Books

Non-Fiction

Fiction

Illustrated

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Non-Fiction

Philosophy

Compilations

How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy by Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary & Daniel KaufmanThis thought-provoking, wide-ranging collection brings together essays by fifteen leading philosophers reflecting on what it means to live according to a philosophy of life. From Eastern philosophies (Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism) and classical Western philosophies (such as Aristotelianism and Stoicism), to the four major religions, as well as contemporary philosophies (such as existentialism and effective altruism), each contributor offers a lively, personal account of how they find meaning in the practice of their chosen philosophical tradition.

Consequentialist

Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright

In a book sure to stir argument for years to come, Robert Wright challenges the conventional view that biological evolution and human history are aimless. Ingeniously employing game theory – the logic of ‘zero-sum’ and ‘non-zero-sum’ games – Wright isolates the impetus behind life’s basic direction: the impetus that, via biological evolution, created complex, intelligent animals, and then via cultural evolution, pushed the human species towards deeper and vaster social complexity. In this view, the coming of today’s independent global society was ‘in the cards’ – not quite inevitable, but, as Wright puts it, ‘so probable as to inspire wonder’. In a narrative of breathtaking scope and erudition, yet pungent wit, Wright takes on some of the past century’s most prominent thinkers, including Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins. Wright argues that a coolly specific appraisal of humanity’s three-billion-year past can give new spiritual meaning to the present and even offer political guidance for the future. This book will change the way people think about the human prospect.

Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality by Douglas W. Portmore

Commonsense Consequentialism is a book about morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, Douglas W. Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons.

Broadly construed, consequentialism is the view that an act’s deontic status is determined by how its outcome ranks relative to those of the available alternatives on some evaluative ranking. Portmore argues that outcomes should be ranked, not according to their impersonal value, but according to how much reason the relevant agent has to desire that each outcome obtains and that, when outcomes are ranked in this way, we arrive at a version of consequentialism that can better account for our commonsense moral intuitions than even many forms of deontology can. What’s more, Portmore argues that we should accept this version of consequentialism, because we should accept both that an agent can be morally required to do only what she has most reason to do and that what she has most reason to do is to perform the act that would produce the outcome that she has most reason to want to obtain.

Although the primary aim of the book is to defend a particular moral theory (viz., commonsense consequentialism), Portmore defends this theory as part of a coherent whole concerning our commonsense views about the nature and substance of both morality and rationality. Thus, it will be of interest not only to those working on consequentialism and other areas of normative ethics, but also to those working in metaethics. Beyond offering an account of morality, Portmore offers accounts of practical reasons, practical rationality, and the objective/subjective obligation distinction

Virtue

Anarchism and Moral Philosophy by Benjamin Franks

This wide variety of approaches to moral theory and ethics should suggest that contemporary anarchist philosophy is full of potential. These scholars demonstrate that anarchism is flexible enough to encompass traditions ranging from deep ecology, to analytic philsosphy, to post-culturalism.

Most encouraging to me, however, is that these academics are willing to theorize about their own social position as academics. As more anarchists enter academia, honest dialogue about what means to be an anarchist in a university becomes more important… This book encourages anarchists to follow their tradition of direct action and direct engagement even as they continue to theorize – our future depends on our thoughts and our actions.’

– Tristan K. Husby, Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies

Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully by Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh

Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully gathers leading thinkers from across the humanities and social sciences in a celebration of, and critical engagement with, the recent work of Canadian political philosopher James Tully.

Over the past thirty years, James Tully has made key contributions to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including: interventions in the history of moral and political thought, contemporary political philosophy, democracy, citizenship, imperialism, recognition and cultural diversity.

In 2008, he published Public Philosophy in a New Key, a two-volume work that promises to be one of the most influential and important statements of legal and political thought in recent history. This work, along with numerous other books and articles, is foundational to a distinctive school of political thought, influencing thinkers in fields as diverse as Anthropology, History, Indigenous Studies, Law, Philosophy and Political Science. Critically engaging with James Tully’s thought, the essays in this volume take up what is his central, and ever more pressing, question: how to enact democratic practices of freedom within and against historically sedimented and actually existing relationships of imperialism?

This work, along with numerous other books and articles, is foundational to a distinctive school of political thought, influencing thinkers in fields as diverse as Anthropology, History, Indigenous Studies, Law, Philosophy and Political Science. Critically engaging with James Tully’s thought, the essays in this volume take up what is his central, and ever more pressing, question: how to enact democratic practices of freedom within and against historically sedimented and actually existing relationships of imperialism?

Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives by Matthew Dennisand Sander Werkhoven

The aim of Ethics and Self-Cultivation is to establish and explore a new ‘cultivation of the self’ strand within contemporary moral philosophy. Although the revival of virtue ethics has helped reintroduce the eudaimonic tradition into mainstream philosophical debates, it has by and large been a revival of Aristotelian ethics combined with a modern preoccupation with standards for the moral rightness of actions. The essays comprising this volume offer a fresh approach to the eudaimonic tradition: instead of conditions for rightness of actions, it focuses on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it. The first section of essays looks at the Hellenistic schools and the way they influenced modern thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Hadot, and Foucault in their thinking about self-cultivation. The second section offers contemporary perspectives on ethical self-cultivation by drawing on work in moral psychology, epistemology of self-knowledge, philosophy of mind, and meta-ethics.

Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics and by Martha Craven Nussbaum

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm–including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca–and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought today. This edition features a new introduction by Nussbaum, in which she revisits the themes of this now classic work.

The Fragility of Goodness Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy by Martha Craven Nussbaum

This book is a study of ancient views about ‘moral luck’. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person’s control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This edition, first published in 2001, features a preface by Martha Nussbaum.

How To Be A Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living by Massimo Pigliucci

Stoicism teaches us to acknowledge our emotions, reflect on what causes them and redirect them for our own good. Whenever we worry about how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal seems more elusive.

Massimo Pigliucci explores this remarkable philosophy and how its wisdom can be applied to our everyday lives in the quest for meaning. He shows how stoicism teaches us the importance of a person’s character, integrity and compassion.

Whoever we are, we can take something away from stoicism and, in How to be a Stoic, with its practical tips and exercises, meditations and mindfulness, he also explains how relevant it is to every part of our modern lives.

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Tolerance And The Ethical Life by Andrew Fiala

In a fresh and exciting way, this new book shows how tolerance connects with the practice of philosophy. Andrew Fiala examines the virtue of tolerance as it appears in several historical contexts: Socratic philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Pragmatism, and Existentialism. The lesson derived is that tolerance is a virtue for what Fiala calls ‘tragic communities’. Such communities are developed when we come together across our differences, but they lack the robust sense of connection that we often seek with others – the complete sort of happiness that is offered by a more utopian ideal of community. But rather than viewing this conclusion as a failure, Fiala maintains that tragic communities are the best communities possible for human beings who are aware of their own individuality and finitude. Indeed, they are typical of the sorts of communities created by philosophers engaged in dialogue with others.

Exemplarist Moral Theory by Linda Zagzebski

In this book Linda Zagzebski presents an original moral theory based on direct reference to exemplars of goodness, modeled on the Putnam-Kripke theory which revolutionized semantics in the seventies. In Exemplarist Moral Theory, exemplars are identified through the emotion of admiration, which Zagzebski argues is both a motivating emotion and an emotion whose cognitive content permits the mapping of the moral domain around the features of exemplars. Using examples of heroes, saints, and sages, Zagzebski shows how narratives of exemplars and empirical work on the most admirable persons can be incorporated into the theory for both the theoretical purpose of generating a comprehensive theory, and the practical purpose of moral education and self-improvement. All basic moral terms, including “good person,” “virtue,” “good life,” “right act,” and “wrong act” are defined by the motives, ends, acts, or judgments of exemplars, or persons like that. The theory also generates an account of moral learning through emulation of exemplars, and Zagzebski defends a principle of the division of moral linguistic labor, which gives certain groups of people in a linguistic community special functions in identifying the extension or moral terms, spreading the stereotype associated with the term through the community, or providing the reasoning supporting judgments using those terms. The theory is therefore semantically externalist in that the meaning of moral terms is determined by features of the world outside the mind of the user, including features of exemplars and features of the social linguistic network linking users of the terms to exemplars. The book ends with suggestions about versions of the theory that are forms of moral realism, including a version that supports the existence of necessary a posteriori truths in ethics.

Deontologist

Normativity by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Normativity is a study of normative thought. She brings out that normative thought is not restricted to moral thought. Normative judgments divide into two sub-kinds, the evaluative and the directive; but the sub-kinds are larger than is commonly appreciated. Evaluative judgments include the judgments that such and such is a good umbrella, that Alfred is a witty comedian, and that Bert answered Carol’s question correctly, as well as the judgment that David is a good human being. Directive judgments include the judgment that a toaster should toast evenly, that Edward ought to get a haircut, and that Frances must move her rook, as well as the judgment that George ought to be kind to his little brother. Thomson describes how judgments of these two sub-kinds interconnect and what makes them true when they are true. Given the extensiveness of the two sub-kinds of normative judgment, our everyday thinking is rich in normativity, and moreover, there is no gap between normative and factual thought. The widespread suspicion of the normative is therefore in large measure due to nothing deeper than an excessively narrow conception of what counts as a normative judgment.

Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity by Christine M. Korsgaard

Christine M. Korsgaard presents an account of the foundation of practical reason and moral obligation. Moral philosophy aspires to understand the fact that human actions, unlike the actions of the other animals, can be morally good or bad, right or wrong. Few moral philosophers, however, have exploited the idea that actions might be morally good or bad in virtue of being good or bad of their kind – good or bad as actions. Just as we need to know that it is the function of the heart to pump blood to know that a good heart is one that pumps blood successfully, so we need to know what the function of an action is in order to know what counts as a good or bad action. Drawing on the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, Korsgaard proposes that the function of an action is to constitute the agency and therefore the identity of the person who does it. As rational beings, we are aware of, and therefore in control of, the principles that govern our actions. A good action is one that constitutes its agent as the autonomous and efficacious cause of her own movements. These properties correspond, respectively, to Kant’s two imperatives of practical reason. Conformity to the categorical imperative renders us autonomous, and conformity to the hypothetical imperative renders us efficacious. And in determining what effects we will have in the world, we are at the same time determining our own identities. Korsgaard develops a theory of action and of interaction, and of the form interaction must take if we are to have the integrity that, she argues, is essential for agency. On the basis of that theory, she argues that only morally good action can serve the function of action, which is self-constitution.

Animal Rights, Human Wrongs: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy by Tom Regan

What gives an animal ‘rights?’ What makes product testing on animals wrong? In Animal Rights, Human Wrongs prominent activist and philosopher Tom Regan skillfully puts forth the argument for animal rights through the exploration of two questions central to moral theory: What makes an act right? What makes an act wrong? Taking into consideration moral theories such as contractarianism, utilitarianism, and Kantian ethics, Regan provides the theoretical framework that grounds a responsible pro-animal rights perspective, and ultimately explores how asking moral questions about other animals can lead to a better understanding of ourselves. The necessity of making a transition from moral theory to moral practice becomes startlingly clear as Reagan examines the commonplace, everyday choices that would be affected by believing in a moral theory that affirms the rights of animals. For the many people who have ever wondered ‘what difference does it make if animals have rights,’ Animal Rights, Humans Wrongs provides a provocative and intriguing answer. For a discussion of animal rights tailored to a more general audience, see Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Ethics by Aristotleand W. D. Ross

This complete edition of Aristotle’s Ethics offers the authoritative translation to English by W. D. Ross. Aristotle conceived of the term ‘ethics’ as a way of examining the moral thought of his teacher Plato, and Plato’s contemporary Socrates. Wishing to keep a simple definition, Aristotle conceived of ethics as the moral and behavioural ideal of the way in which human life is conducted. The philosopher’s principle work of moral philosophy is entitled Nicomachean Ethics, and is comprised of ten distinct books. In order to properly define ethical behaviour, Aristotle attempts to conceive of a society that is ideal in the sense of securing the maximum happiness for the entire population. After defining the nature of happiness, Aristotle commences to discuss the various virtues people may aspire to in order to live ethically. Having first appeared in 1908, the iteration of the Ethics presented here has stood the test of time. It continues to be cited and favoured by numerous scholars to this day.

