title stringlengths 3 113 | authors listlengths 1 4 | strapline stringlengths 27 255 | summary stringlengths 119 2.33k | synopsis stringlengths 119 2.33k | review_count int64 0 47 | reviews listlengths 0 47 |
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10/40/70 | [
"Nicholas Rombes"
] | A bold experiment in film theory for the digital era. | In an era of rapid transformation from analog to digital, how can we write about cinema in ways that are as fresh, surprising, and challenging as the best films are? In 10/40/70 Nicholas Rombes proposes one bold possibility: pause a film at the 10, 40, and 70-minute mark and write about the frames at hand, no matter wh... | In an era of rapid transformation from analog to digital, how can we write about cinema in ways that are as fresh, surprising, and challenging as the best films are? In 10/40/70 Nicholas Rombes proposes one bold possibility: pause a film at the 10, 40, and 70-minute mark and write about the frames at hand, no matter wh... | 3 | [
"For Nicholas Rombes, every film is an oracle. In 10/40/70, he proposes a new method of divination: stop the film at arbitrary points, and give a careful account of what you see. The result may be an intense formal analysis, or a new appreciation of narrative subtleties, or a kind of emotional weather report, or a ... |
15 Years of Speculative Realism | [
"Charlie Johns"
] | A definitive and invaluable re-assessment of the last decade of speculative realism. | More than 15 years have passed since the speculative realism conference at Goldsmiths College, London, hosted Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Their dictum was simple: Reality is not what it seems.
15 Years of Speculative Realism begins with four chapters, each dedicated to th... | More than 15 years have passed since the speculative realism conference at Goldsmiths College, London, hosted Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Their dictum was simple: Reality is not what it seems.
15 Years of Speculative Realism begins with four chapters, each dedicated to th... | 2 | [
"When the first speculative realism symposium was held in 2007, it caused a sensation both inside and outside philosophical circles. It seemed to portend a radical shift in our relation to, and in our understanding of, the world. But it is the fate of successful revolutions in thought to be assimilated into the ver... |
2 Ennerdale Drive | [
"Rosa Ainley"
] | A missed family funeral and too many phone calls going nowhere, except to 2 Ennerdale Drive. Who will play detective? | 2 Ennerdale Drive is a memoir of a house and the family that lived there; a work of text and image encompassing architecture, social and personal history, town planning, photography and representation, carving a space within and between new forms of memoir, cultural studies and creative non-fiction. The house in north ... | 2 Ennerdale Drive is a memoir of a house and the family that lived there; a work of text and image encompassing architecture, social and personal history, town planning, photography and representation, carving a space within and between new forms of memoir, cultural studies and creative non-fiction. The house in north ... | 3 | [
"It may or may not have escaped attention (though it has not escaped the attention of the Oxonian Review ) that Zero Books is having an extraordinarily good run at the moment - so heres plugs for four I think especially worth plugging. …\n\nThree books on film, in the loosest sense … More domestic, albeit deceptive... |
Advancing Conversations: Aubrey de Grey - advocate for an indefinite human lifespan | [
"Douglas Lain",
"Aubrey de Grey"
] | A line of interview books documenting conversations with artists, authors, philosophers, economists, scientists, and activists whose works are aimed at the future and at progress. | Advancing Conversations is a line of interview books documenting conversations with artists, authors, philosophers, economists, scientists, and activists whose works are aimed at the future and at progress. The biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, as the world's pre-eminent longevity advocate, is nothing if not future orie... | Advancing Conversations is a line of interview books documenting conversations with artists, authors, philosophers, economists, scientists, and activists whose works are aimed at the future and at progress. The biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, as the world's pre-eminent longevity advocate, is nothing if not future orie... | 0 | [] |
Advancing Conversations: Srećko Horvat - Subversion! | [
"Alfie Bown",
"Srećko Horvat"
] | An interview with acclaimed European philosopher and political activist Srećko Horvat. | In a world dominated by capitalism which is dangerously sliding into a new kind of fascism, Srećko Horvat's new book explores the concept of subverting the dominant paradigm in politics, technology and love. Drawing from his own experience of participating in different protest movements all around the world, working cl... | In a world dominated by capitalism which is dangerously sliding into a new kind of fascism, Srećko Horvat's new book explores the concept of subverting the dominant paradigm in politics, technology and love. Drawing from his own experience of participating in different protest movements all around the world, working cl... | 2 | [
"History has only produced decency when good people infiltrated despotic institutions and succeeded in subverting them, often at a terrible cost to themselves. Horvat explains brilliantly subversion’s creative potential, in juxtaposition to isolationism and escapism which are the establishment’s best friends. ~ Yan... |
Aesthetics & Alienation | [
"Gary Tedman"
] | What is the role of the aesthetic state apparatus? | Aesthetics has recently become the focus of greater attention, and is now seen as a central problem in critical cultural theory and Marxism. This places Gary Tedman's work at the forefront of this concern, where his concepts of the aesthetic level and of aesthetic state apparatuses have proved to be a challenge even to... | Aesthetics has recently become the focus of greater attention, and is now seen as a central problem in critical cultural theory and Marxism. This places Gary Tedman's work at the forefront of this concern, where his concepts of the aesthetic level and of aesthetic state apparatuses have proved to be a challenge even to... | 0 | [] |
After Pornified | [
"Anne G. Sabo"
] | After Pornified: where female pornmakers lead the way, empowering women to claim their bodies and sex against a pornified culture. | Porn brings up a lot of negative images in our sexualized, pornified culture. But today a growing number of women are radically changing porn to authentically capture with respect and realism the sexual lives of women and men, empowering and inspiring the viewer to claim her sexuality against a pornified culture, and c... | Porn brings up a lot of negative images in our sexualized, pornified culture. But today a growing number of women are radically changing porn to authentically capture with respect and realism the sexual lives of women and men, empowering and inspiring the viewer to claim her sexuality against a pornified culture, and c... | 19 | [
"Anne G. Sabo's After Pornified: How Women are Transforming Pornography and Why It Really Matters is a straightforward study of pron made by women... In a world where porn often circulates in small clips that are divorced from their origins, with no indication of financing or mode of production, After Pornified is ... |
After The Apocalypse | [
"Monika Kostera"
] | During times of crumbling social structures and deep divisions, we need to find ideas and values on which we as organizers and society members can build bridges, and unite in our journey towards a common future. | Our times of crumbling structures and decaying social bonds are often depicted as apocalyptic. This book takes the apocalypse as a metaphor to help us in the search for meaning in our everyday realities. Yes, the apocalypse is when social structures and institutions fall apart and we are terrified and suffocated by the... | Our times of crumbling structures and decaying social bonds are often depicted as apocalyptic. This book takes the apocalypse as a metaphor to help us in the search for meaning in our everyday realities. Yes, the apocalypse is when social structures and institutions fall apart and we are terrified and suffocated by the... | 5 | [
"So there is hope. And in After the Apocalypse, the Polish economist and professor of management Monika Kostera takes hope as her theme. Hope shapes experience and, crucially, Kostera wants to inspire it.\n\nShe makes an earnest and worthy contribution to organisation theory, which deals with the effects of social ... |
After the Great Refusal | [
"Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen"
] | A Western Marxist, Avant-garde reading of contemporary art. | After the Great Refusal offers a Western Marxist reading of contemporary art focusing on the continued presence (or absence) of the avant-garde’s transgressive impulse.
Taking art’s ability to contribute to a potential radical social transformation as its point of departure, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen' analyses the relatio... | After the Great Refusal offers a Western Marxist reading of contemporary art focusing on the continued presence (or absence) of the avant-garde’s transgressive impulse.
Taking art’s ability to contribute to a potential radical social transformation as its point of departure, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen' analyses the relatio... | 4 | [
"In a time of headlong social and biophysical 'dissolution into capital', social reproduction crashes and dark political phenomena spring up on all sides. Friendly phantoms of reform surface here and there with their jolts of short-lived radical affect, while fascist libidinal economies go to work on everything fro... |
Against Capital | [
"Cliff Slaughter"
] | In today's globalised world, and after the collapse of Stalinism, what remains of Marx's 'the working class as the gravediggers of capitalism'? | ‘The problem is not how to manage the capital system, but to get rid of it’. And who will do the job? These are the questions posed at the start of Cliff Slaughter’s latest book. Recognising the importance of István Mészáros’s analysis - in Beyond Capital (1995) and other books - of the historic, ‘structural crisis’ th... | ‘The problem is not how to manage the capital system, but to get rid of it’. And who will do the job? These are the questions posed at the start of Cliff Slaughter’s latest book. Recognising the importance of István Mészáros’s analysis - in Beyond Capital (1995) and other books - of the historic, ‘structural crisis’ th... | 2 | [
"Synopsis: 'The problem is not how to manage the capital system, but to get rid of it'. And who will do the job? These are the questions posed at the start of \"Against Capital: Experiences of Class Struggle and Rethinking Revolutionary Agency\" a compilation of thoughtful and thought-provoking articles edited by C... |
Against Capitalist Education | [
"Nadim Anjum Bakhshov"
] | The birth of a revolutionary art of world-creation. | Out there in the so-called real world the education system is being crushed by the demands of capitalism and, in turn, is crushing those who pass through it, reducing them, diminishing them. The dream of the economic functioning unit.
How do we break this? We need alternatives but not just one or two. We need the free... | Out there in the so-called real world the education system is being crushed by the demands of capitalism and, in turn, is crushing those who pass through it, reducing them, diminishing them. The dream of the economic functioning unit.
How do we break this? We need alternatives but not just one or two. We need the free... | 6 | [
"Somewhere in this book, amongst the flashes of insight and exchange, lie the seeds of a revolution in our modes of existence, our forms of value and meaning and fundamental ways of existing as humans within this fragile planetary ecology.\n\n~ Baba Shree Vardi",
"It is only through developing reasoned and imagin... |
Against the Vortex | [
"Anthony Galluzzo"
] | Against the Vortex uses Boorman's '74 cult sci-fi film as the starting point for exploring a neglected strand of '70s thinkers and artists whose ideas propose a radical degrowth utopia as the horizon to which our politics should be oriented. | Alongside scientific knowledge and collective effort, building a degrowth ecological society will require a different set of stories and myths than the big and fast Promethean fables we’re accustomed to. Using Boorman’s Zardoz as a tool, Against The Vortex unearths the artistic and intellectual output of a deceleration... | Alongside scientific knowledge and collective effort, building a degrowth ecological society will require a different set of stories and myths than the big and fast Promethean fables we’re accustomed to. Using Boorman’s Zardoz as a tool, Against The Vortex unearths the artistic and intellectual output of a deceleration... | 9 | [
"\"For a volume of fewer than eighty pages, Anthony Galluzzo’s Against The Vortex achieves an awful lot (...) it remains acutely sensitive to Zardoz’s complexities and contradictions and it gives nothing to the voguish reductionisms from across the political spectrum which would take Boorman’s vision as nothing mor... |
Against the Web | [
"Michael Brooks"
] | From Michael Brooks, host of The Michael Brooks Show and co-host of the Majority Report, comes the first book to directly respond to the Intellectual Dark Web and Jordan Peterson. | Michael Brooks against the "Intellectual Dark Web."
