trump administration, jeopardizing the most significant federal effort to increase equal access to valuable opportunities such as top-performing schools and good jobs. By placing the history of fair housing in the context of the centuries-long struggle for racial equity, the authors show how the policy can be revived and enhanced to advance racial equity in America's neighborhoods.

Culture, humanities & social science·Caley Horan · University of Chicago Press · 2021

Horan shows that "the rise and dissemination of neoliberal values ... were the result of a project to unsocialize risk, shrinking the state's commitment to providing support." This has had the effect of laying burdens on people who are often the least capable of bearing them.

Culture, humanities & social science·Katrin Kaufer · MIT Press · 2021

In this book, Kaufer and Steponaitis take readers on a global tour of financial institutions that use finance as a force for good. In so doing, they remind us that money, if used intentionally and equitably, can be just money - a tool that serves nature, human development, and social justice.

Education, work, finance & impact·Patrick Henry Winston · MIT Press · 2021

Effective communication can be life-changing. This book from the late MIT professor and former director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory helps readers understand how writing and speaking tools can help you get a job, make a sale, convince a boss, inspire a student, or even start a revolution.

Culture, humanities & social science·Moya Bailey · NYU Press · 2021

When Bailey first coined the term "misogynoir," she defined it as the ways anti-Black and misogynistic representation shape broader ideas about Black women, particularly in visual culture and digital spaces. In this book, Bailey shows how Black women actively reimagine the world by engaging in powerful forms of digital resistance at a time when anti-Black misogyny is thriving.

For young readers·Thomas Moya · Hand Press Ink · 2021

A picture book that teaches about uncommon foods and introduces readers to children's names from different cultures. Using alliterative text and aspirational vocabulary to encourage discussion of body image and healthy eating, characters represent fruits and vegetables that highlight differences and imperfections.

Science & engineering·Alan Lightman · Pantheon · 2021

From the acclaimed author of "Einstein's Dreams" comes a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities - and impossibilities - of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between.

Technology & society·Daron Acemoglu · Boston Review, distributed by MIT Press · 2021

This book brings together experts - economists, legal scholars, policymakers, and developers - to explore the intersection of technology and economic justice, and to consider what steps tech companies can do take to ensure the advancement of AI does not further diminish economic prospects of the most vulnerable.

Education, work, finance & impact·Robert Pozen · Harper Business · 2021

You can thrive and excel when you're working remotely, if you adopt the mindset, habits, and tech tools of professionals who are even more productive outside the office. Learn to think like a "business of one," and that entrepreneurial mindset will transform your experience of remote work.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Brandon Clifford · ORO Editions · 2021

Bridging the realities of our ancestors and ourselves, this book proposes a series of architectural "recipes" after dining on a body of past expertise. Recipes are deciphered from ancient cyclopean masonry systems, but with a contemporary twist; they cannibalize leftover debris - building rubble that typically stuffs our landfills - to construct new buildings.

Fiction & poetry·Sherry Turkle · Penguin · 2021

In this vivid narrative, Turkle ties together her coming of age and her pathbreaking research on technology, empathy, and ethics. Growing up in postwar Brooklyn, Turkle searched for clues to her identity in a house filled with mysteries. Before empathy became a way to find connection, it was her strategy for survival.

Technology & society·Kate Darling · Macmillan · 2021

Are robots going to replace us and take our jobs? While those discussions are going on in many industries, Darling offers a different take. She argues that by treating robots the same way we treat animals - with humanity - and incorporating them in our work, military, and family life, our future with robot technology looks bright.

Education, work, finance & impact·Peter B. Kaufman · Seven Stories Press · 2021

How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone? In this book, Kaufman describes the powerful forces that have purposely damaged our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely, drawing up a progressive agenda for how today's free thinkers can band together to fight them - and win.

Fiction & poetry·Rania Ghosn · Actar · 2021

This graphic novel makes climate engineering and its controversies visible in five stories assembled from the deep underground to outer space. Each "geo-story" - Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud - depicts possible future Earths that we come to inhabit on the heels of a geoengineering intervention.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Skylar Tibbits · Princeton University Press · 2021

Today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. This book describes how these materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethink the way we build and collaborate with our environment.

Science & engineering·Arup Chakraborty · MIT Press · 2021

This book provides an accessible explanation of how viruses emerge to cause pandemics, how our immune system combats them, and how diagnostic tests, vaccines, and antiviral therapies work - concepts that provide the foundation for our public health policies.

Culture, humanities & social science·Ana Yáñez Rodríguez · Vernon Press · 2021

In this collection, a wide array of scholars based in the U.S., Spain, and Latin America explore the encounter of Hispanophone cultures and the law. Contributors delineate a fraught relationship of complicity, negotiation, and outright confrontation covering five centuries and a global landscape.

Education, work, finance & impact·William Bonvillian · MIT Press · 2021

Bonvillian and Sarma offer a roadmap for rebuilding America's working class. They argue that we need to train more workers more quickly, and they describe innovative methods of workforce education that are being developed across the country.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Azra Aksamija · ArchiTangle · 2020

This book investigates how architecture can shape an open-minded and inclusive society, highlighting three internationally renowned projects: the White Mosque in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1980); the Islamic Cemetery in Altach, Austria (2012); and Superkilen park in Copenhagen, Denmark (2011). Essays and interviews provide intriguing insights into architecture's ability to bridge cultural divides.

Culture, humanities & social science·Chappell Lawson · MIT Press · 2020

What does it mean to "secure the homeland" in the 21st century? What lessons can be drawn from the first two decades of U.S. government efforts to do so? In this book, leading academic experts and former senior government officials address the most salient challenges of homeland security today.