Subjectivist/Intuitionist

The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind by Cora Diamond

The realistic spirit, a nonmetaphysical approach to philosophical thought concerned with the character of philosophy itself, informs all of the discussions in these essays by philosopher Cora Diamond. Diamond explains Wittgenstein’s notoriously elusive later writings, explores the background to his thought in the work of Frege, and discusses ethics in a way that reflects his influence. Diamond’s new reading of Wittgenstein challenges currently accepted interpretations and shows what it means to look without mythology at the coherence, commitments, and connections that are distinctive of the mind.

Of The Standard of Taste by David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.

Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic “science of man” that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” A prominent figure in the skeptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively “impressions” or direct sensations and fainter “ideas,” which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by “custom”; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the “constant conjunction” of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical “self,” he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self. Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles. Hume also examined the normative is–ought problem. He held notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity, but famously challenged the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779).

Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his “dogmatic slumbers” and Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, and other movements and thinkers. The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume’s Treatise “the founding document of cognitive science.” Also famous as a prose stylist, Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume’s influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.

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Lectures on the Philosophy of History by Hegel

This is the first complete translation in over 150 years of what many consider to be Hegel’s most accessible work. The Lectures on the Philosophy of History are a tour-de-force, an audacious attempt to summarize world history and the purpose behind it. Was Hegel the progenitor of the power-state that unified Germany became? The Lectures, the mature fruit of Hegel’s thought, provide many relevant clues. Hegel saw the growth of freedom as the purpose behind history, but he also argued that such freedom could not take root and flourish apart from a state able to impose and enforce the rule of law.

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes by Rupert Read

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of arising; to loosen their grip and therapeutically liberate those philosophers suffering from them (including oneself). The book contrasts such paradoxes with real, ‘lived paradoxes’: paradoxes that are genuinely experienced outside of the philosopher’s study, in everyday life. Thus Read explores instances of lived paradox (such as paradoxes of self-hatred and of denial of other humans’ humanity) and the harm they can cause, psychically, morally or politically. These lived paradoxes, he argues, sometimes cannot be dissolved using a Wittgensteinian treatment. Moreover, in some cases they do not need to be: for some, such as the paradoxical practices of Zen Buddhism (and indeed of Wittgenstein himself), can in fact be beneficial. The book shows how, once philosophers’ paradoxes have been exorcized, real lived paradoxes can be given their due.

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Nihilist Ethics

The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman

What is the relevance of anarchism for politics and political theory today? While many have in the past dismissed anarchism, the author contends that anarchism’s heretical critique of authority, and its insistence on full equality and liberty, places it at the forefront of the radical political imagination today.

With the unprecedented expansion of state power in the name of security, the current ‘crisis of capitalism’, and the terminal decline of Marxist and social democratic projects, it is time to reconsider anarchism as a form of politics.

This book seeks to renew anarchist thought through the concept of post-anarchism. This innovative theoretical approach, drawing upon classical anarchist theory, post-structuralism, post-Marxism, critical theory and psychoanalytic approaches, allows for a new engagement with contemporary debates about future directions in radical politics relating to political subjectivity and identity, political organisation, the State, globalisation, liberty and equality today, and the political ‘event’.

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From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power by Saul Newman

In its comparison of anarchist and poststructuralist thought, From Bakunin to Lacan contends that the most pressing political problem we face today is the proliferation and intensification of power. Saul Newman targets the tendency of radical political theories and movements to reaffirm power and authority, in different guises, in their very attempt to overcome it. In his examination of thinkers such as Bakunin, Lacan, Stirner, and Foucault Newman explores important epistemological, ontological, and political questions: Is the essential human subject the point of departure from which power and authority can be opposed? Or, is the humanist subject itself a site of domination that must be unmasked? As it deftly charts this debate’s paths of emergence in political thought, the book illustrates how the question of essential identities defines and re-defines the limits and possibilities of radical politics today.

The Radicalism of Romantic Love by Renata Grossi and David West

Undoubtedly Romantic love has come to saturate our culture and is often considered to be a, or even the, major existential goal of our lives, capable of providing us with both our sense of worth and way of being in the world.

The Radicalism of Romantic Love interrogates the purported radicalism of Romantic love from philosophical, cultural and psychoanalytic perspectives, exploring whether it is a subversive force capable of breaking down entrenched social, political and cultural norms and structures, or whether, in spite of its role in the fight against certain barriers, it is in fact a highly conservative impulse.

Exploring both the grounds for the central place of Romantic love in contemporary lives and the meaning, extent and nature of its supposed radicalism, this volume considers love from a variety of theoretical perspectives, with attention to matters of gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity. With authors examining a range of questions, including the role of love in the same-sex marriage debate, polyamory and the notion of love as a political force, The Radicalism of Romantic Love illuminates a fundamental but perplexing aspect of our contemporary lives and will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in the emotions and love as a social and political phenomenon.

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Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and “a work of heretical madness” by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society’s innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person’s unwillingness to be cut off from the group.

What’s more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialogue on the nature of free thinking.

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Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 by Nick Land

Fanged Noumena brings together the writings of Nick Land for the first time. During the 1990s Land’s unique philosophical work, variously described as ‘rabid nihilism’, ‘mad black deleuzianism’ and ‘cybergothic’, developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of ‘continental philosophy’ – a route which was implacably blocked by the academy.

However, Land’s work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British ‘speculative realist’ philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers – artists, musicians, filmmakers, bloggers – who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.

Beginning with Land’s early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume then collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s – long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print) – in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena allows a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker’s work, and will introduce his unique voice to a new generation of readers.

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The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Of all the writing that emerged from the existentialist movement, Simone de Beauvoir’s groundbreaking study of women will probably have the most extensive and enduring impact. It is at once a work of anthropology and sociology, of biology and psychoanalysis, from the pen of a writer and novelist of penetrating imaginative power.

The Second Sex stands, four decades after its first appearance, as the first landmark in the modern feminist upsurge that has transformed perceptions of the social relationship of man and womankind in our time.

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The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir

In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of “ways of being” (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it.

The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.

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The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 by Michel Foucault

The Birth of Biopolitics continues to pursue the themes of Foucault’s lectures from Security, Territory, Population. Having shown how eighteenth-century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality – seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less and in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena to be governed – Michel Foucault undertakes a detailed analysis of the forms of this liberal governmentality.

In a direct and conversational tone, this book raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics.

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Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party by Tiqqun

Everyone knows the terrible communities, having spent time in them or being within them still because they are always stronger than the others. And because of that one always stays, in part – and parts at the same time. Family, school, work, and prison are the classic faces of this form of contemporary hell.

But they are less interesting as they belong to an old form of market evolution and only presently survive. On the contrary, there are the terrible communities which struggle against the existing state of things that are at one and the same time attractive and better than “this world.” And at the same time their way of being closer to the truth – and therefore to joy – moves them away from freedom more than anything else.

The question we must answer in a final manner is of a more ethical than political nature because the classic political forms and their categories fit us like our childhood clothing. The question is to know if we prefer the possibility of an unknown danger to the certainty of a present pain. That is to say if we want to continue to live and speak in agreement (dissident perhaps, but always in agreement) with what has been done so far – and thus with the terrible communities – or, if we want to question that small portion of our desire that the culture has not already infested in its mess, to try – in the name of an original happiness – a different path.

This text was conceived as a contribution to that other voyage.

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Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man by Wilfrid Sellars

In which Sellars describes what he sees as the major problem confronting philosophy today. This is the “clash” between “the ‘manifest’ image of man-in-the-world” and “the scientific image.” These two ‘images’ are idealizations of distinct conceptual frameworks in terms of which humans conceive of the world and their place in it. Sellars characterizes the manifest image as “the framework in terms of which man came to be aware of himself as man-in-the-world” (PSIM, in SPR: 6; in ISR: 374), but it is, more broadly, the framework in terms of which we ordinarily observe and explain our world. The fundamental objects of the manifest image are persons and things, with emphasis on persons, which puts normativity and reason at center stage. According to the manifest image, people think and they do things for reasons, and both of these “can occur only within a framework of conceptual thinking in terms of which [they] can be criticized, supported, refuted, in short, evaluated” (PSIM, in SPR: 6; in ISR: 374). In the manifest image persons are very different from mere things; how and why normative assessments apply to things is an important and contentious question within the framework.

Modernity and the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman

Sociology is concerned with modern society, but has never come to terms with one of the most distinctive and horrific aspects of modernity – the Holocaust.

The book examines what sociology can teach us about the Holocaust, but more particularly concentrates upon the lessons which the Holocaust has for sociology. Bauman’s work demonstrates that the Holocaust has to be understood as deeply involved with the nature of modernity. There is nothing comparable to this work available in the sociological literature.

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Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts by Zygmunt Bauman

The production of ‘human waste’ – or more precisely, wasted lives, the ‘superfluous’ populations of migrants, refugees and other outcasts – is an inevitable outcome of modernization. It is an unavoidable side-effect of economic progress and the quest for order which is characteristic of modernity.

As long as large parts of the world remained wholly or partly unaffected by modernization, they were treated by modernizing societies as lands that were able to absorb the excess of population in the ‘developed countries’. Global solutions were sought, and temporarily found, to locally produced overpopulation problems. But as modernization has reached the furthest lands of the planet, ‘redundant population’ is produced everywhere and all localities have to bear the consequences of modernity’s global triumph. They are now confronted with the need to seek – in vain, it seems – local solutions to globally produced problems. The global spread of the modernity has given rise to growing quantities of human beings who are deprived of adequate means of survival, but the planet is fast running out of places to put them. Hence the new anxieties about ‘immigrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ and the growing role played by diffuse ‘security fears’ on the contemporary political agenda.

With characteristic brilliance, this new book by Zygmunt Bauman unravels the impact of this transformation on our contemporary culture and politics and shows that the problem of coping with ‘human waste’ provides a key for understanding some otherwise baffling features of our shared life, from the strategies of global domination to the most intimate aspects of human relationships.

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Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty by Zygmunt Bauman

The passage from ‘solid’ to ‘liquid’ modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organise their lives. They have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like ‘career’ and ‘progress’ could meaningfully be applied. Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable – to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty.

Zygmunt Bauman’s brilliant writings on liquid modernity have altered the way we think about the contemporary world. In this short book he explores the sources of the endemic uncertainty which shapes our lives today and, in so doing, he provides the reader with a brief and accessible introduction to his highly original account, developed at greater length in his previous books, of life in our liquid modern times.

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An Introduction to Buddhism Teachings, History and Practices by Peter Harvey

In this second edition of the best-selling Introduction to Buddhism, Peter Harvey provides a comprehensive introduction to the development of the Buddhist tradition in both Asia and the West. Extensively revised and fully updated, this edition draws on recent scholarship in the field, exploring the tensions and continuities between the different forms of Buddhism. Harvey critiques and corrects some common misconceptions and mistranslations, and discusses key concepts that have often been over-simplified and over-generalised. The volume includes detailed references to scriptures and secondary literature, an updated bibliography and a section on web resources. Key terms are given in Pali and Sanskrit, and Tibetan words are transliterated in the most easily pronounceable form, making this is a truly accessible account. This is an ideal coursebook for students of religion, Asian philosophy and Asian studies, and is also a useful reference for readers wanting an overview of Buddhism and its beliefs.

The Selfless Mind Personality: Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism by Peter Harvey

This careful analysis of early Buddhist thought opens out a perspective in which no permanent Self is accepted, but a rich analysis of changing and potent mental processes is developed. It explores issues relating to the not-Self teaching: self-development, moral responsibility, the between-lives period, and the ‘undetermined questions’ on the world, on the ‘life principle’ and on the liberated one after death. It examines the ‘person’ as a flowing continuity centred on consciousness or discernment (vinnana) configured in changing minds-sets (cittas). The resting state of this is seen as ‘brightly shining’ – like the ‘Buddha nature’ of Mahayana thought – so as to represent the potential for Nirvana. Nirvana is then shown to be a state in which consciousness transcends all objects, and thus participates in a timeless, unconditioned realm.