As the host of The Michael Brooks Show and co-host of the Majority Report, Brooks was a progressive fighter whose work brought people together from around the world. In this, his first book, he lets his understanding of the digital media environment direct his analys... | Michael Brooks against the "Intellectual Dark Web."
As the host of The Michael Brooks Show and co-host of the Majority Report, Brooks was a progressive fighter whose work brought people together from around the world. In this, his first book, he lets his understanding of the digital media environment direct his analys... | 5 | [
"Michael called out the nonsense of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web well before anyone else caught onto their cynical games. A brilliant critique of the Right with very sharp insight on some of the shortcomings of the Left, this book is a must-read for anyone looking to understand how dishonest actors spread th... |
Age of Nixon, The | [
"Carl Freedman"
] | applies Marxism and psychoanalysis to the study of American politics. In America, every age is the Age of Nixon. | The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant ele... | The fundamental argument of this book is, first, that Richard Nixon, though not generally regarded as a charismatic or emotionally outgoing politician like Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, did establish profound psychic connections with the American people, connections that can be detected both in the brilliant ele... | 2 | [
"Richard Nixon was real, for all that he seems like a fictional character concocted in the course of some strange literary collaboration between Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Theodore Dreiser, and J. G. Ballard. And Nixon continues to fascinate us, and to haunt our dreams, even these many years after his death. Carl Freedman... |
Agency of Their Own, An | [
"Gregor Gall"
] | Sex workers of the world are uniting and fighting to gain control over their working lives. | This book concerns the projects and processes of sex worker unionisation and more widely forms of sex worker self-interest representation. Since the late 1980s, sex workers have unionised themselves as collective associations of workers in their worksites in many countries. The term ‘sex workers’, chosen by sex workers... | This book concerns the projects and processes of sex worker unionisation and more widely forms of sex worker self-interest representation. Since the late 1980s, sex workers have unionised themselves as collective associations of workers in their worksites in many countries. The term ‘sex workers’, chosen by sex workers... | 0 | [] |
Airplane Reading | [
"Christopher Schaberg",
"Mark Yakich"
] | Re-examining the strange and ordinary world of air travel, one flight at a time. | In Airplane Reading, Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich bring together a range of essays about air travel. Discerning and full of wonder, this prismatic collection features perspectives from a variety of writers, airline workers, and everyday travelers. At turns irreverent, philosophical, and earnest, each essay is a... | In Airplane Reading, Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich bring together a range of essays about air travel. Discerning and full of wonder, this prismatic collection features perspectives from a variety of writers, airline workers, and everyday travelers. At turns irreverent, philosophical, and earnest, each essay is a... | 2 | [
"A marvelous story round-up exploring and explaining what air travel does to us—and makes us do. Buy it now, but save it to read on your next cross-country flight. ~ Harriet Baskas, travel writer for USAToday.com, author of Stuck at the Airport",
"An insightful exploration into the airplane journey that is both e... |
Albion's Secret History | [
"Guy Mankowski"
] | Snapshots of how English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from The Long Blondes and The Libertines, to Tricky and Goldfrapp, altered our sense of a green but sometimes unpleasant land. | Albion's Secret History compiles snapshots of English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, Guy Mankowski looks at those who have really shaped Albion’s secret history, not just its oft-qu... | Albion's Secret History compiles snapshots of English pop culture’s rebels and outsiders, from Evelyn Waugh to PJ Harvey via The Long Blondes and The Libertines. By focusing on cultural figures who served to define England, Guy Mankowski looks at those who have really shaped Albion’s secret history, not just its oft-qu... | 13 | [
"An inherently fascinating, iconoclastic, and informative read from cover to cover, \"Albion's Secret History: Snapshots of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders\" is an original work of impressive research and highly recommended for community, college and university library 20th Century English Cultural History colle... |
Aliens, Robots & Virtual Reality Idols in the Science Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov and William Gibson | [
"John L. Steadman"
] | John L. Steadman argues that there is little difference between alien indifferentism and alien inclusionism in the fictional works of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov and William Gibson. | H. P. Lovecraft’s aliens are extra-terrestrial, terrestrial & trans-dimensional entities, totally unlike any other aliens in science fiction literature. In contrast, Isaac Asimov's and William Gibson’s aliens are human created positronic robots and virtual reality constructs, or 'idols'.
Lovecraft’s great theme is ali... | H. P. Lovecraft’s aliens are extra-terrestrial, terrestrial & trans-dimensional entities, totally unlike any other aliens in science fiction literature. In contrast, Isaac Asimov's and William Gibson’s aliens are human created positronic robots and virtual reality constructs, or 'idols'.
Lovecraft’s great theme is ali... | 4 | [
"Steadman (H.P. Lovecraft and the Black Magickal Tradition), a scholar of science fiction literature, provides an intriguing look at three giants of the genre in terms of how each treated the concept of the alien. As he acknowledges, his three subjects are known for tackling disparate themes. Lovecraft’s supernatur... |
All Things Are Nothing to Me | [
"Jacob Blumenfeld"
] | Max Stirner’s "The Unique and Its Property" (1844) is the first ruthless critique of modern society. | Max Stirner’s The Unique and Its Property (1844) is the first ruthless critique of modern society. In All Things are Nothing to Me, Jacob Blumenfeld reconstructs the unique philosophy of Max Stirner (1806–1856), a figure that strongly influenced—for better or worse—Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emma Goldman as well a... | Max Stirner’s The Unique and Its Property (1844) is the first ruthless critique of modern society. In All Things are Nothing to Me, Jacob Blumenfeld reconstructs the unique philosophy of Max Stirner (1806–1856), a figure that strongly influenced—for better or worse—Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emma Goldman as well a... | 6 | [
"Even people who have been grappling with Stirner’s work and its implications for quite some time will find new insights, new challenges, and, one hopes, new weapons on reading it. ~ Matty Groves, The Anvil",
"In his ambitious study, Blumenfeld attempts to revive Stirner’s ghost once more in two regards: he wants... |
Allegories of the End of Capitalism | [
"Milo Sweedler"
] | How contemporary films transcode popular discontent with global capitalism. | In Allegories of the End of Capitalism, Milo Sweedler examines how filmmakers from six different countries, across four continents, give narrative and audio-visual form to the frustration and anger that burst into public view in 2011, the ongoing class war between the super-rich and the rest of the world's population, ... | In Allegories of the End of Capitalism, Milo Sweedler examines how filmmakers from six different countries, across four continents, give narrative and audio-visual form to the frustration and anger that burst into public view in 2011, the ongoing class war between the super-rich and the rest of the world's population, ... | 4 | [
"Sweedler's book deserves to be widely read. Its subject is of vital importance. ~ Daniel Lindvall, Film International",
"Milo Sweedler’s book is an unfailingly interesting and indeed fun read from start to finish. Focusing on six films which conjure with various images of revolt against capitalism and even with ... |
Almighty Machine, The | [
"Pekka Vahvanen",
"Mark Jones (Translator)"
] | Read this book and re-evaluate your relationship with digital tech – is it making you unhappy? | The hymn of Digitalization is nothing new: We must encourage the creation of new apps. We must develop AI in order to prevail among international competition. Technology's advance will halt climate change and let robots do the dumb stuff for us. Our faith in technology is powerful because it has saved us in the past.
... | The hymn of Digitalization is nothing new: We must encourage the creation of new apps. We must develop AI in order to prevail among international competition. Technology's advance will halt climate change and let robots do the dumb stuff for us. Our faith in technology is powerful because it has saved us in the past.
... | 1 | [
"Technological advancements are always necessary to keep up in the world, but here within The Almighty Machine, author Pekka Vahvanen shows us technology’s flip side.\n\nWithin this book and the eight chapters therein are a series of dedicated, expertly thought out, concise and at their crux, deeply worrying theori... |
Along the Watchtower | [
"Nathan Akehurst"
] | Europe’s war on migration is everywhere. This book unearths the forces behind it and how they’ve reshaped our society. | Thousands of people die preventable deaths at Europe’s borders every year. And the situation keeps getting worse.
From eastern Polish forest swamps to the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas to the corridors of power, Along the Watchtower describes how Europe’s war on migration has spun out of control.
Through the stories ... | Thousands of people die preventable deaths at Europe’s borders every year. And the situation keeps getting worse.
From eastern Polish forest swamps to the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas to the corridors of power, Along the Watchtower describes how Europe’s war on migration has spun out of control.
Through the stories ... | 4 | [
"“This is a profoundly important book – about the moral black hole at the heart of the Western response to migration. The issue will dominate politics in Europe and North America over the next 20 years, as growing numbers of refugees are compelled to flee both from surging conflict and devastating climate change ag... |
Alphonso Lingis and Existential Genealogy | [
"Alexander E. Hooke"
] | The first book-length study of the work of Alphonso Lingis' philosophical works. | What is philosophy? Is philosophy an academic discipline that produces arguments and theories, or is philosophy also about understanding the world through stories, metaphors, analogies, ambience, and even through feelings?
Alphonso Lingis approaches philosophy the way a travel writer approaches a strange new land, wit... | What is philosophy? Is philosophy an academic discipline that produces arguments and theories, or is philosophy also about understanding the world through stories, metaphors, analogies, ambience, and even through feelings?