Technology & society·Sarah Williams · MIT Press · 2020

Data inevitably represent the ideologies of those who control their use; data analytics and algorithms too often exclude women, the poor, and ethnic groups. In this book, Williams provides a guide for working with data in more ethical and responsible ways.

Technology & society·Catherine D'Ignazio · MIT Press · 2020

Data are neither neutral nor objective. While they have been used for good (exposing injustice, improving health outcomes), they have also been used to discriminate (granting home loans, determining jail sentences). The authors present a new way of thinking about data informed by intersectional feminism, and offer strategies for how data scientists can work toward a more just society.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Sasha Costanza-Chock · MIT Press · 2020

"Design justice" is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. This book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices and connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

Education, work, finance & impact·Justin Reich · Harvard University Press · 2020

Reich describes how learning technologies - even those that are free to access - often provide the greatest benefit to affluent students and do little to combat growing inequality in education. We still need new teaching tools, and classroom experimentation should be encouraged, he asserts. But successful reform efforts will focus on incremental improvements, not the next killer app.

Education, work, finance & impact·Sanjay Sarma · Doubleday · 2020

Sarma and Yoquinto summarize the history of pedagogy and offer a vision for a different future, asking important questions about the efficacy of exams, the notion of innate ability, and new scholarship on how learners understand, absorb, and utilize information and skills. They argue for a more accessible, flexible, and engaging learning ecosystem.

Science & engineering·Noelle E. Selin · MIT Press · 2020

This book explores how people have made beneficial use of mercury for thousands of years, how they've been harmed by its toxic properties, and how they've tried to protect themselves and the environment from its damaging effects. The authors develop and apply an analytical framework that can inform other efforts to evaluate and promote sustainability.

Culture, humanities & social science·Thomas Levenson · Random House · 2020

Advances of the Scientific Revolution created newly abstract ideas about money, transforming it from something material - discs of precious metal - to a mathematical notion of money, shares, or bonds, or insurance that could evolve over time. Levenson shows how we are still vulnerable to the same risks that brought down Britain's first experiments with financial invention.

Education, work, finance & impact·Erin L. Kelly · Princeton University Press · 2020

Years of research shows how organizational change and work redesign strategies can address burnout, overload, and turnover - especially timely as many professionals in the past year have been asked to do more with less in extremely challenging circumstances.

Science & engineering·David Kaiser · University of Chicago Press · 2020

Kaiser introduces readers to iconic episodes in physicists' still-unfolding quest to understand space, time, and matter. He explores moments of discovery and debate among the minds of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking, and many more who have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature as they've tried to make sense of a messy world.

Technology & society·Michael Schrage · MIT Press · 2020

Schrage explains the origins, technologies, business applications, and increasing societal impact of recommendation engines, the systems that allow companies worldwide to know what products, services, and experiences "you might also like." Part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.

Education, work, finance & impact·Tom Kochan · Routledge · 2020

This book provides a clear roadmap for the roles workers and leaders in business, labor, education, and government must play in building a new social contract for all to prosper. It is a call to action for a collaborative effort to develop both high-quality jobs and strong, successful businesses while overcoming the deep social and economic divisions that are all too apparent in society today.

Culture, humanities & social science·Jennifer S. Light · MIT Press · 2020

Across the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century, simulated cities, states, and nations sprang up in which children played legislators, police officers, bankers, shopkeepers, and other adults. They passed laws, grew food, and constructed buildings, among other tasks, inside virtual worlds. Light examines these "junior republics" and argues that they marked the transition to a new kind of "sheltered" childhood for American youth.

Education, work, finance & impact·Elsbeth Johnson · Bloomsbury · 2020

Johnson challenges some of our most fundamental beliefs about how to lead change - and about what we consider "leadership." She suggests leaders need to do more in early stages of the change, in specific ways and at specific times, and do less in later stages of the change.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Andres Sevtsuk · University of Pennsylvania Press · 2020

Will e-commerce and big-box stores overtake the smaller-scale stores lining streets accessible on foot or by public transit? Sevtsuk offers a thoughtful analysis of the issues involved in implementing successful street commerce and provides examples from around the world where cities have reinvigorated their street commerce.

Technology & society·Sinan Aral · Currency · 2020

Drawing on decades of research and business experience, Aral provides an insider's tour of how social media affects our decision-making and shapes our world in ways both useful and dangerous, with critical insights into the social media trends of the 2020 election and beyond.

Culture, humanities & social science·Samuel Jay Keyser · MIT Press · 2020

Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the 17th century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations.

Fiction & poetry·Sara Seager · Crown · 2020

A pioneering planetary scientist, Seager searches for exoplanets - especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of her husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. As she struggles to navigate life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanets and the technical challenges of exploration.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Hashim Sarkis · MIT Press · 2020

The world's growing vulnerability to planet-sized risks invites action on a global scale. This book shows how, for more than a century, architects have imagined the future of the planet through world-scale projects. With 50 speculative projects by visionary architects documented in text and images, this ambitious and wide-ranging book is the first compilation of its kind.

Arts, design, architecture & planning·Siqi Zheng · SA+P Press, distributed by MIT Press · 2020

This book presents new cities in Asia from the perspective of economic vibrancy, identifying key mechanisms for measuring success. This analytical framework addresses the mechanisms along three dimensions: underlying forces that foster the dense and diverse production and consumption activities; creative financing; and the digitalization of urban systems.

Technology & society·Julie Shah · Basic Books · 2020

A vision for how robots can survive in the real world and how they will change our relationship to technology. From teaching them manners, to robot-proofing public spaces, to planning for their mistakes, this book answers every question you didn't know you needed to ask about the robots on the way.''