Moonshadows, Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy by The Cowherds

The doctrine of the two truths–a conventional truth and an ultimate truth–is central to Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology. The two truths (or two realities), the distinction between them, and the relation between them is understood variously in different Buddhist schools and is of special importance to the Madhyamaka school. The fundamental ideas are articulated with particular force by Nagarjuna (2nd–3rd century CE) who famously claims that the two truths are identical to one another, and yet distinct. One of the most influential interpretations of Nagarjuna’s difficult doctrine derives from the commentary of Candrakirti (6th century CE). While much attention has been devoted to explaining the nature of the ultimate truth in view of its special soteriological role, less has been paid to understanding the nature of conventional truth, which is often described as “deceptive,” “illusion,” or “truth for fools.” But conventional truth is nonetheless truth. This book therefore asks, “what is true about conventional truth?” and “What are the implications of an understanding of conventional truth for our lives?”

The Complete Essays by Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech.

In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding ‘assays’, inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.

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The Trial by Kafka

A gripping work of psychological horror, in its depiction of bureaucracy run amok Franz Kafka’s The Trial skirts the line between fantasy and reality. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the German with an introduction by Idris Parry.

‘Somebody must have laid false information against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.’ From this first sentence onwards, Josef K. is on trial for his right to exist. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis – an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life – including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door – becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. Maintaining an atmosphere of unease throughout, this chilling, thought-provoking novel, more than any other, is infinitely perceptive about the nature of terror and the absurd meaninglessness and futility of human life.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-speaking insurance clerk who despised his job, preferring to spend his time writing. Nevertheless, Kafka published little during his lifetime, and ordered his closest friend to burn the mass of unpublished manuscripts – now familiar to us as some of the most influential novels and short stories of the twentieth century – after his death. Kafka’s novels, all available in Penguin Modern Classics, include The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.

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The Rebel by Camus

A philosophical exploration of the idea of ‘rebellion’ by one of the leading existentialist thinkers, Albert Camus’ The Rebel looks at artistic and political rebels throughout history, from Epicurus to the Marquis de Sade. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Anthony Bower with an introduction by Oliver Todd.

The Rebel is Camus’ ‘attempt to understand the time I live in’ and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Published in 1951, it makes a daring critique of communism – how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. It questions two events held sacred by the left wing – the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 – that had resulted, he believed, in terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt, which unlike revolution is a spontaneous response to injustice and a chance to achieve change without giving up collective and intellectual freedom.

Albert Camus (1913-60) is the author of a number of best-selling and highly influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include The Fall, The Outsider and The First Man. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus is remembered as one of the few writers to have shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame has been international.

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Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence by Judith Butler

Written after September 11, 2001, in response to the conditions of heightened vulnerability and aggression that have prevailed since then, Judith Butler critiques the use of violence and argues for a response in which violence might be minimized, and interdependency becomes acknowledged as the basis for global political community. Following the expressions of public mourning post-September 11, Butler asks why it’s acceptable, even necessary to grieve some lives, while others are not valued or are even incomprehensible as lives at all. Questions of sovereignty, patriotism and censorship are all examined, especially in light of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Finally she investigates the way in which any criticism of the Israeli state is automatically labelled anti-semitic, thus rendering all criticism of Israel a political taboo in the US and the UK. She counters that we have a responsibility to speak out against both Israeli injustices and anti-semitism, and argues against the rhetorical use of the charge of anti-semitism to quell public debate.

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Through his writing and his own personal philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson unburdened his young country of Europe’s traditional sense of history and showed Americans how to be creators of their own circumstances. His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism.
Larzer Ziff’s introduction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson’s most significant writings provides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his formative years.

It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism by Joel Marks

Written in an engaging style for the general reader, It’s Just a Feeling addresses the fundamental question of ethics: “How shall I live?” The answer it offers is: “In accordance with my considered desires.” This is the philosophy of desirism. The book distinguishes desirism from morality on the one hand and from self-centeredness on the other. Numerous examples drawn from everyday life illustrate desirism in both theory and practice.

Psychology

Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology by Kristin Andrews

Human apes are thought to be extraordinary mindreaders, knowing what others think and desire. But perhaps instead, they, like their nonhuman cousins, are skilled at reading others not by knowing the contents of their minds, but by understanding others as people, living within in a rich social and cultural context. Based on research from developmental psychology, social psychology, and animal cognition research, I develop and defend a theory of Pluralistic Folk Psychology, which decenters the role of belief attribution in our understanding of other minds. Furthermore, I defend a cooperative version of the Social Intelligence Hypothesis, following on the work of Alison Jolly, according to which the capacity to attribute belief facilitates the explanation of anomalous behavior, which in turn facilitates adopting innovative beneficial behaviors. Belief attribution isn’t necessary for cumulative culture, but it sure can help.

Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot

How many of us sometimes feel that we are scratching at the walls of this life, seeking to find our way into a wider space beyond? That our mild, polite existence sometimes seems to crush the breath out of us? Feral is the lyrical and gripping story of George Monbiot’s efforts to re-engage with nature and discover a new way of living.

He shows how, by restoring and rewilding our damaged ecosystems on land and at sea, we can bring wonder back into our lives. Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, Feral lays out a new, positive environmentalism, in which nature is allowed to find its own way.

Folklore Studies

Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life by Dorothy Noyes

Celebrated folklorist, Dorothy Noyes, offers an unforgettable glimpse of her craft and the many ways it matters. Folklore is the dirty linen of modernity, carrying the traces of working bodies and the worlds they live in. It is necessary but embarrassing, not easily blanched and made respectable for public view, although sometimes this display is deemed useful. The place of folklore studies among modern academic disciplines has accordingly been marginal and precarious, yet folklore studies are foundational and persistent. Long engaged with all that escapes the gaze of grand theory and grand narratives, folklorists have followed the lead of the people whose practices they study. They attend to local economies of meaning; they examine the challenge of making room for maneuver within circumstances one does not control. Incisive and wide ranging, the fifteen essays in this book chronicle the “humble theory” of both folk and folklorist as interacting perspectives on social life in the modern Western world.

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

Mules and Men is a treasury of black America’s folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling. Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, big old lies, songs, Vodou customs, and superstitions recorded in these pages capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans.

Political Theory

Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach by Benjamin Franks, Nathan Jun, Leonard Williams

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood.

Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume – authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars – investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message and struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts.

Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities.

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Post-Anarchism A Reader by Duane Rousselle & Süreyyya Evren

Post-anarchism has been of considerable importance in the discussions of radical intellectuals across the globe in the last decade. In its most popular form, it demonstrates a desire to blend the most promising aspects of traditional anarchist theory with developments in post-structuralist and post-modernist thought. Post-Anarchism: A Reader includes the most comprehensive collection of essays about this emergent body of thought, making it an essential and accessible resource for academics, intellectuals, activists and anarchists interested in radical philosophy.

Many of the chapters have been formative to the development of a distinctly ‘post-anarchist’ approach to politics, aesthetics, and philosophy. Others respond to the so-called ‘post-anarchist turn’ with caution and scepticism. The book also includes original contributions from several of today’s ‘post-anarchists’, inviting further debate and new ways of conceiving post-anarchism across a number of disciplines.

– Pluto Press

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Fighting For Ourselves by Solidarity Federation

This excellent book by Solfed aims to recover some of the lost history of the workers’ movement, in order to set out a revolutionary strategy for the present conditions. In clear and accessible prose, the book sets out the anarcho-syndicalist criticisms of political parties and trade unions, engages with other radical traditions such as anarchism, syndicalism and dissident Marxisms, explains what anarcho-syndicalism was in the twentieth century, and how it’s relevant – indeed, vital – for workers today.

After Post-Anarchism by Duane Rouselle

The accursed share is the non-recuperable portion that exists outside of every economy, its promise is the immediate and eventual destruction of any system or foundation that appears to contain it.

Anarchy after Leftism by Bob Black

Critique of Bookchin’s Social Ecology.

Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada by Theresa Papanikolas

Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada sheds new light on Paris Dada’s role in developing the anarchist and individualist philosophies that helped shape the cultural dialogue in France following the First World War. Drawing on such surviving documentation as correspondence, criticism, periodicals, pamphlets, and manifestoes, this book argues that, contrary to received wisdom, Dada was driven by a vision of social change through radical cultural upheaval. The first book-length study to interrogate the Paris Dadaists’ complex and often contested position in the postwar groundswell of anarcho-individualism, Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada offers an unprecedented analysis of Paris Dada literature and art in relation to anarchism, and also revives a variety of little known anarcho-individualist texts and periodicals. In doing so, it reveals the general ideological diversity of the postwar French avant-garde and identifies its anarchist concerns; in addition, it challenges the accepted paradigm that postwar cultural politics were monolithically nationalist. By positioning Paris Dada in its anarchist context, this volume addresses a long-ignored lacuna in Dada scholarship and, more broadly, takes its place alongside the numerous studies that over the past two decades have problematized the politics of modern art, literature, and culture.

Granny Made me an Anarchist by Stuart Christie

In 1964, Christie was arrested in Spain and charged with attempting to assassinate General Franco. He was 18, far from his home in Glasgow, and could speak no Spanish. The worst part was that the charge was true. Christie was convicted, and became Britain’s most famous anarchist. In 1972 he was arrested again, this time in Britain, suspected of being a member of The Angry Brigade. The Angry Brigade was an anarchist group that had – intending that no-one should be injured – blown up several London embassies and the houses of prominent British officials. Their trial became a sensational confrontation between the state and those who tried to overthrow it. Christie was not a member, although he knew those who were and stood trial alongside them. He was acquitted; all the others were sent to gaol. These events bookend an era when a sizeable proportion of the British population thought that the government might be overthrown by the will of the people, in favour of a better society, if only the right spark could be lit. It wasn’t. People have never thought that way again.

Sing A Battle Song by Bernardine Dohrn

Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to “bring the war home.” The Weather Underground waged a low-level war against the U.S. government through much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison, and evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.

Sing a Battle Song brings together the three complete and unedited publications produced by the Weathermen during their most active period underground, 1970 to 1974: The Weather Eye: Communiqués from the Weather Underground; Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism; and Sing a Battle Song: Poems by Women in the Weather Underground Organization.

Sing a Battle Song is introduced and annotated by three of the Weather Underground’s original organizers–Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Jeff Jones–all of whom are all still actively engaged in social justice movement work.

Idealistic, inspired, pissed-off, and often way-over-the-top, the writings of the Weather Underground epitomize the sexual, psychedelic, anti-war counterculture of the American 1960s and 1970s.

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Action Directe by Ann Hansen

Direct Action chronicles the thrilling fast-paced action of the Guerrilla group that blew up the political activist scene of the 80’s. Hansen and her Anarchist group Direct Action were responsible for numerous dramatic political acts, including the bombing of the Litton Systems plant in Toronto. After legal protest actions failed to stop Litton from making guidance systems for Cruise missiles, Direct Action defended the Earth, explosively. Additionally, Hansen with other radical feminists showed the Red Hot Video chain just how hot their illegal films depicting rape could become after being firebombed.

Ann Hansen served seven years in prison and is now quite at home in Vancouver with her three horses, three dogs, one cat and a bird.

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Action Directe: Ultra-left Terrorism in France, 1979-87 by Michael Y. Dartnell

In defining Action Directe’s mixture of millenarianism, workerism and nihilism, this study explains why the group turned to a strategy of murderous strikes and how a revolutionary political faction emerged in a stable western society.

Clandestines; The pirate Journals of an Irish Exile by Ramor Ryan

“What separates Ramor’s work from the other outstanding young writers is the content of what he is doing. I’ve never seen anything close to his work…”–Eddie Yuen, co-editor of Confronting Capitalism

“From Belfast to the Bronx and Chiapas to Kurdistan, Ramor Ryan has shown a lifelong commitment to social justice, a questioning mind and an ability to incorporate historical currents into his work.”–Mick McCaughan, Latin American Correspondent to the Irish Times

An epic debut, Ramor Ryan’s nonfiction tales read like Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries crossed with Hunter S. Thompson’s wit and flair for the impossible. A shrewd political thinker and philosopher with a knack for ingratiating himself into the thick of any social situation, Ryan has been there and lived to tell about it.