Alphonso Lingis approaches philosophy the way a travel writer approaches a strange new land, wit... | 3 | [
"Alphonso Lingis has been so far ahead of the intellectual curve that he has received less than his share of attention in orthodox philosophy. Alex Hooke closes that temporal deficit. This is a compelling and absorbing book that will more than repay the time it takes to dwell in and with it. A timely and exceptiona... |
Althusser and Art | [
"Jonathan R Fardy"
] | Althusser and Art examines the relationship between Althusser’s political theory and his writings on art. | Althusser and Art offers a reading of Althusserianism as a meta-mediation on the question concerning the aesthetics of theory. Fardy shows that Althusserian theory is part of a larger genealogy of thought, stretching from Korsch through Laruelle, that has been primarily concerned with the search for a form of theory, a... | Althusser and Art offers a reading of Althusserianism as a meta-mediation on the question concerning the aesthetics of theory. Fardy shows that Althusserian theory is part of a larger genealogy of thought, stretching from Korsch through Laruelle, that has been primarily concerned with the search for a form of theory, a... | 1 | [
"In this impressively concise book calling for a \"return to Althusser\" through the avenue of Althusserian aesthetics, Jonathan Fardy has accomplished nothing short of the twenty-first century equivalent of Althusser's own call for a \"return to Marx\" in the 1960s. Readers will certainly learn much from Fardy's d... |
America and Other Fictions | [
"Ed Simon"
] | If America or God didn't exist it would be necessary to invent them. Let's start. | At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the nee... | At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the nee... | 3 | [
"In this book you'll rediscover America, the enchanted and cursed. For an age haunted with reactionary nostalgia, Ed Simon haunts readers with an American greatness that is both lovely and perverse, through masterfully told tales that look their subjects' original sins straight in the eye. His America is more than ... |
Anatomy of Thought-Fiction | [
"Joanna Demers"
] | Why do people choose to believe things they know are untrue? | In the year 2214, the Center for Humanistic Study has discovered an unpublished manuscript by Joanna Demers, a musicologist who lived some two centuries before. Her writing interrogates the music of artists ranging from David Bowie and Scott Walker to Kanye West and The KLF. Questioning how people of the early twenty-f... | In the year 2214, the Center for Humanistic Study has discovered an unpublished manuscript by Joanna Demers, a musicologist who lived some two centuries before. Her writing interrogates the music of artists ranging from David Bowie and Scott Walker to Kanye West and The KLF. Questioning how people of the early twenty-f... | 1 | [
"Focused on music, but with implications that extend to just about everything, Anatomy of Thought-Fiction explores the role of false ideas in our intellectual and emotional life. Joanna Demers’ elegant monograph (or should that be polygraph?) softly shatters myths and tenderly takes apart received wisdom. Yet this ... |
Angels and Demons: A Radical Anthology of Political Lives | [
"Tony McKenna"
] | A Marxist analysis of key political and historical figures including Hugo Chavez and Jeremy Corbyn, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. | A Marxist analysis of key political and historical figures including Hugo Chavez and Jeremy Corbyn, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Angels and Demons offers a series of profiles of historical figures both old and new. Using a Marxist analysis, the author adduces the particularities of each individual personality fro... | A Marxist analysis of key political and historical figures including Hugo Chavez and Jeremy Corbyn, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Angels and Demons offers a series of profiles of historical figures both old and new. Using a Marxist analysis, the author adduces the particularities of each individual personality fro... | 3 | [
"Newly released by Zero Books, Tony McKenna’s aptly titled “Angels and Demons” is a collection of profiles…that has the author’s customary psychological insight and literary grace…[I]t demonstrates a remarkable breadth of knowledge about disparate cultural, political and intellectual strands that is seldom seen tod... |
Animatic Apparatus, The | [
"Deborah Levitt"
] | How the transition from analogue to digital, and the rise of animation and simulation transform our concepts of life in contemporary culture. | Unprecedented kinds of experience, and new modes of life, are now produced by simulations, from the CGI of Hollywood blockbusters to animal cloning to increasingly sophisticated military training software, while animation has become an increasingly powerful pop-cultural form. Today, the extraordinary new practices and ... | Unprecedented kinds of experience, and new modes of life, are now produced by simulations, from the CGI of Hollywood blockbusters to animal cloning to increasingly sophisticated military training software, while animation has become an increasingly powerful pop-cultural form. Today, the extraordinary new practices and ... | 3 | [
"At once theoretically dazzling and fearless, The Animatic Apparatus shows how the production of life in animation deconstructs ontology as such: “There is no death in animation, because there is no being, no existence, to begin with.” But an-ontology is not the end of living. Instead, carefully tracing how the med... |
Anthropology of Nothing in Particular, An | [
"Martin Demant Frederiksen"
] | A journey into the social lives of meaninglessness. | There have been claims that meaninglessness has become epidemic in the contemporary world. One perceived consequence of this is that people increasingly turn against both society and the political establishment with little concern for the content (or lack of content) that might follow. Most often, encounters with meani... | There have been claims that meaninglessness has become epidemic in the contemporary world. One perceived consequence of this is that people increasingly turn against both society and the political establishment with little concern for the content (or lack of content) that might follow. Most often, encounters with meani... | 9 | [
"This book attends to those troubling moments that ‘go missing when we look for meaning’. The narrative stages a series of encounters with such imponderable, meaningless ‘nothings’, leading to a deeply philosophical tarrying with mute, meaningless materiality. These varied encounters begin in the author's apartment... |
Anti-Hero | [
"A.J. Lozier"
] | One man’s journey into, and out of, the movement that foreshadowed the modern-day “Antifa.” | A memoir of one man’s journey into, and out of, the movement that foreshadowed the modern-day “Antifa.”
Between 1999-2005, as the nation convulsed with uncertainty over a contested election and the Sept. 11 attacks, A.J. Lozier attended and helped organize protests across the United States, as an active participant in... | A memoir of one man’s journey into, and out of, the movement that foreshadowed the modern-day “Antifa.”
Between 1999-2005, as the nation convulsed with uncertainty over a contested election and the Sept. 11 attacks, A.J. Lozier attended and helped organize protests across the United States, as an active participant in... | 3 | [
"In what is told via a compelling narrative from start to finish, Anti-Hero: Memories of a Black Bloc Anarchist is a book for the ages; a refreshing take, an exposed side of a raging argument of a distorted viewpoint that now gets its day in the sun through Lozier. ~ Anne Carlini, Exclusive Magazine",
"Lozier's b... |
Anti-Matter | [
"Ben Jeffery"
] | An interrogation of art's ability to face unpleasant truths. | Michel Houellebecq, author of five novels including Atomised and Platform, has become possibly the world’s most famous literary pessimist. His work declares that life is painful and disappointing, death is terrifying, and the human condition is a nasty sort of joke. He has been wildly successful – translated into over ... | Michel Houellebecq, author of five novels including Atomised and Platform, has become possibly the world’s most famous literary pessimist. His work declares that life is painful and disappointing, death is terrifying, and the human condition is a nasty sort of joke. He has been wildly successful – translated into over ... | 4 | [
"Anti-Matter is an example of the kind of rigorous and refined criticism that one rarely stumbles across these days. ~ Jacques Testard, Times Literary Supplement",
"Ben Jeffery's Anti-Matter is the kind of intelligent, sophisticated response to provocative work that affirms criticism's value as art in itself. ...... |
Architecture of Control, The | [
"Grant Vetter"
] | Grant Vetter develops an entirely new lexicon for analyzing architectural power in the twenty first century. | Through six meditations on the ideology of architecture, Grant Vetter is able to give us an entirely new set of coordinates for understanding social control in the twenty-first century. Moving between historical precedents in the east and the west, Vetter's work reveals a hybrid order of architectural power that acts o... | Through six meditations on the ideology of architecture, Grant Vetter is able to give us an entirely new set of coordinates for understanding social control in the twenty-first century. Moving between historical precedents in the east and the west, Vetter's work reveals a hybrid order of architectural power that acts o... | 4 | [
"It was functionalist philosopher Jeremy Bentham whose development of the panopticon famously provided the genealogical project of Michel Foucault with the exemplar for a particular social-historical moment. For Foucault, its use of observational techniques to condition the behavior of prisoners superbly articulate... |
Architecture of Failure, The | [
"Douglas Murphy"
] | This book proposes a theory of architectural failure; a radical way to approach memory and history in the city. | Against those who consider architecture to be a wholly optimistic activity, this book shows how the history of modern architecture is inextricably tied to ideas of failure and ruin.
By means of an original reading of the earliest origins of modernism, The Architecture of Failure exposes the ways in which failure has b... | Against those who consider architecture to be a wholly optimistic activity, this book shows how the history of modern architecture is inextricably tied to ideas of failure and ruin.
By means of an original reading of the earliest origins of modernism, The Architecture of Failure exposes the ways in which failure has b... | 5 | [
"\"The author’s powerful critique of the supposedly radical proponents of architecture is brutal and incisive, a welcome move away from the well-trodden cultural clichés.\"\n\n\"The Architecture of Failure stands out in the growing contemporary literature on ruins for not communicating merely through the frisson of... |
Art Kettle, The | [
"Sinead Murphy"
] | Is art a mode of control? Does our desire to create constrain us as effectively as our desire to consume? | In contemporary society, art is that which appears to open up all of those possibilities that our daily lives would close down, with developments in community art, art therapy, and public art extending this seemingly liberating effect to us all. But what if art is a mode of control? What if art operates to kettle us as... | In contemporary society, art is that which appears to open up all of those possibilities that our daily lives would close down, with developments in community art, art therapy, and public art extending this seemingly liberating effect to us all. But what if art is a mode of control? What if art operates to kettle us as... | 0 | [] |
Artist at Work, Proximity of Art and Capitalism | [
"Bojana Kunst"
] | Examining the recent changes in the labour of an artist and addressing them from the perspective of performance. | The main affirmation of artistic practice must today happen through thinking about the conditions and the status of the artist's work. Only then can it be revealed that what is a part of the speculations of capital is not art itself, but mostly artistic life. Artist at Work examines the recent changes in the labour of ... | The main affirmation of artistic practice must today happen through thinking about the conditions and the status of the artist's work. Only then can it be revealed that what is a part of the speculations of capital is not art itself, but mostly artistic life. Artist at Work examines the recent changes in the labour of ... | 4 | [
"Artist at Work: Proximity of Art and Capitalism\n\nBojana Kunst\n\nZero Books\n\nc/o John Hunt Publishing, Ltd.\n\nLaurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK\n\nwww.johnhuntpublishing.com\n\nPR: [email protected]\n\n9781785350009, $25.95, 241pp, www.amazon.com\n\nSynopsis: The main affirmation ... |
Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-porn Addicts | [
"Leigh Phillips"
] | Modernity is not the cause of our ecological woes. Only through a deepening of our modernity can we save the planet. | Economic growth, progress, industry and, erm, stuff have all come in for a sharp kicking from the green left and beyond in recent years. Everyone from black-hoodied Starbucks window-smashers to farmers' market heirloom-tomato-mongers to Prince Charles himself seem to be embracing 'degrowth' and anti-consumerism, which ... | Economic growth, progress, industry and, erm, stuff have all come in for a sharp kicking from the green left and beyond in recent years. Everyone from black-hoodied Starbucks window-smashers to farmers' market heirloom-tomato-mongers to Prince Charles himself seem to be embracing 'degrowth' and anti-consumerism, which ... | 0 | [] |
Awkwardness | [
"Adam Kotsko"
] | Argues that the awkwardness of our age is a key to understanding human experience. | Awkwardness has been one of the defining traits of the awkwardly unnamed first decade of our young century dominating comedy on both the big and small screens. Could this trend point toward something deeper? In Awkwardness Adam Kotsko answers that question with a resounding yes. Drawing on key insights of cultural theo... | Awkwardness has been one of the defining traits of the awkwardly unnamed first decade of our young century dominating comedy on both the big and small screens. Could this trend point toward something deeper? In Awkwardness Adam Kotsko answers that question with a resounding yes. Drawing on key insights of cultural theo... | 4 | [
"Adam Kotsko’s Awkwardness is the kind of criticism — pertinent, witty, sophisticated but without sophistry — in which one can glimpse a culture that doesn’t quite exist. As with the other essays adapted from blogs and published by Zero Books. Awkwardness, in a different America, would supplant the dumbed-down pop ... |
Babbling Corpse | [
"Grafton Tanner"
] | In the age of global capitalism, vaporwave celebrates and undermines the electronic ghosts haunting the nostalgia industry. | In the age of global capitalism, vaporwave celebrates and undermines the electronic ghosts haunting the nostalgia industry.
Ours is a time of ghosts in machines, killing meaning and exposing the gaps inherent in the electronic media that pervade our lives. Vaporwave is an infant musical micro-genre that foregrounds th... | In the age of global capitalism, vaporwave celebrates and undermines the electronic ghosts haunting the nostalgia industry.
