Reading · Subjects

Subject

Culture, humanities & social science

History, statecraft, economics and memory: how societies hold together and come apart.

74 books · 69 authors · across 6 lists · 2020–2026

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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