As much an adventure story as an unofficial chronicle of modern global resistance movements, Clandestines spirits the reader across the globe, carefully weaving the narrative through illicit encounters and public bacchanals. From the teeming squats of mid-90’s East Berlin, to intrigue in the Zapatista Autonomous Zone, a Croatian Rainbow Gathering on the heels of the G8 protests in Genoa, mutiny on the high seas, the quixotic ambitions of a Kurdish guerilla camp, the contradictions of Cuba, and the neo-liberal nightmare of post-war(s) Central America we see everywhere a world in flux, struggling to be reborn.

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Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity by Ramor Ryan

Eight volunteers converge to help campesinos build a water system in Chiapas—a strategy to bolster the Zapatista insurgency by helping locals to assert their autonomy.

These outsiders come to question the movement they’ve traveled so far to support—and each other—when forced into a world so unlike the poetic communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos—a world of endemic rural poverty, parochialism, and shifting loyalties to the movement. The quiet dignity of the local compañeros and echoes of B. Traven, Conrad, and Camus, round out this epic yarn.

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Days of War Nights of Love by Crimethinc

Beautifully designed A-Z of the totality of revolutionary youth politics. Sort of a Situ-inspired Steal This Book for everyday life, love, and how to live it. Heavily illustrated with photos, cartoons, posters, and other useful accoutrements for the new millenium. Believe the hype, and check out why this is already an underground bestseller.

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Labor Organizing

Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics by Richard Seymour

In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ‘soft-left’ detractors.

Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government’s authority, and even Corbyn’s most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas.

For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership.

Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ‘Old Labour’ pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media’s Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left’s revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.

– Verso Books

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Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society by Andre Gorz

Over the last twenty-five years, Western societies have been reversing into the future. They are able neither to reproduce themselves in accordance with past norms, nor to exploit the unprecedented freedom offered by the savings in working time which new technology has generated.

In this major new book, Andre Gorz argues that the societies created by Fordism have been falling apart and have given way to ‘non-societies’, in which a tiny dominant stratum has grabbed most of the surplus wealth. In the absence of any alternative political project, social disintegration and individual despair have prevailed.

Mainstream economists seek solutions to this ‘crisis’, but Gorz argues that we are in fact in the grip of a new system which is abolishing work as we know it. The worst forms of exploitation are being restored, as each is forced to fight against all (both at the individual and the national level) in a desperate struggle to obtain the diminishing supply of work.In the face of these developments, Gorz argues that we should fight not against the destruction of work itself (in the sense of stable employment), but against the new system’s efforts to perpetuate the ideology of work as a source of rights.

We should welcome the reduction in the working hours required to meet our material needs and should realize the creative potential that this reduction could release. Through measures such as a sufficient unconditional basic income for all and new, co-operative economic structures, we can reclaim work and rebuild a future beyond the wage-based society.

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Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America by Kenyon Zimmer

From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions.

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Social Organizing

Understanding Social Movements by Greg Martin

This book offers a new and fresh approach to understanding social movements. It provides interdisciplinary perspectives on social and cultural protest and contentious politics. It considers major theories and concepts, which are presented in an accessible and engaging format. Historical and contemporary case studies and examples from a variety of different countries are provided throughout, including the American civil rights movement, Greenpeace, Pussy Riot, indigenous peoples movements, liberation theology, Occupy, Tea Party, and the Arab Spring.

The book presents specific chapters outlining the early origins of social movement studies, and more recent theoretical and conceptual developments. It considers key ideas from resource mobilization theory, the political process model, and new social movement approaches. It provides an expansive commentary on the role of culture in social protest, and looks at substantive areas in chapters dedicated to religious movements, geography and struggles over space, media and movements, and global activism.

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Feminist

Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements by O’Keefe

This book examines the development of feminist identities among women active in revolutionary movements and how this identity simultaneously contributes to and conflicts with the struggle for women’s emancipation. It is based on groundbreaking interviews with women who were active in the contemporary Irish republican movement and activists in the broader women’s movement.

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

In today’s world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women’s movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife.

It’s the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of “the flawless beauty.”

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Fire with Fire: New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century by Naomi Wolf

In her bestselling book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf sought to change the way in which women see themselves in relation to their bodies. Now she focuses on how they see themselves in relation to power.

She argues that the feminist movement has to change if it is to speak to a new generation of women, and that, even as women are gaining more ground than ever before, a wariness of feminist orthodoxies keeps them away from the only movement capable of putting political clout behind their personal success. The book represents a call to women to throw off centuries of conditioning about the relationship between power and femininity.

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Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today by Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune

In today’s ‘post-feminist’ society, feminism is often portrayed as unfashionable and irrelevant. But since the turn of the millennium, a revitalised feminist movement has emerged to challenge these assumptions and assert a vibrant new agenda.

Reclaiming the F Word reveals the what, why and how of the new feminist movement and what it has to say about women’s lives today. From cosmetic surgery to celebrity culture and parenting to politics, from rape to religion and sex to singleness, this groundbreaking book reveals the seven vital issues at stake for today’s feminists, and calls a new generation back to action.

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There is No Word For It by Laura Bridgeman & Serge Nicholson

There Is No Word For It is a book based on a unique theatre project. It is a contemporary collection of real-life stories exploring the trans male experience. The contributors were twelve transgender men based in London, the UK, France and Southeast Asia.

There Is No Word For It doesn’t just concern itself with trans masculine body but it explores love, sexuality, daily life and finding a new language. The desire was to discover words for the unmentionable and unlock stories that had never been told.

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Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It is and Why It Matters by Karen J. Warren

How are the unjustified dominations of women and other humans connected to the unjustified domination of animals and nonhuman nature? What are the characteristics of oppressive conceptual frameworks and systems of unjustified domination? How does an ecofeminist perspective help one understand issues of environmental and social justice? In this important new work, Karen J. Warren answers these and other questions from a Western perspective. Warren looks at the variety of positions in ecofeminism, the distinctive nature of ecofeminist philosophy, ecofeminism as an ecological position, and other aspects of the movement to reveal its significance to both understanding and creatively changing patriarchal (and other) systems of unjustified domination.

Heterosexuality by Sue Wilkinson & Celia Kitzinger

Heterosexuality is generally taken for granted, seldom explicitly addressed. Rarely has it been the focus of sustained theory. This Reader is a forum for the analysis of heterosexuality as it relates to feminism and psychology.

Leading feminists, psychologists and activists explore the personal and political implications of heterosexuality and of heterosexuality as an institution. They consider the extent to which feminism and heterosexuality are compatible and the complex interrelationships between sexual behaviour, categories and identities. Acknowledging the interactions between heterosexism and other oppressions, they point to the contradictions between heterosexual desire and heterosexual coercion, between heterosexual privilege and women′s traditional role within the family.

This Reader is based on articles published in the first three volumes of Feminism & Psychology, particularly the Special Issue on Heterosexuality (Volume 2 Number 3, October 1992) and also includes eight specially-commissioned pieces.

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Women’s Studies; A Reader by Stevi Jackson

This Reader provides students with a comprehensive selection of readings covering a range of key issues in women’s studies which are representative of the diversity of current feminist thinking. Designed as a text for classroom use, the Reader is divided into 15 sections reflecting primary topic areas within women’s studies.

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Anti-Racist

Black Girl Dangerous On Race, Queerness, Class and Gender by Mia McKenzie

Mia McKenzie, creator of the enormously popular website BGD, writes about race, queerness, class and gender in a concise, compelling voice filled at different times with humor, grief, rage, and joy. In this collection of her work from BGD, McKenzie’s nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience.

McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other.

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Not Born a Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices by Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed, Nazilla Khanlou and Helena Moussa

“The book as a whole offers an array of difficult topics: the way women’s identities are shaped and reshaped by the complicated experiences of refugeeism; global sex trade and sex trafficking of Eastern European women; connections between war and homelessness… a valuable text that is bound to challenge students and teachers alike, in both our methodologies and our personal desires for an easy consumption of knowledge about the world and ourselves.

Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition by Glen Sean Coulthard

While Red Skin, White Masks focuses on indigenous experiences in Canada, it is immediately applicable to understanding the false promise of recognition, liberal pluralism, and reconciliation at the heart of colonial relationships between indigenous peoples and nation-states elsewhere. Glen Sean Coulthard is able to bring a remarkably distinctive and provocative look at issues of power and opposition relevant to anyone concerned with what constitutes and perpetuates imperialist state formations and what indigenous alternatives offer in regards to freedom.”—Joanne Barker, San Francisco State University

The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged “contract” has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence “whites” and “non-whites,” full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state.

Holding up a mirror to mainstream philosophy, this provocative book explains the evolving outline of the racial contract from the time of the New World conquest and subsequent colonialism to the written slavery contract, to the “separate but equal” system of segregation in the twentieth-century United States. According to Mills, the contract has provided the theoretical architecture justifying an entire history of European atrocity against non-whites, from David Hume’s and Immanuel Kant’s claims that blacks had inferior cognitive power, to the Holocaust, to the kind of imperialism in Asia that was demonstrated by the Vietnam War.

Mills suggests that the ghettoization of philosophical work on race is no accident. This work challenges the assumption that mainstream theory is itself raceless. Just as feminist theory has revealed orthodox political philosophy’s invisible white male bias, Mills’s explication of the racial contract exposes its racial underpinnings.

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Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance by Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana

Offering a wide variety of philosophical approaches to the neglected philosophical problem of ignorance, this groundbreaking collection builds on Charles Mills’s claim that racism involves an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance. Contributors explore how different forms of ignorance linked to race are produced and sustained and what role they play in promoting racism and white privilege. They argue that the ignorance that underpins racism is not a simple gap in knowledge, the accidental result of an epistemological oversight. In the case of racial oppression, ignorance often is actively produced for purposes of domination and exploitation. But as these essays demonstrate, ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool for people of color to wield against white privilege and white supremacy. The book concludes that understanding ignorance and the politics of such ignorance should be a key element of epistemological and social/political analyses, for it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices.

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Anti-Imperialism

Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, And Policy by Peter Bergen

Drones are the iconic military technology of many of today’s most pressing conflicts. Drones have captured the public imagination, partly because they project lethal force in a manner that challenges accepted norms and moral understandings.

Drone Wars presents a series of essays by legal scholars, journalists, government officials, military analysts, social scientists, and foreign policy experts. It addresses drones’ impact on the ground, how their use adheres to and challenges the laws of war, their relationship to complex policy challenges, and the ways they help us understand the future of war.

The book is a diverse and comprehensive interdisciplinary perspective on drones that covers important debates on targeted killing and civilian casualties, presents key data on drone deployment, and offers new ideas on their historical development, significance, and impact on law and policy.

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Consuming Cultures by Jeremy Seabrook

The hurtling speed of the global market knows no cultural boundaries. Languages, customs, rituals, and myths are swept aside with the global market’s promise of security and prosperity. Is this promise false? Is the survival of pockets of local culture true resistance, or does it mean that cultural identities are being turned into commodities? Harnessing moving personal testimonies, this is a wide-ranging and sensitive exploration of the battleground between local and global.

Oil and Water; Being Han in Xinjiang by Tom Cliff

For decades, China’s Xinjiang region has been the site of clashes between long-residing Uyghur and Han settlers. Up until now, much scholarly attention has been paid to state actions and the Uyghur’s efforts to resist cultural and economic repression. This has left the other half of the puzzle—the motivations and ambitions of Han settlers themselves—sorely understudied.

With Oil and Water, anthropologist Tom Cliff offers the first ethnographic study of Han in Xinjiang, using in-depth vignettes, oral histories, and more than fifty original photographs to explore how and why they became the people they are now. By shifting focus to the lived experience of ordinary Han settlers, Oil and Water provides an entirely new perspective on Chinese nation building in the twenty-first century and demonstrates the vital role that Xinjiang Han play in national politics—not simply as Beijing’s pawns, but as individuals pursuing their own survival and dreams on the frontier.

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Animal Liberation

Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot

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The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter by Marc Bekoff

Based on award-winning scientist Marc Bekoff’s years studying social communication in a wide range of species, this important book shows that animals have rich emotional lives.