Ours is a time of ghosts in machines, killing meaning and exposing the gaps inherent in the electronic media that pervade our lives. Vaporwave is an infant musical micro-genre that foregrounds th... | 2 | [
"The concept of vaporwave is a function of franken music. Taking samples of other music, endlessly repeating sounds, words and phrases either spoken or musical, and slapping them all together into an mp3 package, vaporwave can infuriate, bore or be completely ignored. It can have zero musical value, or appear as ou... |
Bells and Whistles | [
"Graham Harman"
] | In this diverse collection of sixteen essays, lectures, and interviews Graham Harman lucidly explains the principles of Speculative Realism, including his own object-oriented philosophy. | In this diverse collection of sixteen essays, lectures, and interviews dating from 2010 to 2013, Graham Harman lucidly explains the principles of Speculative Realism, including his own object-oriented philosophy. From Brazil to Russia, and in Poland, France, Croatia, and India, Harman addresses local philosophical conc... | In this diverse collection of sixteen essays, lectures, and interviews dating from 2010 to 2013, Graham Harman lucidly explains the principles of Speculative Realism, including his own object-oriented philosophy. From Brazil to Russia, and in Poland, France, Croatia, and India, Harman addresses local philosophical conc... | 2 | [
"Attractive Additional Features\n\nGraham Harman, Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism\n\nZero Books, 303pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781782790389\n\nreviewed by Sarah De Sanctis\n\nThe title chosen by Graham Harman for his latest book couldn't have been more appropriate. It is a collection of 16 essays, blog pieces, ... |
Between | [
"Martin Lee"
] | Welcome to the spaces between. | Forget any idea of a fixed, dependable centre ground. The suggestion in this book is that the real story of modern life is found in and along edges, cracks, and boundaries. It’s in these places of ambiguity and glorious uncertainty where the richness is, and often where the fun stuff happens.
By providing a wide-rangi... | Forget any idea of a fixed, dependable centre ground. The suggestion in this book is that the real story of modern life is found in and along edges, cracks, and boundaries. It’s in these places of ambiguity and glorious uncertainty where the richness is, and often where the fun stuff happens.
By providing a wide-rangi... | 1 | [
"Lee showed me something wonderful. However uncertain our world feels, there always is the opportunity to celebrate ‘being between’. It's a deep, fresh way of making sense of modern life. ~ David Bodanis, science author, including Einstein’s Greatest Mistake"
] |
Beyond Capitalism? | [
"Simon Hardy",
"Luke Cooper"
] | An in-depth examination into the social nature of the austerity crisis and how we can move "Beyond Capitalism". | How to move 'beyond capitalism' and whether indeed it is possible to do so, has become a question of general interest, rather than simply the preserve of left-literary discussion, since the credit crisis of 2008. This book examines the social nature of the austerity crisis, and whether an anticapitalist message can suc... | How to move 'beyond capitalism' and whether indeed it is possible to do so, has become a question of general interest, rather than simply the preserve of left-literary discussion, since the credit crisis of 2008. This book examines the social nature of the austerity crisis, and whether an anticapitalist message can suc... | 2 | [
"Luke Cooper and Simon Hardy's vivid and invigorating Beyond Capitalism builds upon the analysis of leftist paralysis I started to develop in Capitalist Realism. Writing from the perspective of experienced activists, Cooper and Hardy offer an incisive and clear-eyed explanation of why the left has so far failed to ... |
Beyond the Left | [
"Stephen Harper"
] | Attacking the cherished assumptions of liberal media criticism, Beyond the Left updates and recharges the Marxist critique of the media. | The ideological distortions of the conservative media, from Fox News to the Daily Mail, are widely acknowledged and often denounced among contemporary critics and commentators. But what if The Guardian newspaper and BBC news, in fact, constitute the most insidious forms of capitalist propaganda? In a wide-ranging and e... | The ideological distortions of the conservative media, from Fox News to the Daily Mail, are widely acknowledged and often denounced among contemporary critics and commentators. But what if The Guardian newspaper and BBC news, in fact, constitute the most insidious forms of capitalist propaganda? In a wide-ranging and e... | 3 | [
"Even if you find yourself disagreeing with certain portions of this book -- as I have -- you will find much in it that is well reasoned and historically informed, a valuable critique of how the mainstream media serves the capitalist plutocracy.\n\n~ Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism and Contrary N... |
Bio-Politicizing Cary Grant | [
"Joshua David Gonsalves"
] | Bio-Politicizing Cary Grant explicates the ethnic, racial and sexual ambiguity of Cary Grant’s star persona as both an inculcation of (and resistance to) biopolitical imperatives in fifties-era “America”. | Who will Cary Grant have been when the future runs out?
In the atrocity-rich wake of Hiroshima, Cold War America is enriched beyond belief. Hollywood radiates, in turn, images of a consumer utopia criss-crossed by segregation, social mobility, racial passing, anxieties about ethnicity and “white panic”. Cary Grant’s c... | Who will Cary Grant have been when the future runs out?
In the atrocity-rich wake of Hiroshima, Cold War America is enriched beyond belief. Hollywood radiates, in turn, images of a consumer utopia criss-crossed by segregation, social mobility, racial passing, anxieties about ethnicity and “white panic”. Cary Grant’s c... | 1 | [
"I have been enjoying your essay on a too-quick-first read and will re-read it with more leisure when I have a chance. I think it opens some new angles, while having a variety of dossiers juggling, ethnicity, Grant’s imago, “Hitchcock,” race of course. A pleasure to read. ~ Tom Cohen, author of Hitchcock's Cryptono... |
Biopolitical Imperialism | [
"Mark G. E. Kelly"
] | The First World is a parasite, subsisting on life imported from the Third World, and exporting death in return. | Biopolitical Imperialism is a book about international politics today. The core, eponymous thesis is that our world is marked by a pattern of biopolitical parasitism, that is, the enhancement of the life of wealthy populations of First World countries on the basis of an active denigration of the lives of the poor mass ... | Biopolitical Imperialism is a book about international politics today. The core, eponymous thesis is that our world is marked by a pattern of biopolitical parasitism, that is, the enhancement of the life of wealthy populations of First World countries on the basis of an active denigration of the lives of the poor mass ... | 1 | [
"A very strong book, exceptionally clear, incisive, and terrifying. ~ Justin Clemens"
] |
BioShock | [
"Robert Jackson"
] | A historical, critical look at the famous videogame franchise BioShock. | A historical, critical look at the famous videogame franchise BioShock, understanding it through philosophical, ideological and computational interpretations of systems, decisions and 'propaganda'. | A historical, critical look at the famous videogame franchise BioShock, understanding it through philosophical, ideological and computational interpretations of systems, decisions and 'propaganda'. | 3 | [
"One interesting aspect of the New Materialism is the use of digital cultural artifacts such as video games as things to think with philosophically. A good example of this is Bioshock: Decision, Forced Choice and Propaganda by Robert Jackson. In this short book Jackson takes the game franchise Bioshock as a means w... |
Blood-Stained Poppy, The | [
"Kevin Rooney",
"James Heartfield"
] | The Poppy is a symbol of British militarism, not a badge of peace. | For a century the war dead have been honoured with Red Poppies on Remembrance Day. The Poppy is part of a cult of death that celebrates the slaughter of the 'Great War' of 1914-18. The Poppy and the Remembrance Day ceremony turn grief to sanctify war.
Here we expose the truth about the First World War, and about the c... | For a century the war dead have been honoured with Red Poppies on Remembrance Day. The Poppy is part of a cult of death that celebrates the slaughter of the 'Great War' of 1914-18. The Poppy and the Remembrance Day ceremony turn grief to sanctify war.
Here we expose the truth about the First World War, and about the c... | 1 | [
"Praise for Rooney and Heartfield's previous work from Zero Books, Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising? 1916-2016: 'A penetrating reflection on the controversies surrounding the Dublin revolt of 1916.' ~ Michael Fitzpatrick, Spiked Online"
] |
Blowing the Lid | [
"Stuart Feather"
] | The queer fight for Gay Liberation; authentic identities and modern roles for lesbians and gays that enhanced British society. | The Gay Liberation Front founded in 1970 urged gay men and gay women to unite around a simple set of demands among which were calls for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in employment, in sex education, in the age of consent and in being treated as sick by the medical establishment.
GLF saw itself as a peop... | The Gay Liberation Front founded in 1970 urged gay men and gay women to unite around a simple set of demands among which were calls for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in employment, in sex education, in the age of consent and in being treated as sick by the medical establishment.
