New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Simone Muller, “Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks” (Columbia UP, 2016)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Simone Muller’s Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (Columbia University Press, 2016) is a superb accoun...
Melvin R. Adams, “Atomic Geography: A Personal History of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation” (Washington State University Press, 2016)
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In May, a tunnel filled with radioactive waste collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, making international news. This incid...
Thomas Hazlett, “The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology” (Yale UP, 2017)
30 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What better way to explore the history of media regulation than to go on a journey with the former chief economist of the FCC? Prior to introduction o...
Brian Clegg, “The Reality Frame: Relativity and Our Place in the Universe” (Icon Books, 2017)
29 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Clegg is one of England’s most prolific and popular writers on science. His latest work, The Reality Frame: Relativity and Our Place in the Un...
Neil M. Maher, “Apollo in the Age of Aquarius” (Harvard UP, 2017)
20 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1969, two seminal events of the sixties happened within a few weeks of each other: the first man walked on the moon and the Woodstock...
Beau Lotto, “Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently” (Hatchette Books, 2017)
30 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We may think we see the world as it is, but neuroscience proves otherwise. Which is a good thing, according to neuroscientist and author Beau Lotto. I...
Britt Rusert, “Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture” (NYU Press, 2017)
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early Afric...
Sharrona Pearl, “Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other” (U. Chicago Press, 2017)
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sharrona Pearl‘s new book is an absolute pleasure to read. Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other (The University of Chicago Press, 2...
Different Medias with Eric Alterman
18 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How can we as consumers distinguish between the many different political medias? Eric Alterman is CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journa...
Willliam Rankin, “After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
17 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Policymakers and the public clamored for maps throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed, maps were a necessity for war, navigation, a...
Kate Daloz, “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America” (PublicAffairs, 2016)
14 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a...
Sophia Roosth, “Synthetic: How Life Got Made” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
13 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sophia Roosth‘s wonderful new book follows researchers clustered around MIT beginning in 2003 who named themselves synthetic biologists. A historica...
Tara H. Abraham, “Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch’s Transdisciplinary Life in Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
11 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Fueling his bohemian lifestyle and anti-authoritarian attitude with a steady diet of ice cream and whiskey, along with a healthy dose of insomnia, War...
Helen Anne Curry, “Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
08 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Nowadays, it might seem perplexing for the founder of a seed company to express the intention to “shock Mother Nature,” or at least in bad taste. ...
Lisa Messeri, “Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds” (Duke UP, 2016)
04 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of object is a planet? Lisa Messeri‘s new book asks and addressed this question in a fascinating ethnography that explores how scientific ...
J. C. McKeown, “A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome” (Oxford UP, 2017)
29 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The back cover of J. C. McKeown‘s new book, A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2017), is adorned not with review quo...
Tania Munz, “The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
25 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Tania Munz‘s new book is a dual biography: both of Austrian-born experimental physiologist Karl von Frisch, and of the honeybees he worked with as e...
Democracy and Dialogue Online with Joshua Cohen
20 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Cohen is a faculty member of Apple University, and is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the School of Law, the Department of Philosophy, and the ...
Grace Davie, “Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
19 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century ea...
Donna Freitas, “The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost” (Oxford UP, 2017)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In The Happiness Effect: How Social Media is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost (Oxford University Press, 2017), Donna Freitas investi...
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT, 2014)
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: T...
Rebecca Scales, “Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921-1939” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What did sound mean to French people as radio and other listening technologies began to proliferate in the early twentieth century? What was the natur...
Eugene Raikhel, “Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic” (Cornell UP, 2016)
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Alcoholism is a strange thing. That it exists, no one seriously doubts. But it’s not entirely clear (diagnostically speaking) what it is, who has it...
Democracy and Social Media with Michael Lynch
05 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Social Media rewards snap judgments and blind conviction. Michael Lynch finds this troubling. Michael P. Lynch is Professor of Philosophy and Direct...
Raz Chen-Morris, “Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility” (Penn State UP, 2016)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Raz Chen-Morris‘s new book traces a significant and surprising notion through the work of Johannes Kepler: in order to account for real physical mot...
Colleen Derkatch, “Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
29 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What makes for new science? What happens to the evidentiary basis of the medical profession when patients demand treatments beyond the range of their ...
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry...
Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers, “Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible” (Fordham UP, 2015)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most interesting, but largely overlooked silent films, is Haxan, written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Using documentary methods as...
Susan E. Cayleff, “Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
28 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Susan Cayleff’s Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016) offers a fascinating alternativ...
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco, “The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture” (Routledge, 2016)
27 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The wish to transcend one’s mortality, and the anxiety associated with being unable to do so, are universal human experiences. People deal with thes...
Kathleen McAuliffe, “This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society” (Mariner Books, 2017)
21 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the...