Bekoff skillfully blends extraordinary stories of animal joy, empathy, grief, embarrassment, anger, and love with the latest scientific research confirming the existence of emotions that common sense and experience have long implied. Filled with Bekoff’s light humor and touching stories, The Emotional Lives of Animals is a clarion call for reassessing both how we view animals and how we treat them.

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Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life in British Romanticism by Ron Broglio

In Beasts of Burden, Ron Broglio examines how lives—human and animal—were counted in rural England and Scotland during the Romantic period. During this time, Britain experienced unprecedented data collection from censuses, ordinance surveys, and measurements of resources, all used to quantify the life and productivity of the nation.

It was the dawn of biopolitics—the age in which biological life and its abilities became regulated by the state. Borne primarily by workers and livestock, nowhere was this regulation felt more powerfully than in the fields, commons, and enclosures.

Using literature, art, and cultural texts of the period, Broglio explores the apparatus of biopolitics during the age of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. He looks at how data collection turned everyday life into citizenship and nationalism and how labor class poets and artists recorded and resisted the burden of this new biopolitical life.

The author reveals how the frictions of material life work over and against designs by the state to form a unified biopolitical Britain. At its most radical, this book changes what constitutes the central concerns of the Romantic period and which texts are valuable for understanding the formation of a nation, its agriculture, and its rural landscapes.

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Europe: A Natural History by Tim Flannery

In this unprecedented evolutionary history, Tim Flannery shows how for the past 100 million years Europe has absorbed wave after wave of immigrant species; taking them in, transforming them, and sometimes hybridising them.

Flannery reveals how, in addition to playing a vital role in the evolution of our own species, Europe was once the site of the formation of the first coral reefs, the home of some of the world’s largest elephants, and now has more wolves than North America.

This groundbreaking book charts the history of the land itself and the forces shaping life on it – including modern humans – to create a portrait of a continent that continues to exert a huge influence on the world today.

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Decolonizing Nature by William M Adams & Martin Mulligan

British imperialism was almost unparalleled in its historical and geographical reach, leaving a legacy of entrenched social transformation in nations and cultures in every part of the globe.

Colonial annexation and government were based on an all-encompassing system that integrated and controlled political, economic, social and ethnic relations, and required a similar annexation and control of natural resources and nature itself. Colonial ideologies were expressed not only in the progressive exploitation of nature but also in the emerging discourses of conservation.

At the start of the 21st century, the conservation of nature is of undiminished importance in post-colonial societies, yet the legacy of colonial thinking endures. What should conservation look like today, and what (indeed, whose) ideas should it be based upon?

Decolonizing Nature explores the influence of the colonial legacy on contemporary conservation and on ideas about the relationships between people, polities and nature in countries and cultures that were once part of the British Empire. It locates the historical development of the theory and practice of conservation – at both the periphery and the centre – firmly within the context of this legacy, and considers its significance today. It highlights the present and future challenges to conservationists of contemporary global neo-colonialism.

The contributors to this volume include both academics and conservation practitioners. They provide wide-ranging and insightful perspectives on the need for, and practical ways to achieve new forms of informed ethical engagement between people and nature.

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Hungry for Peace: How You Can Help End Poverty and War with Food Not Bombs by Keith Mchenry

The de facto how-to manual of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which provides free food to the homeless and hungry and has branches in countries on every continent except Antarctica, this book describes at length how to set up and operate a Food Not Bombs chapter. The guide considers every aspect of the operation, from food collection and distribution to fund-raising, consensus decision making, and what to do when the police arrive.

It contains detailed information on setting up a kitchen and cooking for large groups as well as a variety of delicious recipes. Accompanying numerous photographs is a lengthy section on the history of Food Not Bombs, with stories of the jailing and murder of activists, as well as premade handbills and flyers ready for photocopying.

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Complete Urban Farmer: Growing Your Own Fruit and Vegetables in Town by David Wickers

A nice and basic overview for the new urban gardener. If you are starting from ground zero this is a good book to read to get the very basics of indoor and outdoor gardening. It helped me to get excited about starting my own little plot.

The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living by Helen Nearing and Scott Nearing

This one volume edition of Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life brings these classics on rural homesteading together. This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.

Creating a Flower Meadow by Yvette Verner

Inspired by the idea of doing something positive for their local environment, Yvette Verner and her husband Mike bought a small field close to their home in the south of England. With the bountiful assistance of nature they have created a flower meadow which attracts a rich variety of wildlife, including badgers, deer and a multitude of birds and butterflies.

In this book Yvette tells the story of their meadow: how they designed the layout, selected and planted wild flowers, trees and hedgesand spent many absorbing hours wildlife-watching. Meadows such as theirs support large populations of plants, insects, birds and other animals, and are extremely important in maintaining the ecological diversity of our countryside. Many meadow species that farmers and gardeners consider to be weeds are host to other forms of wildlife: the modest oxeye daisy alone supports over twenty species of insect!

Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes by Leila Darwish

Millions of acres of land have been contaminated by pesticides, improperly handled chemicals, dirty energy projects, toxic waste, and other pollutants in the United States alone. This toxic legacy impacts the environment, our health, our watersheds, and land that could otherwise be used to grow healthy local food and medicines.

Conventional clean-up techniques employed by government and industry are tremendously expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage. More and more communities find themselves increasingly unable to rely on those companies and governments who created the problems to step in and provide solutions.

Anarchism and Animal Liberation; Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation by Anthony J. Nocella II, Richard J. White & Erika Cudworth

Building upon anarchist critiques of racism, sexism, ableism and classism, this collection of new essays melds anarchism with animal advocacy in arguing that speciesism is an ideological and social norm rooted in hierarchy and inequality.

This book brings together international scholars and activists from the fields of anarchist and critical animal studies. The contributors challenge activists and academics to look more critically into the causes of speciesism and to take a broader view of peace, social justice and the nature of oppression.

Animal advocates have long argued that speciesism will end if the humanity adopts a vegan ethic. This concept is developed into the argument that the vegan ethic promises the most change if it is also anti-capitalist and against all forms of domination.

Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights by Bob Torres (186 Pages)

Suggest to the average leftist that animals should be part of broader liberation struggles and—once they stop laughing—you’ll find yourself casually dismissed. With a focus on labor, property, and the life of commodities, Making a Killing contains key insights into the broad nature of domination, power, and hierarchy. It explores the intersections between human and animal oppressions in relation to the exploitative dynamics of capitalism.

Combining nuts-and-bolts Marxist political economy, a pluralistic anarchist critique, as well as a searing assessment of the animal rights movement, Bob Torres challenges conventional anti-capitalist thinking and convincingly advocates for the abolition of animals in industry—and on the dinner plate. Making A Killing is sure to spark wide debate in the animal rights and anarchist movements for years to come.

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

An inspiring and controversial exploration of the interplay between contemporary society’s ingrained cultural misogyny and its obsession with meat and masculinity. First published in 1990, the book has continued to change the lives of tens of thousands of readers into the second decade of the 21st century.

Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko and Syl Ko

In this lively, accessible, and provocative collection, Aph and Syl Ko provide new theoretical frameworks on race, advocacy for nonhuman animals, and feminism. Using popular culture as a point of reference for their critiques, the Ko sisters engage in groundbreaking analysis of the compartmentalized nature of contemporary social movements, present new ways of understanding interconnected oppressions, and offer conceptual ways of moving forward expressive of Afrofuturism and black veganism.

Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society by Breeze Harper

Sistah Vegan is a series of narratives, critical essays, poems, and reflections from a diverse community of North American black-identified vegans. Collectively, these activists are de-colonizing their bodies and minds via whole-foods veganism. By kicking junk-food habits, the more than thirty contributors all show the way toward longer, stronger, and healthier lives.

Suffering from type-2 diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and overweight need not be the way women of color are doomed to be victimized and live out their mature lives. There are healthy alternatives.

Thought-provoking for the identification and dismantling of environmental racism, ecological devastation, and other social injustices, Sistah Vegan is an in-your-face handbook for our time. It calls upon all of us to make radical changes for the betterment of ourselves, our planet, and–by extension–everyone.

Sistah Vegan is not about preaching veganism or vegan fundamentalism. Rather, the book is about how a group of black-identified female vegans perceive nutrition, food, ecological sustainability, health and healing, animal rights, parenting, social justice, spirituality, hair care, race, gender-identification, womanism, and liberation that all go against the (refined and bleached) grain of our dysfunctional society.

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Oxen At The Intersection: A Collision by Pattrice Jones

When Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont announced that two oxen called Bill and Lou would be killed and turned into hamburgers despite their years of service as unofficial college and town mascots, Pattrice Jones and her colleagues at nearby VINE Sanctuary offered an alternative scenario: to allow the elderly bovines to retire to the sanctuary.

What transpired after this simple offer was a catastrophe of miscommunication, misdirection and misinterpretations, as the college dug in its heels, activists piled in and social media erupted.

Part true-crime mystery, part on-the-ground reportage and part socio-cultural critique, this a brilliant unearthing of the assumptions, preconceptions and biases that led all concerned with the lives and deaths of these two animals to fail to achieve their ends.

How and why the threads of this story unravelled, as Jones reveals, raises profound questions – most particularly about how ideas rooted in history, race, gender, region and speciesism intersect and complicated strategy and activism and their desired outcomes. In the end, notes Jones, we must always ask, Where’s the body?

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A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory by Corey Wrenn

Applying critical sociological theory, this book explores the shortcomings of popular tactics in animal liberation efforts. Building a case for a scientifically-grounded grassroots approach, it is argued that professionalized advocacy that works in the service of theistic, capitalist, patriarchal institutions will find difficulty achieving success.

Philosophy and Animal Life by Stanley Cavell & Cora Diamond

Philosophy and Animal Life offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself. Cora Diamond begins with “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy,” in which she accuses analytical philosophy of evading, or deflecting, the responsibility of human beings toward nonhuman animals.

Diamond then explores the animal question as it is bound up with the more general problem of philosophical skepticism. Focusing specifically on J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, she considers the failure of language to capture the vulnerability of humans and animals. Stanley Cavell responds to Diamond’s argument with his own close reading of Coetzee’s work, connecting the human-animal relation to further themes of morality and philosophy.

John McDowell follows with a critique of both Diamond and Cavell, and Ian Hacking explains why Cora Diamond’s essay is so deeply perturbing and, paradoxically for a philosopher, he favors poetry over philosophy as a way of overcoming some of her difficulties.

Cary Wolfe’s introduction situates these arguments within the broader context of contemporary continental philosophy and theory, particularly Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction and the question of the animal.

Philosophy and Animal Life is a crucial collection for those interested in animal rights, ethics, and the development of philosophical inquiry. It also offers a unique exploration of the role of ethics in Coetzee’s fiction.

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Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals by Christine M. Korsgaard

Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of humans’ moral relationships to the other animals. She defends the claim that we are obligated to treat all sentient beings as what Kant called “ends-in-themselves”. Drawing on a theory of the good derived from Aristotle, she offers an explanation of why animals are the sorts of beings for whom things can be good or bad.

She then turns to Kant’s argument for the value of humanity to show that rationality commits us to claiming the standing of ends-in-ourselves, in two senses. Kant argued that as autonomous beings, we claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we claim the standing to make laws for ourselves and each other. Korsgaard argues that as beings who have a good, we also claim to be ends-in-ourselves when we take the things that are good for us to be good absolutely and so worthy of pursuit. The first claim commits us to joining with other autonomous beings in relations of moral reciprocity. The second claim commits us to treating the good of every sentient creature as something of absolute importance.

Korsgaard argues that human beings are not more important than the other animals, that our moral nature does not make us superior to the other animals, and that our unique capacities do not make us better off than the other animals. She criticizes the “marginal cases” argument and advances a new view of moral standing as attaching to the atemporal subjects of lives. She criticizes Kant’s own view that our duties to animals are indirect, and offers a non-utilitarian account of the relation between pleasure and the good. She also addresses a number of directly practical questions: whether we have the right to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us and fight in our wars, and keep them as pets; and how to understand the wrong that we do when we cause a species to go extinct.

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Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka

Zoopolis offers a new agenda for the theory and practice of animal rights. Most animal rights theory focuses on the intrinsic capacities or interests of animals, and the moral status and moral rights that these intrinsic characteristics give rise to.