GLF saw itself as a peop... | 4 | [
"'This is a wonderfully rich and evocative account of an important moment in gay history. Stuart Feather has \"brought it all back\" in a marvellous narrative that is a great gift to posterity.' Ken Plummer, University of Essex. ~",
"Hegel is a Drag: Thesis: scores of Wests, Garlands, and boas (and I don't mean F... |
Blue in the Air, The | [
"Marcello Carlin"
] | A retrieved man tells how music, from Patrick Cargill to Jay-Z, retained the power to change the world in 2008. | A former widower whose life was saved by writing about music spends a year waiting for his new wife to fly over from Toronto and join him in London. While he waits he observes that the world is subtly changing and that music has played a key part in these changes. A galaxy of characters, ranging from Marty Wilde to Jay... | A former widower whose life was saved by writing about music spends a year waiting for his new wife to fly over from Toronto and join him in London. While he waits he observes that the world is subtly changing and that music has played a key part in these changes. A galaxy of characters, ranging from Marty Wilde to Jay... | 2 | [
"Why not just let the song speak for itself? Here are some answers.†~ Mark Sinker",
"Marcello Carlin lures or impels us through an astonishing maze of music, much of it very likely unfamiliar with, from radical free improv to one off novelty pop, via every imaginable sheeptrack or rat run or scenic bus ride.\n... |
Borderlines | [
"Daniel Melo"
] | Through different facets of the U.S. immigration system, Borderlines explores how power and profit are perpetuated by the divisions between migrant and citizen and the resulting dehumanization of both. | The current U.S. immigration nightmare is a product of capitalism. The familiar, heartbreaking stories of dangerous treks, migrant exploitation, asylum, family separation and detention all have their roots in the material conditions of the dominant economic system. Immigrants’ place in American democracy has long been ... | The current U.S. immigration nightmare is a product of capitalism. The familiar, heartbreaking stories of dangerous treks, migrant exploitation, asylum, family separation and detention all have their roots in the material conditions of the dominant economic system. Immigrants’ place in American democracy has long been ... | 0 | [] |
Boredom and Art | [
"Julian Jason Haladyn"
] | Examines the manners in which modern artists use boredom as a form of aesthetic resistance that, at its most positive, is the will to boredom. | Boredom and Art examines the use of boredom as a strategy in modern and contemporary art to resist or frustrate the effects of consumerism and capitalism. This book traces the emergence of what Haladyn terms the will to boredom in which artists, writers and philosophers actively attempt to use the lack of interest inhe... | Boredom and Art examines the use of boredom as a strategy in modern and contemporary art to resist or frustrate the effects of consumerism and capitalism. This book traces the emergence of what Haladyn terms the will to boredom in which artists, writers and philosophers actively attempt to use the lack of interest inhe... | 0 | [] |
Brad Pitt's Dog | [
"Johan Kugelberg"
] | A Punch and Judy show of intellectual diaspora making mincemeat of some pop culture sacred cows | The first book of essays by a long-time renowned chronicler of underground culture. Johan Kugelberg's book on the early history of hip hop won the NYPL books for the teen age award 2008 and his book on the Velvet Underground won the Foreword silver medal for music 2010. The way this book mashes up lo-bro and hi-bro is ... | The first book of essays by a long-time renowned chronicler of underground culture. Johan Kugelberg's book on the early history of hip hop won the NYPL books for the teen age award 2008 and his book on the Velvet Underground won the Foreword silver medal for music 2010. The way this book mashes up lo-bro and hi-bro is ... | 2 | [
"I laughed out loud five times. ~ Bob Stanley",
"An eclectic assembly of perspectives from one of our more singular sockets, it may increase the readers bandwidth in quite unexpected ways.\n\n~ William Gibson"
] |
Brave New Avant Garde | [
"Marc James Léger"
] | Brave New Avant Garde provides an unexpected exploration of critical strategies for anticapitalist cultural theory and practice. | Brave New Avant Garde is a collection of essays that ask the questions: what is an adequate model of contemporary avant garde practice and what are its theoretical premises? With this it asks the related question, echoing Alain Badiou: must the avant garde hypothesis be abandoned? Brave New Avant Garde stands in opposi... | Brave New Avant Garde is a collection of essays that ask the questions: what is an adequate model of contemporary avant garde practice and what are its theoretical premises? With this it asks the related question, echoing Alain Badiou: must the avant garde hypothesis be abandoned? Brave New Avant Garde stands in opposi... | 4 | [
"“Canadian artist and theorist Marc James Léger’s recent collection of essays, Brave New Avant Garde, is … a timely attempt to bring thinking on avant-gardism to bear on this resurgence [of socially engaged art]. As Léger frames the matter towards the end of his book, the present decoupling of activist art and the ... |
Brexit: The Establishment Civil War | [
"Josh Hamilton"
] | How dark money and big data were unleashed upon a divided and austerity ravaged population. They reached into our social divides and pulled us apart all for their own gain. | Wrapped up in a story of the British public's' rejection of the establishment is a much darker story about shady money, untoward digital campaign tactics, and a fraught battle exploding from the highest rungs of British politics and society. Brexit: The Establishment Civil War is a crucial examination of what is now dr... | Wrapped up in a story of the British public's' rejection of the establishment is a much darker story about shady money, untoward digital campaign tactics, and a fraught battle exploding from the highest rungs of British politics and society. Brexit: The Establishment Civil War is a crucial examination of what is now dr... | 0 | [] |
BrexLit | [
"Dulcie Everitt"
] | How post-Brexit referendum literature (re)imagines what Englishness means in a globalized world. | In this highly readable and convincing exploration of Englishness as a problematic concept, Dulcie Everitt combines historical, political, and literary analysis to re-examine the nature of Englishness. BrexLit offers readers the opportunity to step outside of the chaos, to reflect, and in many cases, to heal from the d... | In this highly readable and convincing exploration of Englishness as a problematic concept, Dulcie Everitt combines historical, political, and literary analysis to re-examine the nature of Englishness. BrexLit offers readers the opportunity to step outside of the chaos, to reflect, and in many cases, to heal from the d... | 6 | [
"Spanning political science, history, and literary studies, BrexLit features dedicated, engrossingly cultured viewpoints and, perhaps at its soul, simply tries to better articulate the subtle (and perhaps not so subtle) nuances of the landscape of works she brings before us. ~ Anne Carlini, Exclusive Magazine",
"... |
British Marxist Historians, The | [
"Harvey J. Kaye"
] | The first and most complete study of the work of the British intellectuals whose studies and stories of popular resistance, rebellion, and revolution from the bottom up radically transformed our understanding of the making of history. | The British Marxist Historians remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influential contemporary academic traditions in history and social theory. In this classic text, Kaye looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; Rodney Hilton on feudalism and the Engli... | The British Marxist Historians remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influential contemporary academic traditions in history and social theory. In this classic text, Kaye looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; Rodney Hilton on feudalism and the Engli... | 1 | [
"Harvey Kaye's The British Marxist Historians... is a lasting contribution to the history of twentieth-century Marxism, to a corner of British cultural history, and to the study of how history and historians work. ~ Eric Hobsbawn, author of The Age of Revolution"
] |
British State, The | [
"Chris Nineham"
] | The first attempt since the 1980s to analyse the British state's capacity to block change and derail social movements. A riposte to those who said there could never be a very British coup. | What happens if a radical government gets elected in Britain? How will the banks, the civil servants, the media and the military react? Is the idea of a British coup far-fetched? How can the left prepare?
Chris Nineham addresses these questions by looking behind the myths at the reality of two hundred years of British... | What happens if a radical government gets elected in Britain? How will the banks, the civil servants, the media and the military react? Is the idea of a British coup far-fetched? How can the left prepare?
Chris Nineham addresses these questions by looking behind the myths at the reality of two hundred years of British... | 8 | [
"5 out of 5 stars: An excellent eye-opening straight-to-the-point summary of the real history of the British state and how far it differs from the benign narrative we would prefer to believe. If you thought the establishment had attacked Corbyn enough over bad clothes, mixing with terrorists, not bowing low enough ... |
Can Architecture Be an Emancipatory Project? | [
"Nadir Z. Lahiji"
] | Can architectural discourse rethink itself in terms of a radical emancipatory project? And if so, what would be the contours of such a discourse? | Can architectural discourse rethink itself in terms of a radical emancipatory project? And if so, what would be the contours of such a discourse? | Can architectural discourse rethink itself in terms of a radical emancipatory project? And if so, what would be the contours of such a discourse? | 1 | [
"Can architecture be an instrument of emancipation? Can architects unchain themselves from their own instrumentalisation within capitalism? In a format as provocative as the questions Lahiji asks of his interlocutors - Andreotti, Cunningham, Deamer, Swyngedouw and Ockman - these are given a platform to ask searchin... |
Can The Market Speak? | [
"Campbell Jones"
] | This book attacks the ideological foundations of capitalism, starting with the mystifications surrounding the idea of ‘the market’. | It is said the market has moods and desires. It is said that we must listen to it and must anticipate how it will respond to our actions. What is the significance of these peculiar forms of speech? This book investigates the conceptual underpinnings of the idea that the market has intentions, consciousness and speech, ... | It is said the market has moods and desires. It is said that we must listen to it and must anticipate how it will respond to our actions. What is the significance of these peculiar forms of speech? This book investigates the conceptual underpinnings of the idea that the market has intentions, consciousness and speech, ... | 3 | [
"In conclusion, Campbell Jones work raises a number of pertinent questions in regard to concepts such as hegemony, reification and the balance of forces between labour and capital. His book might not have all the answers to those questions but it can allow the kind of discussions which might arrive at them. Having ... |
Canceling Comedians While the World Burns | [
"Ben Burgis"
] | We need a smarter, funnier, and more strategic left. | Between the decline of the labor movement, the aftershocks of the falls of so-called "actually existing socialism," and the long exile of even social democrats from the levers of real power, we have gotten far too used to thinking of leftism as a performative exercise in expressing our political commitments rather than... | Between the decline of the labor movement, the aftershocks of the falls of so-called "actually existing socialism," and the long exile of even social democrats from the levers of real power, we have gotten far too used to thinking of leftism as a performative exercise in expressing our political commitments rather than... | 10 | [
"Depending on where you stand, ‘cancel culture’ is either deserved payback for those who have enjoyed their privilege for too long, or a serious threat to free speech and public life. In his lively and thoughtful book Canceling Comedians, Ben Burgis, philosopher, socialist and regular contributor to the US leftwing... |
Capitalised Education | [
"David R. Cole"
] | Understanding how Kate Middleton can be conceived in the current geopolitical situation | Capitalised Education is not a biography of Kate Middleton, but, rather, understands her wedding on April 29th 2011 as a 'plateau', wherein a complex knot of social, political and economic forces collided. The chapters of the book make up a non-linear history of the royal wedding, a history that is underpinned by the w... | Capitalised Education is not a biography of Kate Middleton, but, rather, understands her wedding on April 29th 2011 as a 'plateau', wherein a complex knot of social, political and economic forces collided. The chapters of the book make up a non-linear history of the royal wedding, a history that is underpinned by the w... | 6 | [
"In his book, Capitalised Education: An Immanent Materialist Account of Kate Middleton, David R. Cole thoughtfully and thoroughly engages in an analysis that extends beyond the modern era to take into account a multiplicity of events and forces, which in their encounters produce social and cultural phenomena. Cole’... |
Capitalism on Campus: Sex Work, Academic Freedom and the Market | [
"Ron Roberts"
] | Sex, bureaucracy and money; the death of the university. | Capitalism on Campus examines the university’s journey into market hands and the sexual sell-off of students, which has come with it. It raises critical questions about the forces which conjoin higher education to both sex work and declining academic freedom. In so doing it questions the role our institutions of learni... | Capitalism on Campus examines the university’s journey into market hands and the sexual sell-off of students, which has come with it. It raises critical questions about the forces which conjoin higher education to both sex work and declining academic freedom. In so doing it questions the role our institutions of learni... | 5 | [
"Sex and student debt are viewed as two inevitable facets of university-student life. Kingston University’s Dr. Ron Roberts writes about the disturbing connections between these two and the state of academia as a whole in Capitalism on Campus.\n\nDr. Roberts writes about the growing phenomenon of uni students parta... |
Capitalism vs. Freedom | [
"Rob Larson"
] | A single-handed debunking of libertarian economics and "the age of Friedman". | For years, we’ve been taught that capitalism is good for freedom. Dominant right-wing talk radio hosts to this day recommend “libertarian” classics like Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom that claim markets free us, and this picture still dominates the schools and the political spectrum.
Wel... | For years, we’ve been taught that capitalism is good for freedom. Dominant right-wing talk radio hosts to this day recommend “libertarian” classics like Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom that claim markets free us, and this picture still dominates the schools and the political spectrum.
Wel... | 5 | [
"I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I reckon anyone interested in how the world works financially would get a lot out of it. Larson takes the views of Milton Friedman, the esteemed economist, and dissects them in a context of the present day. He starts with definitions of freedom - both positive and negative freedo... |
Capitalist Realism (New Edition) | [
"Mark Fisher"
] | An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system. | After 1989, capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political economic system. What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?
FOREWORD B... | After 1989, capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political economic system. What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?
