New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)
10 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as ac...
Caitlin Vincent, "Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)
09 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How can cultural industries survive in the twenty-first century? In Opera Wars Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future Caitlin Vinc...
Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Ol...
Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth centuryA popular truism derive...
Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism with Thea Riofrancos
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Lithium, a crucial input in the batteries powering electric vehicles, has the potential to save the world from climate change. But even green solution...
Kelsey Klotz, "Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness" (Oxford UP, 2023)
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that B...
Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political econ...
Julia Elyachar, "On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo" (Duke UP, 2025)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On the Semicivilized: Coloniality, Finance, and Embodied Sovereignty in Cairo (Duke University Press, 2025) by Julia Elyachar is a sweeping analysis...
Deana Heath and Jinee Lokaneeta, "Policing and Violence in India: Colonial Origins and Contemporary Realities" (Speaking Tiger, 2025)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why does Indias police force, created under British rule, still echo the priorities of a bygone empire? And what is it about this institution, tasked ...
Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...
Hans Kundnani, "Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
"Today’s 'pro-Europeans' would be horrified at the suggestion that their idea of Europe had anything to do with whiteness. In fact, many would find ...
Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, a...
Russell T. McCutcheon, "Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion" (Routledge, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russell T. McCutcheon's essay collection Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Routledge, 2023) argues that the study o...
Henrike Kohpeiß, "Bourgeois Coldness" (Divided Publishing, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bourgeois Coldness (Divided Publishing, 2025) refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bour...
Daniel M. Herskowitz, "The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig (Liverpool UP, 2025) offers a new interpretation of Franz Rosenzweig's magnum opus The Star o...
Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm, "Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life" (Reaktion, 2023)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life (Reaktion, 2023) recreates medieval people’s experience of time: as continuous and discontinuous, ...
Marcus Willaschek, "Kant: A Revolution in Thinking" (Harvard UP, 2025)
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the most important philosopher of the modern era. His Critique of Pure Reason, “categorical imperative,” and con...
Beenash Jafri, "Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of ...
Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production" (CEU Press, 2025)
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism:...
Graham Harman, "Waves and Stones: The Continuous and the Discontinuous in Human Thought" (Allen Lane, 2025)
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new exploration of our conception of reality, by one of the world’s most influential philosophers.How do we understand the world and our place in ...
Negar Mansouri and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín eds., "Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law" (Cambridge UP, 2025
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law...
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts" (Yale UP, 2025)
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Medieval Europe was preoccupied with magic. From the Carolingian Empire to Renaissance Italy and Tudor England, great rulers, religious figures, and s...
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships...
Dan Edelstein, "The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin" (Princeton UP, 2025)
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balan...
Michael Staunton, "Thomas Becket and His World" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Becket and His World (Reaktion Books, 2025) explores the turbulent life and violent death of Thomas Becket, one of the most controversial ...
Ayoush Lazikani, "The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing" (Yale UP, 2025)
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When they gazed at the moon, medieval people around the globe saw an object that was at once powerful and fragile, distant and intimate—and sometime...
Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What good is aesthetics in a time of ecological crisis? Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France ...
Mark Griffiths, "Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinia...
Matt Houlbrook, "Songs of Seven Dials: An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London" (Manchester UP, 2025)
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has central London changed in the last 100 years? In Songs of Seven Dials An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London (Manchester UP, 2025)...
Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk...
Patrick Gamsby, "Henri Lefebvre, Metaphilosophy and Modernity" (Routledge, 2025)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Henri Lefebvre is a writer who has had many competing claims for ownership, from sociology to philosophy to urban geography, different scholars have a...
Benjamin Balthaser, "Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left" (Verso Books, 2025)
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since October 7, 2023, the world has witnessed a massive American Jewish uprising in support of Palestinian liberation. Through sit-ins in Congress or...
Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that co...
Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the...
Joe Greenwood-Hau," Capital, Privilege and Political Participation" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Who gets involved in politics? In Capital, Privilege and Political Participation (Liverpool UP, 2025) Joe Greenwood-Hau a Lecturer in the J...
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, "Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen’s Chicago" (MIT Press, 2024)
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostenta...
Piotr Nowak, "After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man" (Anthem Press, 2025)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man (Anthem Press, 2025) is an attempt to describe and critically interpret the condi...
Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, the body of a former president of the Republic of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, was stolen from his grave. The Time of the Cannibals reconside...
Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edg...
Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
23 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely ima...
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
23 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we bre...
160* Hannah Arendt's Refugee Politics (JP)
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John's “Arendt's Refugee Politics” came out in Public Books in early November. He made the case that his favorite political philosopher, Hanna...
Can Feminism be African?: A Conversation with Minna Salami
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript of the interview Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader on feminism, knowledge production, and the aesthetics and str...
Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twe...
On Democracy and Bullshit with Hélène Landemore
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus ...
Jemma Deer, "Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
16 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jemma Deer’s Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020) invites the reader to take a moment and to ponder...
Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023)
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford UP, 2023), Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness canno...
Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U Californ...
Dag Nikolaus Hasse, "What Is European? On Overcoming Colonial and Romantic Modes of Thought" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is common to define Europe by its democratic, scientific, religious, and cultural traditions. But in What is European? On Overcoming Colonial and ...