Zoopolis shifts the debate from the realm of moral theory and applied ethics to the realm of political theory, focusing on the relational obligations that arise from the varied ways that animals relate to human societies and institutions. Building on recent developments in the political theory of group-differentiated citizenship, Zoopolis introduces us to the genuine “political animal”. It argues that different types of animals stand in different relationships to human political communities.

Domesticated animals should be seen as full members of human-animal mixed communities, participating in the cooperative project of shared citizenship. Wild animals, by contrast, form their own sovereign communities entitled to protection against colonization, invasion, domination and other threats to self-determination.

`Liminal’ animals who are wild but live in the midst of human settlement (such as crows or raccoons) should be seen as “denizens”, resident of our societies, but not fully included in rights and responsibilities of citizenship. To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights. But we inevitably and appropriately have very different relations with them, with different types of obligations. Humans and animals are inextricably bound in a complex web of relationships, and Zoopolis offers an original and profoundly affirmative vision of how to ground this complex web of relations on principles of justice and compassion.

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Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals by John Hadley

Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals represents the first attempt to extend liberal property rights theory across the species barrier to animals. It broadens the traditional focus of animal rights beyond basic rights to life.

Rattling The Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals by Stephen Wise

Rattling the Cage explains how the failure to recognize the basic legal rights of chimpanzees and bonobos in light of modern scientific findings creates a glaring contradiction in our law. In this witty, moving, persuasive, and impeccably researched argument, Wise demonstrates that the cognitive, emotional, and social capacities of these apes entitle them to freedom from imprisonment and abuse.

Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions by Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum

Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum bring together an all-star cast of contributors to explore the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it.

Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, the authors offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one’s ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. This book offers a state-of-the-art treatment of that rethinking.

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Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits by Corey Lee Wrenn

Given their tendency to splinter over tactics and goals, social movements are rarely unified. Following the modern Western animal rights movement over thirty years, Corey Lee Wrennapplies the sociological theory of Bourdieu, Goffman, Weber, and contemporary social movement researchers to examine structural conditions in the animal rights movement, facilitating factionalism in today’s era of professionalized advocacy.

Modern social movements are dominated by bureaucratically oriented nonprofits, a special arrangement that creates tension between activists and movement elites who compete for success in a corporate political arena. Piecemeal Protest examines the impact of nonprofitization on factionalism and a movement’s ability to mobilize, resonate, and succeed. Wrenn’sexhaustive analysis of archival movement literature and exclusive interviews with movement leaders illustrate how entities with greater symbolic capital are positioned to monopolize claims-making, disempower competitors, and replicate hegemonic power, eroding democratic access to dialogue and decision-making essential for movement health.

Piecemeal Protest examines social movement behavior shaped by capitalist ideologies and state interests. As power concentrates to the disadvantage of marginalized factions in the modern social movement arena, Piecemeal Protest shines light on processes of factionalism and considers how, in the age of nonprofits, intra-movement inequality could stifle social progress.

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History

A People’s History of the Second World War: Resistance Versus Empire by Donny Gluckstein

A People’s History of the Second World War unearths the fascinating history of the war as fought ‘from below’. Until now, the vast majority of historical accounts have focussed on the conflict between the Allied and Axis powers for imperialist mastery. Donny Gluckstein shows that in fact between 1939 and 1945 two distinct wars were fought – one ‘from above’ and one ‘from below’.

Using examples from countries under the Nazi heel, in the colonies and within the Axis and Allied camps, Gluckstein brings to life the very different struggle of the people’s and resistance movements which proliferated during the war. He shows how they fought not just fascism, but colonialism and empire, and were betrayed by the Allies at the war’s end.

This book will fundamentally challenge our understanding of the Second World War – both about the people who fought it and the reasons for which it was fought.

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The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose

Now in its second edition, this landmark book provides an intellectual history of the British working classes from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century. Drawing on workers’ memoirs, social surveys, library registers, and more, Jonathan Rose discovers which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew. A new preface uncovers the author’s journey into labour history, and its rewarding link to intellectual history.

Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood by Joseph Valente

Dracula’s Crypt unearths the Irish roots of Bram Stoker’s gothic masterpiece, offering a fresh interpretation of the author’s relationship to his novel and to the politics of blood that consumes its characters. An ingenious reappraisal of a classic text, Dracula’s Crypt presents Stoker’s novel as a subtly ironic commentary on England’s preoccupation with racial purity.

Probing psychobiographical, political, and cultural elements of Stoker’s background and milieu, Joseph Valente distinguishes Stoker’s viewpoint from that of his virulently racist, hypermasculine vampire hunters, showing how the author’s dual Anglo-Celtic heritage and uncertain status as an Irish parvenu among London’s theatrical elite led him to espouse a progressive racial ideology at odds with the dominant Anglo-Saxon supremacism.

In the light of Stoker’s experience, the shabby-genteel Count Dracula can be seen as a doppelganger, an ambiguous figure who is at once the blood-conscious landed aristocrat and the bloodthirsty foreign invader. Stoker also confronts gender ideals and their implications, exposing the “inner vampire” in men like Jonathan Harker who dominate and absorb the women who become their wives. Ultimately, Valente argues, the novel celebrates a feminine heroism, personified by Mina Harker, that upholds an ethos of social connectivity against the prevailing obsession with blood as a vehicle of identity. Revealing a profound and heretofore unrecognized ethical and political message, Dracula’s Crypt maintains that the real threat delineated in Dracula is not racial degeneration but the destructive force of racialized anxiety itself. Stoker’s novel emerges as a powerful critique of the very anxieties it has previously been taken to express: anxieties concerning the decline of the British empire, the deterioration of Anglo-Saxon culture, and the contamination of the Anglo-Saxon race.

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Nothing But the Same Old Story: Roots of Anti-Irish Racismby Liz Curtis by Liz Curtis

This book is truely superb. It was published with support by the Greater London Council as an educational effort in the early 1980’s after more than a decade of virulent anti-Irish feeling in England. This book looks at the form of that expression and at its historical roots. Those roots span seven hundred years. Particular instances of almost genocidal behavior in different centuries are looked at not just in terms of what was done but how it was justified. Not many people realize the signifance of the expression ‘the Irish race’. The Irish were, and are to some extent, considered biologically distinct from the English ‘race’. The similarities between how the English express their anti-Irish feeling and how racism affects African-Americans is thought-provoking, enlightening and important. I cannot praise this book enough for those interested in racism as it transcends ‘race’ or ‘colour’. A history of the African-American experiences are given sufficent to show commonalities. The book is beautifully illustrated by past cartoons and visual depictions. A terrific historical document.
– Howard Clare

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The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders by Ernst Klee

The title “The Good Old Days” (“Schone Zeiten” in German) comes from the cover of a private photo album kept by concentration camp commandant Kurt Franz of Treblinka. This gruesomely sentimental and unmistakably authentic title introduces an disturbing collection of photographs, diaries, letters home, and confidential reports created by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust. “The Good Old Days” reveals startling new evidence of the inhumanity of recent twentieth century history and is published now as yet another irrefutable response to the revisionist historians who claim to doubt the historic truth of the Holocaust.

Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans, 1945 by Florian Huber

One of the last untold stories of the Third Reich is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides, carried out not just by much of the Nazi leadership, but by thousands of ordinary Germans, in the war’s closing period. Some of these were provoked by straightforward terror in the face of advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt, but many could not be explained in such relatively straightforward terms.

Florian Huber’s remarkable book, a bestseller in Germany, confronts this terrible phenomenon. Other countries have suffered defeat, but not responded in the same way. What drove whole families, who in many cases had already withstood years of deprivation, aerial bombing and deaths in battle, to do this?

In a brilliantly written, thoughtful and original work, Huber sees the entire project of the Third Reich as a sequence of almost overwhelming emotions and scenes for many Germans. He describes some of the key events which shaped the period from the First World War to the end of the Second, showing how the sheer intensity, allure and ferocity of Hitler’s regime swept along millions. Its sudden end was, for many of them, simply impossible to absorb.

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The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon’s seminal work on the trauma of colonization made him the leading anti-colonialist thinker of the twentieth century. Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule and first published in 1961, it analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, makes clear the economic and psychological degradation inflicted by imperialism. Showing how decolonization must be combined with building a national culture, this passionate analysis of relations between the West and the Third World is still illuminating about the world today.

The Diary of a Young Girl: Definitive Edition by Anne Frank

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close quarters, and her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up. Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, they were all betrayed.

A People’s History of England by Arthur Leslie Morton by Arthur Leslie Morton

This work lays out the main outlines and most important turning points of British history – from the point of view of ordinary people. The book has remained in print for more than 50 years.

Liverpool: A People’s History by Peter Aughton

Liverpool is indisputably one of the greatest cities on earth. From its warm, tough, always-beating heart come people renowned for their friendliness, wit, resilience and strength of character. Throughout its long and surprisingly varied history Liverpool has engendered fierce loyalty from its – citizens, and captivated even the most casual of – visitors. “Liverpool: A People’s History” tells the full story of this unique place in a way which celebrates the – individuals who have shaped it, often allowing – witnesses from the past to speak for themselves. This book traces the growth of the city from a little fishing village on the banks of the Mersey all the way from its foundation in 1207 to the proud European Capital of Culture 800 years later.Combining good historical research with a lively, fresh and accessible style, Peter Aughton describes every stage of Liverpool’s remarkable history: from its origins as a tiny port in the tidal inlet known as the ‘Liver Pool’, to the horrors of the slave trade, the building of the world’s first ever public railway, its brief spell in the eighteenth century as a fashionable spa town, its unprecedented growth as the major seaport for the world’s first industrial society, its role in a mass emigration movement that saw perhaps as many as nine million souls depart from its quaysides for a better life in the New World, the devastation to docks, public buildings and houses caused during the terrible Blitz in 1941, the Mersey Sound which now draws thousands of visitors from around the world, right up to the recent renaissance of the town’s fortunes which has culminated in the European Capital of Culture bid success. This is a truly fascinating story which is complemented by over 300 pictures, including specially drawn maps designed to help the reader to understand the city’s development. Many of the images are reproduced in colour, making “Liverpool: A People’s History” a genuine classic worthy of a place on bookshelves both locally and the world over. It is the best single volume on Liverpool currently available in print.

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors. Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery—more than epidemics—that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see.

The Tragedy of a Generation; The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe by Joshua M. Karlip

The Tragedy of a Generation is the story of the rise and fall of an ideal: an autonomous Jewish nation in Europe. It traces the origins of two influential but overlooked strains of Jewish thought–Yiddishism and Diaspora Nationalism–and documents the waning hopes and painful reassessments of their leading representatives against the rising tide of Nazism and, later, the Holocaust. Joshua M. Karlip presents three figures–Elias Tcherikower, Yisroel Efroikin, and Zelig Kalmanovitch–seen through the lens of Imperial Russia on the brink of revolution. Leaders in the struggle for recognition of the Jewish people as a national entity, these men would prove instrumental in formulating the politics of Diaspora Nationalism, a middle path that rejected both the Zionist emphasis on Palestine and the Marxist faith in class struggle. Closely allied with this ideology was Yiddishism, a movement whose adherents envisioned the Yiddish language and culture, not religious tradition, as the unifying force of Jewish identity. We follow Tcherikower, Efroikin, and Kalmanovitch as they navigate the tumultuous early decades of the twentieth century in pursuit of a Jewish national renaissance in Eastern Europe. Correcting the misconception of Yiddishism as a radically secular movement, Karlip uncovers surprising confluences between Judaism and the avowedly nonreligious forms of Jewish nationalism. An essential contribution to Jewish historiography, The Tragedy of a Generation is a probing and poignant chronicle of lives shaped by ideological conviction and tested to the limits by historical crisis.

Migration Studies

Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural (Anthropology, Culture, and Society) by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

An introductory text on social and cultural anthopology, this book covers such topics as: social control and socialization; the spread of capitalism; ethnicity; the global culture; and the societal character of humans.