FOREWORD B... | 14 | [
"...the book contains some interesting insights and neo-Marxist references, worth a look to update your own ideas. Fisher is dead set against the heroic nostalgia of 1870, 1917, the 1930s or the 1960–1970s, and that makes sense. The present and future is the thing. ~ Gregg Gibbs, May Day Books & Blog",
"I've revi... |
Capitalist Superheroes | [
"Dan Hassler-Forest"
] | The blockbuster superhero movie: popular entertainment or capitalist propaganda? This book investigates the 21st-century superhero's underlying political agenda. | In the same way that Stallone and Schwarzenegger played film heroes who came to embody the values of Ronald Reagans aggressive conservative agenda in the 1980s, the 21st-century film narratives of Batman, Spider-Man and Superman reflect the policies of the Bush Doctrine after 9/11. This book offers a groundbreaking stu... | In the same way that Stallone and Schwarzenegger played film heroes who came to embody the values of Ronald Reagans aggressive conservative agenda in the 1980s, the 21st-century film narratives of Batman, Spider-Man and Superman reflect the policies of the Bush Doctrine after 9/11. This book offers a groundbreaking stu... | 4 | [
"Just read this excellent book which echoes my mind-set in Marshal Law. Law was always more than a satire on men in capes, it is also a critique on the fortresses of the establishment – hence the hero hunter’s attack on the US corporations trading with the enemy in World War 2 and the role of the US in Vietnam.\n\n... |
Cartographies of the Absolute | [
"Alberto Toscano",
"Jeffrey Kinkle"
] | An aesthetics of the economy for the twenty-first century. | Can capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new vis... | Can capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new vis... | 6 | [
"How much of capitalism can we see from the moon? This remarkable, unclassifiable book sets out to map the ways. Cartographies takes as its object representation as such, which it tracks through theories, models, visual works, films, novels, engineering projects and whole cities: it is an immense museum exhibition ... |
Cauldron of Anxiety, A | [
"William Briggs"
] | Capitalism has passed its use-by-date, but a better, saner world is possible. | The veritable tsunami of anxieties that are affecting individual lives, the increasingly dysfunctional nature of society and the potential catastrophes of global conflict and of climate change, have a common cause. The inability of capitalism or the state to respond to existential crises and internal contradictions is ... | The veritable tsunami of anxieties that are affecting individual lives, the increasingly dysfunctional nature of society and the potential catastrophes of global conflict and of climate change, have a common cause. The inability of capitalism or the state to respond to existential crises and internal contradictions is ... | 1 | [
"A Cauldron of Anxiety is a book for anyone left feeling wretched by the state of our world: the poverty, the degradation of our environment, the brutality of our rulers. Briggs blames all our ills singly and compellingly on the capitalist system, insisting that it is the monster against which all of us should unit... |
Centring the Margins: Essays and Reviews | [
"Jeff Bursey"
] | Neglected and obscure writers are at the fore in this incisive collection of critical essays. | Centring the Margins is a collection of reviews and essays written between 2001 and 2014 of writers from Canada, the United States, the UK, and Europe. Most are neglected, obscure, or considered difficult, and include Mati Unt, Ornela Vorpsi, S.D. Chrostowska, Blaise Cendrars and Joseph McElroy, among others. | Centring the Margins is a collection of reviews and essays written between 2001 and 2014 of writers from Canada, the United States, the UK, and Europe. Most are neglected, obscure, or considered difficult, and include Mati Unt, Ornela Vorpsi, S.D. Chrostowska, Blaise Cendrars and Joseph McElroy, among others. | 21 | [
"Jan 16, 2018: Daniel Green | http://www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/2018/01/unruly.html edit | delete\n\nIn Praise of the Unruly\n\nCollections of book reviews are inherently difficult to present as sufficiently unified to warrant republication as a book. Whatever unity of theme, style, or approach the reviews po... |
Chaos Ethics | [
"Chris Bateman"
] | Facing ethical disaster perhaps what we need isn't moral law but moral chaos. | Balance has no meaning for a politics that is merely the continuation of war by other means. Both religious zealots and defenders of scientific fact declare a monopoly on truth and the moral law, while radicals are powerless to resist since they have lost faith that ethics can be anything but arbitrary. Meanwhile, insa... | Balance has no meaning for a politics that is merely the continuation of war by other means. Both religious zealots and defenders of scientific fact declare a monopoly on truth and the moral law, while radicals are powerless to resist since they have lost faith that ethics can be anything but arbitrary. Meanwhile, insa... | 3 | [
"A revelatory reading of both my own and other's work - a genuine philosophy for the 21st century. ~ Michael Moorcock, award-winning fantasy and literary author",
"Provocative, lively, engaging and erudite. ~ Allen W. Wood, Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford University",
"An elegant y... |
China, the USA and Capitalism's Last Crusade | [
"William Briggs"
] | As the sun rises on China and sets on America, the world holds its breath. | As the sun rises on China and sets on America, the world holds its breath.
China, the USA and Capitalism's Last Crusade looks at the rise of China and the decline of the USA but from a different angle. William Briggs argues that this struggle for economic supremacy is being played out against a much bigger backdrop; t... | As the sun rises on China and sets on America, the world holds its breath.
China, the USA and Capitalism's Last Crusade looks at the rise of China and the decline of the USA but from a different angle. William Briggs argues that this struggle for economic supremacy is being played out against a much bigger backdrop; t... | 3 | [
"A book that anyone concerned about the human future would do well to read. Written lucidly and rich in its insights, it offers a distinctive interpretation of the US-China relationship, in many ways the defining relationship of our time. Though the two societies may have vastly different cultures and histories, Wi... |
Christopher Hitchens | [
"Ben Burgis"
] | Ten years after the death of Christopher Hitchens, it's time for the left to take another look at his complicated legacy. | While his post-9/11 turn to the right has defined Christopher Hitchens for the last two decades, we may now be in a position to rehabilitate his long pre-9/11 career as a left-wing polemicist. Burgis reminds readers about what was best in Hitchens's writings and helps us gain a better understanding of how someone whose... | While his post-9/11 turn to the right has defined Christopher Hitchens for the last two decades, we may now be in a position to rehabilitate his long pre-9/11 career as a left-wing polemicist. Burgis reminds readers about what was best in Hitchens's writings and helps us gain a better understanding of how someone whose... | 9 | [
"Burgis’ book is one of most interesting and informative books I’ve read in the last several years. His research ability, good faith, and concern for his readers provide us with what’s possibly the best tribute to a man who shared those same qualities. ~ Leon Garber, existentialcafe.blog",
"Christopher Hitchens: ... |
Circle of the Snake, The | [
"Grafton Tanner"
] | Why are we more nostalgic in the digital age than ever before? | Shocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it.
In his essential new book, ... | Shocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it.
In his essential new book, ... | 1 | [
"Whether it is dissecting the utopian fantasies of Big Tech gurus, revealing the political economy of the nostalgia industry, or uncovering exploitation in the global division of digital labour, The Circle of the Snake is just the guide we need to navigate, resist, and transform the online world. In precise, access... |
Circus Philosophicus | [
"Graham Harman"
] | Platonic myth meets American noir in this haunting collection of philosophical images, from gigantic Ferris wheels to offshore drilling rigs. | Platonic myth meets American noir in this haunting series of philosophical images from gigantic ferris wheels to offshore drilling rigs.
It has been said that Plato Nietzsche and Giordano Bruno gave us the three great mythical presentations of serious philosophy in the West. They have spawned few imitators as philosop... | Platonic myth meets American noir in this haunting series of philosophical images from gigantic ferris wheels to offshore drilling rigs.
It has been said that Plato Nietzsche and Giordano Bruno gave us the three great mythical presentations of serious philosophy in the West. They have spawned few imitators as philosop... | 2 | [
"Graham Harman’s Circus Philosophicus is that rarest of beasts, a philosophical treatise that is also deeply personal. Although it seems to have been intended both as an approachable explication of Harman’s object-oriented ontology and as an attempt to restore mythic vision to the philosophical tradition, it is sim... |
Clampdown | [
"Rhian E. Jones"
] | Class and gender in Britpop and after, and why 'chav' is a feminist issue. | Why have both pop and politics in Britain become the preserve of an unrepresentative elite? From chav-pop pantomimes to retro-chauvinist ‘landfill indie’, the bland, homogenous, and compromised nature of the current 'alternative' sector reflects the interests of a similarly complacent and privileged political establish... | Why have both pop and politics in Britain become the preserve of an unrepresentative elite? From chav-pop pantomimes to retro-chauvinist ‘landfill indie’, the bland, homogenous, and compromised nature of the current 'alternative' sector reflects the interests of a similarly complacent and privileged political establish... | 17 | [
"\"This is it. This is what cultural studies scholars should have been writing in the last ten years. Instead of walking away from discussions of the political economy or - even worse - becoming apologists (cheerleaders?) for the neoliberal reclamation of power after the Global Financial Crisis, cultural studies sc... |
Classless | [
"Carl Neville"
] | Why nobody who knows Britain recognises the Britain represented in British films.A general-interest, polemical book on contemporary British Cinema that focuses heavily on cult movies like "Withnail and I" and "Sexy Beast" both of which have committed audi | Why has mainstream British film been so unrepresentative of the changes in British society over the past twenty years? Classless looks at the erasure of key issues of class and class struggle in recent British film as well as the flattening out of the rich variety of English social types into the bland middle-mass of L... | Why has mainstream British film been so unrepresentative of the changes in British society over the past twenty years? Classless looks at the erasure of key issues of class and class struggle in recent British film as well as the flattening out of the rich variety of English social types into the bland middle-mass of L... | 1 | [
"This book gave me a welcome slap in the face. Impassioned argumentation and impressively cineliterate.\n\n~ Emmet O'Cuana, http://abookadaytillicanstay.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/219-classless-recent-essays-on-british-film-by-carl-neville/"
] |
Claude Cahun | [
"Gavin James Bower"
] | Claude Cahun is the most important artist you've never heard of - until now. | Claude Cahun is the most important artist you've never heard of - until now. Writer, photographer, lesbian; revolutionary activist, surrealist, resistance fighter - Cahun witnessed the birth of the Paris avant-garde, lived through two World Wars and, as 'Der Soldat ohne Namen', risked death by inciting mutiny on Nazi-o... | Claude Cahun is the most important artist you've never heard of - until now. Writer, photographer, lesbian; revolutionary activist, surrealist, resistance fighter - Cahun witnessed the birth of the Paris avant-garde, lived through two World Wars and, as 'Der Soldat ohne Namen', risked death by inciting mutiny on Nazi-o... | 1 | [
"Praise for Gavin James Bower's debut novel, Dazed & Aroused:\n\n'Less Than Zero for the Off-Beat Generation'\n\n3:AM Magazine\n\n'A writer with the ability to cut through the hype and reveal the dark heart of everyday life'\n\nIndependent\n\n'A stunning debut novel'\n\nAndrew Gallix, FLUX\n\nPraise for Made in Bri... |
Cloud Time | [
"Rob Coley",
"Dean Lockwood"
] | This book maps capitalisms mobilization of cloud computing in its bid to archive and enclose the future. | The Cloud, hailed as a new digital commons, a utopia of collaborative expression and constant connection, actually constitutes a strategy of vitalist post-hegemonic power, which moves to dominate immanently and intensively, organizing our affective political involvements, instituting new modes of enclosure, and, crucia... | The Cloud, hailed as a new digital commons, a utopia of collaborative expression and constant connection, actually constitutes a strategy of vitalist post-hegemonic power, which moves to dominate immanently and intensively, organizing our affective political involvements, instituting new modes of enclosure, and, crucia... | 3 | [
"A new kind of anthropophony: the deafening \"informatic white noise\" of constant push-messaging and gadget updates over the airwaves. The \"cloud\" – remote storage, \"software as a service\", pervasive mobile data – is here the subject of a rivetingly angry denunciation. The authors kick off with a reading of Ch... |
Cold World | [
"Dominic Fox"
] | A scintillating critical survey of the "cold worlds" of Romantic poetry, black metal, teenage angst and terrorism. | To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy it: to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. In this book, the dark serenity of dejection is examined through ... | To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy it: to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. In this book, the dark serenity of dejection is examined through ... | 3 | [
"Dominic Fox discusses different types of rebellion in his scholarly Cold World: The Aesthetics of Rejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria (out from the fantastic Zer0 Books).\n\n~ Devin King, http://makemag.com/reviews-online",
"We have been told by the living that the idea of a vital world is that of c... |
Colloquium: Sound Art and Music | [
"Thomas Gardner",
"Salomé Voegelin"
] | Declares the relationship between sound art and music “colloquial”: spoken and accessible, rather than locked behind disciplinary boundaries. | In 2012, Thomas Gardner and Salomé Voegelin hosted a colloquium, entitled "Music - Sound Art: Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures", at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This colloquium dealt with the current fervent debate concerning the relationship between sound art and music.