Lars Cornelissen, "Neoliberalism and Race" (Stanford UP, 2025)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Neoliberalism and Race (Stanford UP, 2025) Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neolib...
Joseph Stiglitz, "The Origins of Inequality" (Oxford UP, 2025)
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peac...
Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cog...
James Scorer, "Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame" (U Texas Press, 2024)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do comics cross boarders? In Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame James Scorer, a Professor of Latin Ameri...
brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitate...
Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs...
Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an i...
Natasha Piano, "Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science" (Harvard UP, 2025)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do competitive elections secure democracy, or might they undermine it by breeding popular disillusionment with liberal norms and procedures? The so-ca...
Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary n...
Gavin Flood, "The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra" (Routledge, 2024)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2024) presents an account of the concept of mind in Hindu Tantra through a study of religious and ph...
Elif Kalaycioglu, "The Politics of World Heritage: Visions, Custodians, and Futures of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2025)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it take to construct humanity's cultural history and what do these efforts produce in the world? In The Politics of World Heritage (Oxford...
Gilles Deleuze, "On Painting" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to di...
Michael Lazarus, "Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx" (Stanford UP, 2025)
26 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a w...
Tim Beasley-Murray, "Critical Games: On Play and Seriousness in Academia, Literature and Life" (Manchester UP, 2025)
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Which parts of life are serious, and which are a game? In Critical Games: On Play and Seriousness in Academia, Literature and Life (Manchester...
Joanna Woronkowicz, "Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers" (Stanford UP, 2025)
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be an artist? In Artists At Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers (Stanford UP, 2025) Joanna Woronkowicz, the co-found...
What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money, work for justice, run marathons, sing in a choir, have children, travel the world? The things we...
Eva Meijer, "Multispecies Assemblies" (Vine Press, 2025)
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Animals speak. Plants do too. Seas and mountains are not a mute background to human actions, but have interests and agency. Many more-than-human being...
Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action" (Haymarket, 2019)
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and ...
Bill V. Mullen, "James Baldwin: Living in Fire" (Pluto Press, 2019)
19 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the per...
Hamid Dabashi, "After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization" (Haymarket, 2025)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we speak with Hamid Dabashi about his new book, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarke...
Gianna Englert, "Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage" (Oxford UP, 2024)
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wi...
Mahboob Qirvanian and Behnaz Mirzai, "Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiog...
Will Kitchen, "Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitch...
Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them.If there’s one thing most Ameri...
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, "Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone" (Columbia UP, 2025)
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express ...
Madison Schramm, "Why Democracies Fight Dictators" (Oxford UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems ...
Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of s...
Katharine Jenkins, "Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about ...
William H. F. Altman, "The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy: Platonis Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero" (Lexington Books, 2016)
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy: Platonis Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero (Lexington Books, 2016) argues that Cicero deserv...
Matt Myers, "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989" (Oxford UP, 2025)
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been i...
Carol Atack, "Plato: A Civic Life" (Reaktion, 2025)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born ...
Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025)
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Witt...
Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a very special episode of the New Books Network, as the editor of Conversations with Kiese Laymon (UP of Mississippi, 2025), Dr. Constance B...
Robert F. Carley, "Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice" (SUNY Press, 2019)
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Car...
Kenja McCray, "Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership" (NYU Press, 2025)
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated a...
Marcus Rediker, "Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea" (Penguin Group, 2025)
20 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Conspiracy, mutiny and liberation on America’s waterfront by the award-winning author of The Slave Ship. Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History o...
Paying Attention with Anya Daly
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Anya Daly. Dr Anya Daly investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of...
Zahi Zalloua, "Fanon, Žižek and the Violence of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
n a novel pairing of anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon with Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Zahi Zalloua explores the ways both thinker...
Matthew Benjamin Cole, "Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century" (U of Michigan Press, 2025)
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are we already living in some kind of fascist or technocratic dystopia? How do we avert the AI dystopia? These are the types of things that you'll see...
Laura Garbes, "Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" (Princeton UP, 2025)
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is radio so white? In Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry (Princeton UP, 2025) Laura Garbes, a Sociol...
Simon James Copland, "The Male Complaint: The Manosphere and Misogyny Online" (Polity, 2025)
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Inspired by leaders such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, the online Manosphere has exploded in recent years. Dedicated to anti-feminism, these com...
Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, "Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England" (Princeton UP, 2025)
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do children believe in? In Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton UP, 2025) Anna Strhan, a Reader...
Ariel Colonomos, "Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement" (Oxford UP, 2023)
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement (Oxford UP, 2023) discusses how human lives are equated with the material, and argues that pricing l...
Robert T. Tally, Jr., "For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism" (Zero Books, 2022)
07 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Robert T. Tally, Jr.'s book For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (Zero Books, 2022) takes as its p...
Lyndsey Stonebridge on Hannah Arendt's Lessons on Love and Disobedience (JP)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the...
Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia Univer...
David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capital...
Maddalena Cerrato, "Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes" (SUNY Press, 2025)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of...
David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around fo...
Cordelia Fine, "Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the wo...
Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a...