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition (Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations) by Sharam Alghasi, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Halleh Ghorashi

Mobility is becoming a key issue in social theory, with people moving between countries on diverse grounds and in diverse ways whether as tourists, refugees, students, temporary workers, labour migrants or family members of prior migrants. In this setting characterized by flux, minorities are often marked by their alleged culture, which is then taken to account for their relative successes or failures in adapting to their host society; culture also being invoked in accounts of social problems such as crime, educational failures and oppression of women.

Explicity comparative in its approach, “Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition” discusses central issues regarding multiculturalism in today’s Europe, based on studies of Norway and the Netherlands.… Distinguishing clearly the four social fields of the media, education, the labour market and issues relating to gender, it presents empirical case studies, which offer valuable insights into the nature of majority/minority relationships, whilst raising theoretical questions relevant for further comparisons.

With clear comparisons of integration and immigration policies in Europe and engagement with the questions surrounding the need for more culturally sensitive policies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and policy makers alike.

”
Europe and The People Without History by Eric R. Wolf, Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Offering insight and equal consideration into the societies of the “civilized” and “uncivilized” world, Europe and the People Without History deftly explores the historical trajectory of so-called modern globalization. In this foundational text about the development of the global political economy, Eric R. Wolf challenges the long-held anthropological notion that non-European cultures and peoples were isolated and static entities before the advent of European colonialism and imperialism. Ironically referred to as “the People Without History” by Wolf, these societies before active colonization possessed perpetually changing, reactionary cultures and were indeed just as intertwined into the processes of the pre-Columbian global economic system as their European counterparts. Utilizing Marxian concepts and a vivid consideration for the importance of history, Wolf judiciously traces the effects and conditions in Europe and the rest of the “known” world, beginning in 1400 AD, that allowed capitalism to emerge as the dominant ideology of the modern era.

Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman by Mark Jackson & Naomi Millner

This book brings together emerging insights from across the humanities and social sciences to highlight how postcolonial studies are being transformed by increasingly influential and radical approaches to nature, matter, subjectivity, human agency, and politics. These include decolonial studies, political ontology, political ecology, indigeneity, and posthumanisms. The book examines how postcolonial perspectives demand of posthumanisms and their often ontological discourses that they reflexively situate their own challenges within the many long histories of decolonised practice. Just as postcolonial research needs to critically engage with radical transitions suggested by the ontological turn and its related posthumanist developments, so too do posthumanisms need to decolonise their conceptual and analytic lenses. The chapters’ interdisciplinary analyses are developed through global, critical, and empirical cases that include: city spaces and urbanisms in the Global North and South; food politics and colonial land use; cultural and cosmic representation in film, theatre, and poetry; nation building; the Anthropocene; materiality; the void; pluriversality; and, indigenous world views. Theoretically and conceptually rich, the book proposes new trajectories through which postcolonial and posthuman scholarships can learn from one another and so critically advance.

God’s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

In this timely and compelling account of the contribution to immigrant rights made by religious activists in post-1965 and post-9/11 America, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo provides a comprehensive, close-up view of how Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups are working to counter xenophobia. Against the hysteria prevalent in today’s media, in which immigrants are often painted as a drain on the public coffers, inherently unassimilable, or an outright threat to national security, Hondagneu-Sotelo finds the intersection between migration and religion and calls attention to quieter voices, those dedicated to securing the human dignity of newcomers.

Based on years of fieldwork conducted in California’s major centers as well as in Chicago, this book considers… Muslim Americans defending their civil liberties after 9/11, Christian activists responding to death and violence at the U.S-Mexico border, and Christian and Jewish clergy defending the labor rights of Latino immigrants. At a time when much attention has been given to religious fundamentalism and its capacity to incite violent conflict, God’s Heart Has No Borders revises our understanding of the role of religion in social movements and demonstrates the nonviolent power of religious groups to address social injustices.

”
Land of Strangers by Ash Amin

The more social relationships become impersonal and looser, the more we seem to want to return to a world of closer personal ties, and as a means of negotiating diversity and difference. A nostalgia for a time of interpersonal ties and human acknowledgement has grown, in the belief that this will help to overcome contemporary problems such as alienation, disenchantment and xenophobia. This book offers a counter-argument, by looking to habits of living that are not reducible to social ties to explain contemporary malaises of social integration and to offer new suggestions for living in diversity.

This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia by Laura Hammond

How do communities grapple with the challenges of reconstruction after conflicts? In one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of refugee repatriation anywhere in the world, Laura C. Hammond follows the story of Ada Bai, a returnee settlement with a population of some 7,500 people. In the days when refugees first arrived, Ada Bai was an empty field along Ethiopia’s northwest border, but it is now a viable―arguably thriving―community. For the former refugees who fled from northern Ethiopia to eastern Sudan to escape war and famine in 1984 and returned to their country of birth in 1993, “coming home” really meant creating a new home out of an empty space. Settling in a new area, establishing social and kin ties, and inventing social practices, returnees gradually invested their environment with meaning and began to consider their settlement home. Hammond outlines the roles that gender and generational differences played in this process and how the residents came to define the symbolic and geographical boundaries of Ada Bai. Drawing on her fieldwork from 1993 to 1995 and regular shorter periods since, Hammond describes the process by which a place is made meaningful through everyday practice and social interaction. This Place Will Become Home provides insight into how people cope with extreme economic hardship, food insecurity, and limited access to international humanitarian or development assistance in their struggle to attain economic self-sufficiency.

Asylum, Migration and Community by Maggie O’Neill

Issues of asylum, migration, humanitarian protection and integration/belonging are of growing interest beyond the disciplines of refugee studies, migration, and social policy. Rooted in more than two decades of scholarship, this book uses critical social theory and the participatory, biographical and arts-based methods used with asylum seekers, refugees and emerging communities to explore the dynamics of the asylum-migration-community nexus. It argues that interdisciplinary analysis is required to deal with the complexity of the issues involved and offers understanding as praxis (purposeful knowledge), drawing on innovative research that is participatory, arts-based, performative and policy-relevant.

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Alem is on holiday with his father for a few days in London. He has never been out of Ethiopia before and is very excited. They have a great few days togther until one morning when Alem wakes up in the bed and breakfast they are staying at to find the unthinkable. His father has left him. It is only when the owner of the bed and breakfast hands him a letter that Alem is given an explanation. Alem’s father admits that because of the political problems in Ethiopia both he and Alem’s mother felt Alem would be safer in London – even though it is breaking their hearts to do this. Alem is now on his own, in the hands of the social services and the Refugee Council. He lives from letter to letter, waiting to hear from his father, and in particular about his mother, who has now gone missing…A powerful, gripping new novel from the popular Benjamin Zephaniah

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail by Oscar Martinez, Francisco Goldman, et al.

Searing true stories from two years of immersion reporting on the migrant trail from Chiapas to Arizona

One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped. Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.

”
The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child by Francisco Jim enez

After dark in a Mexican border town, a father holds open a hole in a wire fence as his wife and two small boys crawl through. So begins life in the United States for many people every day. And so begins this collection of twelve autobiographical stories by Santa Clara University professor Francisco Jimenez, who at the age of four illegally crossed the border with his family in 1947. The Circuit, the story of young Panchito and his trumpet, is one of the most widely anthologized stories in Chicano literature. At long last, Jimenez offers more about the wise, sensitive little boy who has grown into a role model for subsequent generations of immigrants. These independent but intertwined stories follow the family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots–and back agai–over a number of years. As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures.

World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made by Irving Howe

World of Our Fathers traces the story of Eastern Europe’s Jews to America over four decades. Beginning in the 1880s, it offers a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, and shows how the immigrant generation tried to maintain their Yiddish culture while becoming American. It is essential reading for those interested in understanding why these forebears to many of today’s American Jews made the decision to leave their homelands, the challenges these new Jewish Americans faced, and how they experienced every aspect of immigrant life in the early part of the twentieth century.

This invaluable contribution to Jewish literature and culture is now back in print in a new paperback edition, which includes a new foreword by noted author and literary critic Morris Dickstein.

Border Watch by Alexandra Hall

Questions over immigration and asylum face almost all Western countries. Should only economically useful immigrants be allowed? What should be done with unwanted or ‘illegal’ immigrants? In this bold and original intervention, Alexandra Hall shows that immigration detention centres offer a window onto society’s broader attitudes towards immigrants. Despite periodic media scandals, remarkably little has been written about the everyday workings of the grassroots immigration system, or about the people charged with enacting immigration policy at local levels. Detention, particularly, is a hidden side of border politics, despite its growing international importance as a tool of control and security. This book fills the gap admirably, analysing the everyday encounters between officers and immigrants in detention to explore broad social trends and theoretical concerns. This highly topical book provides rare insights into the treatment of the ‘other’ and will be essential for policy makers and students studying anthropology and sociology.

Wanderlust

Into the wild by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild examines the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, internationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature.

Me, my bike and a street dog called Lucy by Ishbel Holmes

This new title from Bradt tells the inspiring and emotional story of Ishbel Holmes, also known as World Bike Girl , a Scottish-Iranian woman who became a champion racing cyclist in spite of having been abandoned by her family, and who set off on the adventure of a lifetime despite her lack of experience, money or equipment. Ishbel Holmes was determined to cycle the world but her journey took a completely unexpected turn when, despite her initial instincts not to, she rescued a street dog in Turkey. Ishbel was lost and alone when she started on her epic trip, but in Lucy found a companionship never previously known. Between the two there formed a deep bond and their relationship was followed and supported by thousands of readers online, before becoming a media sensation overnight when Ishbel put out a plea for help to transport Lucy to an animal shelter three hundred miles away. This heart-rending tale is about more than just the relationship between a woman and her dog. It is a testimony to the human spirit, overcoming present-day challenges and churning up long-buried and painful memories from Ishbel s earlier life. It is also a tale of adventure, one person s determination to cross an unfamiliar country by bike and the unforgettable scenes that greet her on the Turkey-Syria border and into Syria itself. And it is a loving portrait of Lucy, the street dog that was determined not to let Ishbel go and whose dogged persistence helped to break down the barriers around her heart and in so doing change her life in ways she had never imagined. Ultimately, this is a tale of love and healing, a modern fable that touches the soul and reminds us all of the need to belong.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Five decades after it was first published, Jack Kerouac’s seminal Beat novel On the Road finally finds its way to the big screen, in a production from award-winning director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries) starring Sam Riley (Control, Brighton Rock), Garret Hedlund (Friday Night Lights), Kristen Stewart (Twilight), Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen.

Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac’s exhilarating novel swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion. One of the most influential and important novels of the 20th century, On the Road is the book that launched the Beat Generation and remains the bible of that literary movement.

Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

One of the most influential books written in the past half-century, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful examination of how we live and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Following a father and his young son on a summer motorcycle trip across America’s Northwest, to complete the Chautauqua spiritual journey, it is a story of love, fear, growth, discovery and acceptance. Both personal and philosophical, it is a compelling study of relationships, values, and eventually, enlightenment and meaning – resonant with the confusions and wonders of existence.

Off the Map by Kika Kat, Hib Chickena & Illustrated by Nikki McClure

A punk rock vision quest told in the tradition of the anarchist travel story, Off the Map is narrated by two young women as they discard their maps, fears, and anything resembling a plan, and set off on the winds of the world. Without the smug cynicism that seems to permeate most modern radical tales, this story is told with genuine hope, and a voice that never loses its connection with the mysteries of life, even in the midst of everyday tragedies. Wandering across Europe, the dozens of vignettes are the details of the whole—a squatted castle surrounded by tourists on the Spanish coast, a philosophizing businessman on the highways of France, a plaça full of los crustos in Barcelona, a diseased foot in a Belgian train squat, a glow bug on the dew-covered grass of anywhere—a magical, novel-like folktale for the end of the world.