... | In 2012, Thomas Gardner and Salomé Voegelin hosted a colloquium, entitled "Music - Sound Art: Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures", at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This colloquium dealt with the current fervent debate concerning the relationship between sound art and music.
... | 2 | [
"“The act of listening is a complex web of interconnected behaviour and mental manoeuvring between music, pure sound and historical context. This book is an important tool to negotiate the gap between the history of music and the wider panorama of sonic art.” ~ Anne Hilde Neset, writer, broadcaster and artistic dir... |
Color, Facture, Art and Design | [
"Iona Singh"
] | How is technique political? | With its appeal to the most subterranean aspects of perception art was always destined to be one of the last bastions of the transcendental in the 21st century.
Color, Facture, Art and Design investigates the "beauty" of art based on the somatic "magic" of the physical body and its relationship to nature, arguing that... | With its appeal to the most subterranean aspects of perception art was always destined to be one of the last bastions of the transcendental in the 21st century.
Color, Facture, Art and Design investigates the "beauty" of art based on the somatic "magic" of the physical body and its relationship to nature, arguing that... | 9 | [
"Recommended. ~ Adrian Heathcote, Academia.edu",
"...I am struck by the novelty and ingenuity of the author's arguments about the physical construction of Vermeer's work and the anti-transcendence that attention to this material aspect makes possible. I like very, very much as the argument that Vermeer shows the ... |
Combined and Uneven Apocalypse | [
"Evan Calder Williams"
] | From salvagepunk to zombie hordes, wastelands to plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era. | From the repurposed rubble of salvagepunk to undead hordes banging on shopping mall doors, from empty waste zones to teeming plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era. Moving through the films, political tendencies, and recurrent crises of late capitali... | From the repurposed rubble of salvagepunk to undead hordes banging on shopping mall doors, from empty waste zones to teeming plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era. Moving through the films, political tendencies, and recurrent crises of late capitali... | 2 | [
"More than a blueprint for liberation, Williams’s limpid and creative dissection of these cultural artefacts is an exemplary illustration of the serious scrutiny we should apply to our imaginative lives.\n\n~ The Oxonian Review",
"Yes, another book about zombies and the end of the world. But this is not just anot... |
Coming From Nothing | [
"Matthew McKeever"
] | A tragi-comic philosophical novella about how the internet is reshaping our notions of personal identity. | Coming From Nothing is a tragi-comic love story concerned with notions of identity, such as Judith Butler's idea that sexual identity isn't determined by the body, and John Locke's that personal identity is a question of memory.
The first novella in Zero Books new series of Thought Experiment Novellas, these are books... | Coming From Nothing is a tragi-comic love story concerned with notions of identity, such as Judith Butler's idea that sexual identity isn't determined by the body, and John Locke's that personal identity is a question of memory.
The first novella in Zero Books new series of Thought Experiment Novellas, these are books... | 2 | [
"The first novella in Zero Books new series of 'Thought Experiment Novellas', \"Coming From Nothing\" works out philosophical arguments in it's plot. Successfully fleshing out philosophical problems, \"Coming From Nothing\" is a deftly crafted story where philosophical ideas have consequences in the lives of its ch... |
Coming Revolution, The | [
"Ben Reynolds"
] | A technological revolution is driving capitalism toward crisis and collapse – can our society evolve in time to rescue the future? | A technological revolution is driving capitalism toward crisis and collapse. Can our society evolve in time to rescue the future?
Radical advances in automation, robotics, and computer technology have thrown millions out of work and will only continue to do so in the years to come. At the same time, cheap, individuall... | A technological revolution is driving capitalism toward crisis and collapse. Can our society evolve in time to rescue the future?
Radical advances in automation, robotics, and computer technology have thrown millions out of work and will only continue to do so in the years to come. At the same time, cheap, individuall... | 7 | [
"Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Thorough and detailed history of capitalism and predictions for its (lack of a) future. Convincing and compelling, particularly in its discussions of the impact of technology. Worth your time. ~ Michael J (Educator) , NetGalley",
"What is encouraging about books such as Reynolds’ is tha... |
Concepts for a Democratic and Ecological Society | [
"Yavor Tarinski"
] | A book about the fundamental conflict between democratic aspirations and the imposed norms of capitalism. | Yavor Tarinski examines the fundamental conflict between democratic aspirations and the imposed norms of capitalism, the potential for directly democratic and ecologically designed cities, the imperative to renew the commons, and the prospects for a genuine solidarity economy to overturn the ravages of capitalist econo... | Yavor Tarinski examines the fundamental conflict between democratic aspirations and the imposed norms of capitalism, the potential for directly democratic and ecologically designed cities, the imperative to renew the commons, and the prospects for a genuine solidarity economy to overturn the ravages of capitalist econo... | 6 | [
"I encourage you to read Yavor Tarinski's new book \"Concepts for Democratic and Ecological Society\". Regardless of your political beliefs, you will learn vital facts concerning direct democracy and social ecology.\n\nTarinski is relentless in his analysis and criticism of the destruction of the environment. He un... |
Conscience of a Progressive, The | [
"Steven Klees"
] | Prof. Steven Klees draws on 45 years of worldwide analysis as an economist and international educator to paint a detailed picture of conservative, liberal, and progressive views on a wide range of social issues. | The Conscience of a Progressive begins where Senator Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) and Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) leave off. Prof. Klees draws on 45 years of work around the world as an economist and international educator to paint a detailed picture of conservative, l... | The Conscience of a Progressive begins where Senator Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) and Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) leave off. Prof. Klees draws on 45 years of work around the world as an economist and international educator to paint a detailed picture of conservative, l... | 7 | [
"In this new study Professor Klees draws on 45 years of work around the world as an economist and international educator to paint a detailed picture of conservative, liberal, and progressive views on a wide range of current social issues. He takes an in-depth look at his specializations: education, economics, pover... |
Continental Realism | [
"Paul J. Ennis"
] | In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy. | In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy. Pitted against the dominant antirealist and transcendental continental hegemony Ennis argues that continental thinking must establish an alliance between metaphysics, speculation, and realism if we are to t... | In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy. Pitted against the dominant antirealist and transcendental continental hegemony Ennis argues that continental thinking must establish an alliance between metaphysics, speculation, and realism if we are to t... | 3 | [
"Aan excellent introduction to a fascinating new development in philosophical thinking.\n\n~ Emmet O’Cuana, abookadaytillicanstay",
"Paul J. Ennis has given us the first general overview of the theses of After Finitude , and of their reception in the Anglo-American philosophical field. The theses in question - ... |
Continuity and Rupture | [
"J. Moufawad-Paul"
] | A philosophical examination of the theoretical terrain of contemporary Maoism premised on the counter-intuitive assumption that Maoism did not emerge as a coherent theory until the end of the 1980s. | A philosophical examination of the theoretical terrain of contemporary Maoism premised on the counter-intuitive assumption that Maoism did not emerge as a coherent theory until the end of the 1980s. | A philosophical examination of the theoretical terrain of contemporary Maoism premised on the counter-intuitive assumption that Maoism did not emerge as a coherent theory until the end of the 1980s. | 5 | [
"This is a fascinating must read and highly readable book; even if you disagree with the author's arguments, you will reconsider much of the rhetoric that we take for granted regarding Maoism. ~ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States",
"Capitalism is headed for disaste... |
Corona Generation, The | [
"Jennie Bristow and Emma Gilland"
] | How teenagers' experiences of lockdown will impact on their future. | It is already clear that the COVID-19 crisis will have huge social and economic implications. The Corona Generation considers its effect on the generation currently coming of age: the demographic currently known as ‘Generation Z’. A generation that was already considered to be teetering on the brink of an uncertain pol... | It is already clear that the COVID-19 crisis will have huge social and economic implications. The Corona Generation considers its effect on the generation currently coming of age: the demographic currently known as ‘Generation Z’. A generation that was already considered to be teetering on the brink of an uncertain pol... | 4 | [
"\"One of the UK's leading sociologists of generation uses both her scholarship and her ability to write beautifully to give meaning to the experience of Spring and Summer 2020. Together her daughter Emma, whose insights display maturity well beyond her years, Bristow helps us think and reflect on what social crisi... |
Creepiness | [
"Adam Kotsko"
] | A sequel to Awkwardness and Why We Love Sociopaths, Creepiness explores popular culture to examine the worst character trait of all. | A specter is haunting contemporary television—the specter of creepiness. In our everyday lives, we try to avoid creepiness at every cost, shunning creepy people and recoiling in horror at the idea that we ourselves might be creeps. And yet when we sit down to watch TV, we are increasingly entranced by creepy characters... | A specter is haunting contemporary television—the specter of creepiness. In our everyday lives, we try to avoid creepiness at every cost, shunning creepy people and recoiling in horror at the idea that we ourselves might be creeps. And yet when we sit down to watch TV, we are increasingly entranced by creepy characters... | 1 | [
"Rarely do we find a book which combines detailed analysis of a concrete pop-cultural phenomenon – the rise of creepy characters in today’s sitcoms and TV series, from Sex and the City and Breaking Bad to Mad Men and Louie – with properly metaphysical reflections on the traumatic core of subjectivity. And, on the t... |
Cyber Disobedience | [
"Jeff Shantz",
"Jordon Tomblin"
] | Few activities have captured the contemporary popular imagination as hacking and online activism, from Anonymous and beyond. Few political ideas have gained more notoriety recently than anarchism. Yet both remain misunderstood and much maligned. | Few activities have captured the contemporary popular imagination as hacking and online activism, from Anonymous and beyond. Few political ideas have gained more notoriety recently than anarchism. Yet both remain misunderstood and much maligned. /Cyber Disobedience/ provides the most engaging and detailed analysis of o... | Few activities have captured the contemporary popular imagination as hacking and online activism, from Anonymous and beyond. Few political ideas have gained more notoriety recently than anarchism. Yet both remain misunderstood and much maligned. /Cyber Disobedience/ provides the most engaging and detailed analysis of o... | 2 | [
"One thing is clear: the Internet is likely the largest decentralized project in all of human history. Shantz and Tomblin hone in on the Internet’s renegades and radicals, who utilize the Internet’s unprecedented power for the purposes of resisting authority, creating international solidarity, and spreading the mem... |
Daniel Defoe and the Bank of England | [
"Val Hamilton",
"Martin Parker"
] | Why is a novel like a corporation? How is Daniel Defoe connected to the Bank of England? | This little book tells the truthful story of how the Bank of England actually came into being. It is a story of pirates, treasure, random good fortune and sheer determination. This is an institution founded on risk, daring and imagination. The tale is entangled with that of the early novel, in particular the fortunes o... | This little book tells the truthful story of how the Bank of England actually came into being. It is a story of pirates, treasure, random good fortune and sheer determination. This is an institution founded on risk, daring and imagination. The tale is entangled with that of the early novel, in particular the fortunes o... | 3 | [
"Though whisper it quietly, much of research in business would bore the bum off a buffalo. This on the other hand is an interdisciplinary masterpiece standing between English literature and Management which is an exciting tale of risk, danger, piratical endeavour, plunder, deceit and daring-do in the Age of Project... |
Dark Futures | [
"Nick Dunn"
] | We dream in darkness. Yet light is everywhere, blazing its way through our lives and thoughts. We urgently need new ways to think of futures to save the planet, other species, and ourselves. What might happen when the lights go down? | Dark Futures provides a new way of thinking about the world. Light is everywhere, often uninvited as a by-product of our contemporary lives. Darkness meanwhile appears unwanted, yet is essential to our wellbeing, other species, and our planet.