Meredith K. Ray, “Margherita Sarrocchi’s Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in 17th-Century Italy” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
13 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Meredith K. Ray’s new book contextualizes and translates a range of seventeenth-century letters, mostly between Margherita Sarrocchi (1560-1617) and...
Ericka Johnson, ed. “Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the frontier of feminist technoscience research, Ericka Johnson’s collaborative project Gendering Drugs: Feminist Studies of Pharmaceuticals (Pal...
Matthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
23 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the ...
Stacy Alaimo, “Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
21 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Stacy Alaimo’s Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) is a provocative reflection on...
Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds “Digital Sociologies” (Policy Press, 2016)
09 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do we do sociology in the digital era? In Digital Sociologies (Policy Press, 2016) Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and Th...
John Hadley, “Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals” (Lexington Books, 2015)
09 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing ha...
Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
04 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a ...
Matthew L. Jones, “Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
23 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew L. Jones’s wonderful new book traces a history of failed efforts to make calculating machines, from Blaise Pascal’s work in the 1640s thro...
Projit Bihari Mukharji, “Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Science: (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
16 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the hi...
Joshua Howe, “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
10 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gat...
Dave Karpf, “Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy” (Oxford UP, 2016)
09 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the start of 2017, Dave Karpf is back on the podcast with his new book, Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy (Oxfor...
Nicholas A. John, “The Age of Sharing” (Polity Press, 2016)
06 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Age of Sharing (Polity Press, 2016), the sociologist and media scholar Nicholas A. John documents the history and current meanings...
Scott Selisker, “Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
18 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Scott Selisker offers readers a fascinat...
Robert Aronowitz, “Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
09 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Statistics have been on the minds of more people than usual in the run-up and post-mortem of this past U.S. presidential election; some feel as though...
Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China” (U. California Press, 2014 reprint)
07 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Pre...
Carol Upadhya, “Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy” (Oxford UP, 2016)
23 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How is India’s burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are softwa...
Robert Brain, “The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (U. of Washington Press, 2015)
12 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Oscar Wilde famously observed. Wilde’s waning romanticism can be read in stark contrast wit...
Sally Engle Merry, “The Seduction of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016)
07 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Quantification is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when hearing or reading about the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (OHC...
Robert Peckham, “Epidemics in Modern Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
06 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Peckham’s Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores the crucial yet under-explored role that epidemics have played...
J.D. Trout, “Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science” (Oxford UP, 2016)
15 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The social practice we call science has had spectacular success in explaining the natural world since the 17th century. While advanced mathematics and...
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)
10 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for ...
Asif A. Siddiqi, “The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957” (Cambridge UP, 2013)
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Asif Siddiqi approaches the history...
Marc Raboy, “Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World” (Oxford UP, 2016)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Our modern networked world owes an oftentimes unacknowledged debt to Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy demonstrates in Marconi: The Man Who Networked t...
E.R. Truitt, “Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art” (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
21 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s third law, coined in 1973, expresses the difficulty that peopl...
Mary Chayko, “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” (SAGE, 2016)
13 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
New technology has made us more connected than ever before. This has its advantages: instantaneous communication, expanded circles of influence, acces...
George Couros, “The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity” (Dave Burgess Consulting, 2015)
13 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most commonly used words right now in education is “innovation.” It seems to be part of any response to our collective anxiety over the...
Caroline Ford, “Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France” (Harvard UP, 2016)
12 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Ford’s Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France (Harvard University Press, 2016) explores the roots of French envir...
Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, “The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line” (Prometheus Books, 2016)
11 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line (Prometheus Books, 2016) goes considerably beyo...
Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: A New Logic of Scientific Inquiry” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
07 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Is the scientific value of objectivity in conflict with the social justice commitment to diversity? In her latest book, Objectivity and Diversity: A N...
William Cavert, “The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Air pollution may seem to be a problem uniquely of the modern age, but in fact it is one that has bedeviled people throughout history. In his book The...
James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)
26 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned...
Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India” (Temple UP, 2015)
17 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of ...
Lisa Bjorkman, “Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai” (Duke UP, 2015)
02 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Mumbai is in many ways the paradigmatic city of India’s celebrated economic upturn, but the city’s transformation went hand-in-hand with increasin...
Peter Wade, et. al. “Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America (Duke UP, 2014)
02 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past quarter-century, scientists have been mapping and exploring the human genome to locate the genetic basis of disease and track the histor...
Benjamin Peters, “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” (MIT Press, 2016)
16 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Something we might think of as the Soviet internet once existed, according to Benjamin Peters‘ new book, and its failure was neither natural nor ine...
Vanessa Ogle, “The Global Transformation of Time: 1870-1950” (Harvard UP, 2015)
13 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
From the 1880s onward, Beirut-based calendars and almanacs were in high demand as they packaged at least four different calendars into one, including:...