When we consider what futures are possible, they tend to direct us to visio... | Dark Futures provides a new way of thinking about the world. Light is everywhere, often uninvited as a by-product of our contemporary lives. Darkness meanwhile appears unwanted, yet is essential to our wellbeing, other species, and our planet.
When we consider what futures are possible, they tend to direct us to visio... | 3 | [
"This bold vision questions the outdated view of darkness as something to be feared and designed against and, by doing so, proposes a reconnection of humans within the wider world – a true multispecies coexistence that is in tune with our body clocks and nature’s rhythms. ~ , Eurasia Review",
"Professor Nick Dunn... |
Dark Matters | [
"Nick Dunn"
] | Where now for the secret, the contemplative, the quiet and subterranean in our cities? The question may no longer be what spaces we wish to engage with but when we do. | Dark Matters explores the city at night as a place and time within which escape from the confines of the daytime is possible. More specifically, it is a state of being.
There is a long history of nightwalking, often integral to shady worlds of miscreants, shift workers and transgressors. Yet the night offers much to b... | Dark Matters explores the city at night as a place and time within which escape from the confines of the daytime is possible. More specifically, it is a state of being.
There is a long history of nightwalking, often integral to shady worlds of miscreants, shift workers and transgressors. Yet the night offers much to b... | 3 | [
"A brilliant book. Dark Matters is an adventure into the heart of the city at night – the time when the true nature of the beast reveals itself. ~ John Robb, Louder Than War",
"A must read for anyone who's starting with hauntology, dérive or urbanism in general. It's short, urgent and written with poetic sensibil... |
Dead Man Working | [
"Peter Fleming",
"Carl Cederstrom"
] | An analysis of the dead man working and the way in which capital is now colonizing life itself. | Capitalism has become strange. Ironically, while the ‘age of work’ seems to have come to an end, working has assumed a total presence – a ‘worker’s society’ in the worst sense of the term – where everyone finds themselves obsessed with it. So what does the worker tell us today? "I feel drained, empty… dead." This book ... | Capitalism has become strange. Ironically, while the ‘age of work’ seems to have come to an end, working has assumed a total presence – a ‘worker’s society’ in the worst sense of the term – where everyone finds themselves obsessed with it. So what does the worker tell us today? "I feel drained, empty… dead." This book ... | 3 | [
"A bracing thesis to consider on your tightly regulated lunchbreak.....\n\nGathering examples from Žižek to Woody Allen or film adaptations of Stephen King, the book is mordantly entertaining.\n\n~ Stephen Poole, The Guardian",
"Cederström and Fleming, like a present day Virgil, bravely venture into an underworld... |
Dead People | [
"Stefany Anne Golberg",
"Morgan Meis"
] | A book of unorthodox obituaries from David Foster Wallace to Osama bin Laden. | Dead People is a book of eulogies, written for an eclectic assortment of famous and interesting people who died in recent years. The essays were written by Stefany Anne Golberg and 2013 Whiting Award winner Morgan Meis. The book covers twenty-eight dead people in all, including intellectuals like Susan Sontag, Christop... | Dead People is a book of eulogies, written for an eclectic assortment of famous and interesting people who died in recent years. The essays were written by Stefany Anne Golberg and 2013 Whiting Award winner Morgan Meis. The book covers twenty-eight dead people in all, including intellectuals like Susan Sontag, Christop... | 6 | [
"What a fine, thoughtful and quietly courageous [essay about Osama bin Laden], Saddam's end and the rituals of death. It moved and persuaded me, both. ~ Adam Gopnik, New Yorker Staff Writer, winner of three National Magazine Awards and the George Polk Award for magazine reporting",
"These tart, funny, sad, occasi... |
Debunking the Myth of America's Poodle | [
"Nu'man Abd al-Wahid"
] | True understanding of contemporary British militaristic foreign policy begins with a rejection of perceived subservience to the United States. | Most writing today by activists and opponents of foreign policy is rooted in the 1960s. Underpinning many of these books is the unquestioned assumption that contemporary British imperialism is an adjunct to American foreign policy. Wherever the United States invades and bombs, Great Britain lays out the carpet and obed... | Most writing today by activists and opponents of foreign policy is rooted in the 1960s. Underpinning many of these books is the unquestioned assumption that contemporary British imperialism is an adjunct to American foreign policy. Wherever the United States invades and bombs, Great Britain lays out the carpet and obed... | 3 | [
"This illuminating, scalding and scorching takedown of British Imperialism is simultaneously a cautionary reminder that post-Brexit London should be pressured relentlessly in order to avoid a replication of its multiple sins and transgressions of the recent past. ~ Gerald Horne, author, 'White Supremacy Confronted:... |
Deconstructing Dirty Dancing | [
"Stephen Lee Naish"
] | It's time to take Dirty Dancing out of the corner and place it under the microscope. | Renowned film critic Roger Ebert said Dirty Dancing "might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything." In this broadly researched and accessible text, Stephen Lee Naish sets out to deconstruct and unlock a film that has haunted him for decades, and argues that Dirty Dancing, the 1987 sleepe... | Renowned film critic Roger Ebert said Dirty Dancing "might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything." In this broadly researched and accessible text, Stephen Lee Naish sets out to deconstruct and unlock a film that has haunted him for decades, and argues that Dirty Dancing, the 1987 sleepe... | 12 | [
"Released in 1987, Dirty Dancing is one of those films that is almost impossible to not know about, but it’s also one that’s probably not taken very seriously. The story of privileged Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) and hunky heartthrob Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) has been watched over and over again, ga... |
Defiance: Greece and Europe | [
"Roger Silverman"
] | The story of Greece's resistance to European domination past and present. | This socialist history of modern Greece tells the story of its rebirth in struggle, the heroic resistance to Nazi occupation, the civil war and its aftermath, the colonels' dictatorship and its overthrow, the rise and fall of PASOK, the debt crisis, the popular uprising of 2010-12, the election of SYRIZA, the referendu... | This socialist history of modern Greece tells the story of its rebirth in struggle, the heroic resistance to Nazi occupation, the civil war and its aftermath, the colonels' dictatorship and its overthrow, the rise and fall of PASOK, the debt crisis, the popular uprising of 2010-12, the election of SYRIZA, the referendu... | 4 | [
"If Europe gets torn apart, it will start at the bottom corner. Greece, the first country in modern times to elect a radical leftwing government, faces economic war from Brussels and a tide of refugees from collapsing states to its east. At this critical moment Roger Silverman’s book views the origins of the Greek ... |
Degrowth in Movement(s) | [
"Nina Treu",
"Matthias Schmelzer",
"Corinna Burkhart"
] | A dictionary of social movements and alternatives for a future beyond economic growth, capitalism, and domination. | Degrowth is an emerging social movement that overlaps with proposals for systemic change such as anti-globalization and climate justice, commons and transition towns, basic income and Buen Vivir. Degrowth in Movement(s) reflects on the current situation of social movements aiming at overcoming capitalism, industrialism... | Degrowth is an emerging social movement that overlaps with proposals for systemic change such as anti-globalization and climate justice, commons and transition towns, basic income and Buen Vivir. Degrowth in Movement(s) reflects on the current situation of social movements aiming at overcoming capitalism, industrialism... | 9 | [
"\"This volume is simultaneously an anticipation and celebration of an alternative world.\" ~ Manu V. Mathai & Dimitris Stevis, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/04866134211045140",
"5 Star rating: The ideas expressed in this thought provoking collection of essays all have behind them the realisation t... |
Demarcation and Demystification | [
"J. Moufawad-Paul"
] | Operating as a machine upon the terrain of theoretical truth procedures, philosophy's radical potential describes a militant cartography: interpretation, demarcation, clarification, and demystification. | Marx once declared that philosophers have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it. Demarcation and Demystification examines the ways in which a radical practice of philosophy is possible under the aegis of Marx's 11th thesis, arguing that philosophy's radicality is discovered by understanding that it ... | Marx once declared that philosophers have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it. Demarcation and Demystification examines the ways in which a radical practice of philosophy is possible under the aegis of Marx's 11th thesis, arguing that philosophy's radicality is discovered by understanding that it ... | 4 | [
"5 out of 5 stars: Having kept up with JMP's work since Continuity and Rupture, he generously would answer my questions and have conversations with me via social media. When I found out about this book, I was very excited because I fell into the trap of wanting an Ontology, and still had vestiges from my philosophi... |
Democracy Under Siege | [
"Frank Furedi"
] | Challenging the claim that democracy is a means to an end rather than an important value in and of itself. | Frank Furedi examines the frequent claim that democracy is a means to an end rather than an important value in and of itself. The prevalence of this sentiment in the current era is not surprising, given that the normative foundation for democracy is fragile, and there is little cultural valuation for this outlook.
Unt... | Frank Furedi examines the frequent claim that democracy is a means to an end rather than an important value in and of itself. The prevalence of this sentiment in the current era is not surprising, given that the normative foundation for democracy is fragile, and there is little cultural valuation for this outlook.
Unt... | 0 | [] |
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