Phaedra Daipha, “Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
09 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Phaedra Daipha’s thoughtful new book uses a careful sociological study of a particular community of weather forecasters to develop a sociology of de...
Noriko Manabe, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima” (Oxford UP, 2015)
09 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Noriko Manabe’s new book is a compelling analysis of the content, performance style, and role of music in social movements in contemporary Japan. Pa...
Ronald R. Kline, “The Cybernetics Moment: Or, Why We Call Our Age the Information Age” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)
08 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothe...
Sabine Arnaud, “On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)
05 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sabine Arnaud‘s new book explores a history of discursive practices that played a role in the construction of hysteria as pathology. On Hysteria: Th...
Mark Navin, “Values and Vaccine Refusal: Hard Questions in Epistemology, Ethics, and Health Care” (Routledge, 2016)
01 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Communities of parents who refuse, delay, or selectively decline to vaccinate their children pose familiar moral and political questions concerning pu...
Samuel Morris Brown, “Through the Valley of Shadows: Living Wills, Intensive Care, and Making Medicine Human” (Oxford University Press, 2016)
29 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations about death during hospitalization are among the most difficult imaginable: the moral weight of a human life is suspended by stressful c...
Greg Jenner, “A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from Stone Age to Phone Age” (St. Martin’s Press, 2016)
26 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Jenner’s A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from Stone Age to Phone Age (St. Martins Press, 2016), explores the histo...
Saul J. Weiner and Alan Schwartz, “Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care” (Oxford University Press 2016)
22 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When clinicians listen to patients, what do they hear? In Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care (Oxford UP, 2016), Sau...
Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
15 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blac...
Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016)
03 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Michael F. Robinson‘s new book is such a pleasure to read, I cant even. It’s not just because you get to say Gambaragara over and over again if yo...
Katie Gentile, ed., “The Business of Being Made” (Routledge, 2015)
28 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Techn...
Rebecca Lemov, “Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity” (Yale University Press, 2015)
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Rebecca Lemov‘s beautifully written Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity (Yale University Press, 2015) is at once an exploration o...
Mark Carrigan, “Social Media for Academics” (Sage, 2016)
27 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How can academics respond to the rise of social media? Or should they respond at all? In Social Media for Academics (Sage, 2016), Mark Carrigan, from ...
David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015)
26 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
David J. Meltzer‘s new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American arch...
David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015)
20 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociolo...
Eben Kirksey, “Emergent Ecologies” (Duke UP, 2015)
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among...
Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015)
18 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bow...
Sigrid Schmalzer, “Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China” (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
11 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Sigrid Schmalzer‘s new book is an excellent and important contribution to both science studies and the history of China. Red Revolution, Green Revol...
Benjamin Castleman, “The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messaging and Other Behavioral Strategies Can Improve Education” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)
03 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Teenagers live in their phones. As an educator you can try to pull them away or meet them where they are. The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messagi...
Adam Kucharski, “The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling” (Basic Books, 2016)
31 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Kucharski, who won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, has delivered another winner in an area rife with both winners and losers. The ...
Jonathan Donner, “After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet” (MIT Press, 2015)
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to mobile phones, getting online is easier and cheaper than ever. In After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet (MIT Pres...
Elizabeth A. Wilson, “Gut Feminism” (Duke UP, 2015)
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth A. Wilson‘s new book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of science studies and feminist theory. In its introduction,...
Justin E. H. Smith, “Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy” (Princeton UP, 2015)
02 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nat...
Jeffery Pomerantz, “Metadata” (MIT, 2015)
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What is the “stuff” that fuels the information society in which we live? In his new book, Metadata (MIT 2015), information scientist Jeffrey Pomer...
Carin Berkowitz, “Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Carin Berkowitz‘s new book takes readers into the world of nineteenth century London to explore the landscape of medicine and surgery along with Cha...
Paul R. Josephson, “Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologies” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)
29 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Paul R. Josephson‘s new book explores everyday technologies – fish sticks, sports bras, sugar, bananas, aluminum cans, potatoes, fructose, and mor...
Dale Jamieson, “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for Our Future” (Oxford UP, 2014)
21 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How are we to think and live with climate change? In Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for O...
Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machines” (MIT 2015)
06 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, becam...
Peter J. Gloviczki, “Journalism and Memorialization in the Age of Social Media” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)
30 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have coped with tragedy using ritual and memorials since the Neolithic era. Doka called a memorial a space invested with meaning, “set aside ...
Nathan Altice, “I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer-Entertainment System Platform” (MIT Press, 2015)
23 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The genre of “platform studies” offers both researchers and readers more than an examination of the technical machinations of a computing system. ...
Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter” (Duke UP, 2015)
21 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
After reading Natasha Myers’s new book, the world begins to dance in new ways. Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter (Duk...
Brian P. Copenhaver, “Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment” (Cambridge UP, 2015 )
15 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the...
Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015)
06 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-F...