Bikepacking: Mountain Bike Camping Adventures on the Wild Trails of Britain by Laurence McJannet

Bikepacking takes you on an off-road adventure, cycling and wild camping some of Britain s most beautiful hidden trails and ancient trackways. Laurence McJannet sets off to find the 30 finest multi-day rides our island has to offer. From easy city-escapes with the family to epic trails in the Scottish Highlands, this ultimate adventure guide is filled with inspiring stories and packed with tips on kit, planning, camping and route-finding. All routes can be reached by train and are accompanied by downloadable maps and GPX files. In this ultimate guide to bikepacking the most beautiful trails of britain you will find the very best: Epic wilderness rides – With careful planning, and basic gear, you ll be surprised how far into the wild a mountain bike can take you and the distance you can cover Family rides – Careful selection of trail and ride length means children can have an absolute blast, and they ll be planning their next adventure before you have even finished Technical trails – Testing your nerves and handling skills: these trails beg to be tackled at full speed and provide an exciting challenge on the longer rides Coastal trails – There s nothing like the ocean and a beach to transform your journey and to provide a wonderful place to camp and build your fire Hills and mountains – Although it s tempting to steer a laden bike away from the steeper slopes, it s here you will find the most memorable experiences, the greatest descents and the headiest views Winter rides – Don t pack up your bikes for the winter; with some sensible additions to your kit bag there s every reason to carry on bikepacking right through the year

Hobohemia Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & Other Agitators & Outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago by Frank O. Beck

From the 1910s through the Depression 30s, when Chicago was the undisputed hobo capital of the United States, a small north side neighborhood known as Towertown was the vital center of an extraordinary cultural/political ferment. It was home to Bughouse Square (the nation’s most renowned outdoor free-speech center), Ben Reitman’s Hobo College, and the fabulous Dill Pickle club, a highly unorthodox institution of higher learning that doubled as the craziest nightclub in the world. It was something like New York’s Greenwich Village, but—thanks to the prominence of the Chicago-based IWW—much more working class, and more openly revolutionary. Frank O. Beck’s Hobohemia contains a long time Towertowner’s vivid reminiscences of this colorful, dynamic, creative, and radical community that flourished for a generation despite constant onslaughts from the Red Squad, the Vice Squad, bourgeois journalists, and fundamentalist bigots. Originally published in 1956, this handsome new edition contains a superb introduction from Franklin Rosemont, providing a historical overview of Chicago’s working class counter-culture, and a biographical sketch of Beck. It also relates the book to earlier and later literature on the subject and fills in some gaps in the narrative.

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Art

Andrei Tarkovsky About His Film Art In His Own Words by VadimMoroz

During seven days in March 1984, Andrei Tarkovsky laid out, day by day his film theory, his philosophy, opinions and principles. It was the first time that Tarkovsky had to talk about his philosophy and film theory over such long time period

The book is illustrated with the drawings created in March 1984 by Andrei Tarkovsky and photographs.

Science

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.

Naked Science by Laura Nader

Naked Science is about contested domains and includes different science cultures: physics, molecular biology, primatology, immunology, ecology, medical environmental, mathematical and navigational domains. While the volume rests on the assumption that science is not autonomous, the book is distinguished by its global perspective. Examining knowledge systems within a planetary frame forces thinking about boundaries that silence or affect knowledge-building. Consideration of ethnoscience and technoscience research within a common framework is overdue for raising questions about deeply held beliefs and assumptions we all carry about scientific knowledge. We need a perspective on how to regard different science traditions because public controversies should not be about a glorified science or a despicable science.

Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey

In an era of global warming, natural disasters, endangered species, and devastating pollution, contemporary writing on the environment largely focuses on doomsday scenarios. Eben Kirksey suggests we reject such apocalyptic thinking and instead find possibilities in the wreckage of ongoing disasters, as symbiotic associations of opportunistic plants, animals, and microbes are flourishing in unexpected places. Emergent Ecologies uses artwork and contemporary philosophy to illustrate hopeful opportunities and reframe key problems in conservation biology such as invasive species, extinction, environmental management, and reforestation. Following the flight of capital and nomadic forms of life—through fragmented landscapes of Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States—Kirksey explores how chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions have shaped present and future multispecies communities. New generations of thinkers and tinkerers are learning how to care for emergent ecological assemblages—involving frogs, fungal pathogens, ants, monkeys, people, and plants—by seeding them, nurturing them, protecting them, and ultimately letting go.

Comedy

Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines by Bill Hicks and John Lahr

Bill Hicks was arguably the most influential stand-up comedian of the last 30 years. He was an inspiration for performers such as Michael Moore, Mark Thomas and Robert Newman, and many others. For the tenth anniversary of his death, this first collected work includes all Hicks’s major stand-up routines, extracts from his diaries and notebooks, letters and final writings much of it never before published.

Hicks could have had his own show on prime time, could have got rich, fat and frightened. He decided not to use his gifts to confirm the prejudices of his audience. He attacked the lies that justified and prettified the carnage of the First Gulf War. He attacked the easy surrender of art to commerce, the demeaning cynicism of the marketing culture and the preposterous power of the mainstream media to confuse and corrupt. He reminded us that love is the real laugh. In this celebratory collection we can trace Hicks’s evolution from brilliant stand-up to spectacular and dangerous innovator.

”
BILL HICKS: Agent of Evolution by Booth

Written by Bill Hick’s lifelong friend, producer, and co-creator, Kevin Booth offers the inside story into the man who was only along for the ride for a tragically short time, yet left an indelible mark on comedy enthusiasts and freethinkers everywhere.

Offers a rare fly-on-the-wall insight into the life of one of Britain’s most loved US comedians. Adored in the UK for his unique style of savage, hilarious comedy, the one person who knew him inside and out tells of a man whose life was just as impassioned and off-the-wall as his comedy.

Even back at High School, in Houston, Texas, Kevin was Bill’s co-conspirator, as they sneaked out of Bill’s strict Baptist home at night, and headed for the Comedy Workshop, where at the age of fourteen, Bill was going down a storm.

They virtually shared every experience – from magic mushrooms to girls, but it was their music and their vision of comedy, which bound them so closely together. Kevin produced, engineered and performed on many of Bill’s recordings, and it is largely due to him, that so much of Bill’s comedy is readily available on CD and video.

”
Andy Kaufman Revealed!: Best Friend Tells All by Bob Zmuda

Best known for his sweet-natured character Latka on Taxi, Andy Kaufman was the most influential comic of the generation that produced David Letterman, John Belushi, and Robin Williams. A regular on the early days of Saturday Night Live (where he regularly disrupted planned skits), Kaufman quickly became known for his idiosyncratic roles and for performances that crossed the boundaries of comedy, challenging expectations and shocking audiences. Kaufman’s death from lung cancer at age 35 (he’d never smoked) stunned his fans and the comic community that had come to look to him as its lightning rod and standard bearer.

Bob Zmuda — Kaufman’s closest friend, producer, writer, and straight man — breaks his twenty-year silence about Kaufman and unmasks the man he knew better than anyone. He chronicles Kaufman’s meteoric rise, the development of his extraordinary personas, the private man behind the driven actor and comedian, and answers the question most often asked: Did Andy Kaufman fake his own death?

How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian by Stewart Lee

Experience how it feels to be the subject of a blasphemy prosecution! Find out why ‘wool’ is a funny word! See how jokes work, their inner mechanisms revealed, before your astonished face! In 2001, after over a decade in the business, Stewart Lee quit stand-up, disillusioned and drained, and went off to direct a loss-making opera about Jerry Springer. “How I Escaped My Certain Fate” details his return to live performance, and the journey that took him from an early retirement to his position as the most critically acclaimed stand-up in Britain. Here is Stewart Lee’s own account of his remarkable comeback, told through transcripts of the three legendary full-length shows that sealed his reputation. Astonishingly frank and detailed in-depth notes reveal the inspiration and inner workings of his act. With unprecedented access to a leading comedian’s creative process, this book tell us just what it was like to write these shows, develop the performance and take them on tour. “How I Escaped My Certain Fate” is everything we have come to expect from Stewart Lee: fiercely intelligent, unsparingly honest and very funny.

Mack The Life by Lee Mack

Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention. After a somewhat random series of jobs, which included being Red Rum’s stableboy and a bingo hall barman, it was as a Great Yarmouth holiday camp entertainer that he had his first crack at telling jokes on stage. It got him some laughs, the sack and a punch in the face.*

Now, as Lee Mack, he’s one of our best loved and most successful comedians, both as a live stand-up and on television. In Mack the Life, Lee tells the story of how he got there and gives extraordinary insight into what really makes comics tick. Hilarious and brilliant, it’s the kind of book which reminds you why you learned to read in the first place.

*Nearly.

”
The Big Yin The Life and Times of Billy Connolly by Jonathan Margolis

Unauthorised Biography of the internationally famous comedian and entertainer to the TV public, the stars and even royalty. Billy Connolly was the first rock/alternative comedian long before the comedy store generation took off. And he is still a cult a 50 show UK tour in early 1994 sold out within days. On the way up, Connolly has collided with trendies, booze, women, the press the Royals and even Fyffes bananas. The Big Yin is an enormously entertaining read about one of the funniest comedians at work today.

The Tao of Bill Murray Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing by Gavin Edwards

New York Times bestselling author Gavin Edwards, like the rest of us, has always been fascinated with Bill Murray–in particular the beloved actor’s adventures off-screen, which rival his filmography for sheer entertainment value. Edwards traveled to the places where Murray has lived, worked, and partied, in search of the most outrageous and hilarious Bill Murray stories from the past four decades, many of which have never before been reported. Bill once paid a child five dollars to ride his bike into a swimming pool. The star convinced Harvard’s JV women’s basketball team to play with him in a private game of hoops. Many of these surreal encounters ended with Bill whispering, “No one will ever believe you” into a stranger’s ear. But The Tao of Bill Murray is more than just a collection of wacky anecdotes. A sideways mix of comedy and philosophy, full of photo bombs, late-night party crashes, and movie-set antics, this is the perfect book for anyone who calls themselves a Bill Murray fan–which is to say, everyone.

”

Fiction

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose remarkable gift for companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar’s lifelong friend and ally. Edgar seems poised to carry on his family’s traditions, but when catastrophe strikes, he finds his once-peaceful home engulfed in turmoil.

Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the Sawtelle farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who accompany him, until the day he is forced to choose between leaving forever or returning home to confront the mysteries he has left unsolved.

Filled with breathtaking scenes–the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain–The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a meditation on the limits of language and what lies beyond, a brilliantly inventive retelling of an ancient story, and an epic tale of devotion, betrayal, and courage in the American heartland.

”
The heart is a lonely hunter by Carson McCullers

Often cited as one of the great novels of twentieth-century American fiction, Carson McCullers’ prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry socialist drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways the could never imagine. Moving, sensitive and deeply humane, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter explores loneliness, the human need for understanding and the search for love.

Calvin: A Novel by Martine Leavitt

Seventeen-year-old Calvin has always known his fate is linked to the comic book character from Calvin & Hobbes. He was born on the day the last strip was published; his grandpa left a stuffed tiger named Hobbes in his crib; and he even has a best friend named Susie. As a child Calvin played with the toy Hobbes, controlling his every word and action, until Hobbes was washed to death. But now Calvin is a teenager who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Hobbes is back—as a delusion—and Calvin can’t control him. Calvin decides that if he can convince Bill Watterson to draw one final comic strip, showing a normal teenaged Calvin, he will be cured. Calvin and Susie (and Hobbes) set out on a dangerous trek across frozen Lake Erie to track him down.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his prey. When he wasn’t ‘retiring’ them with his laser weapon,
he dreamed of owning a live animal – the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of animal life.

Then Rick got his chance: the assignment to kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But in Deckard’s world things were never that simple, and his assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge and deceit – and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted …

”
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

An interplanetary love story; a traveller’s tale; a hymn to the beauty of the world.

On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they – and we – ever find a safe landing place?

”
Machine of Death A collection of stories about people who know how they will die by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, David Malki

Machine of Death tells 34 stories about people who know how they will die. The machine doesn’t give the date or specifics; using only a blood sample, it just spits out a sliver of paper upon which are printed, in careful block letters, words such as drowned, cancer, old age, or choked on a handful of popcorn. The realization that we could now know how we are going to die changes the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. For every possibility the machine closes, it seems to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility. Over time the machine is reverse-engineered and duplicated. Eventually there are machines in every doctor s office and in booths at the mall. People can pay someone or perhaps get it done for free, but the results are the same no matter which machine is used they are, at least, consistent.

Machine of Death features stories by Randall Munroe, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, Tom Francis, Camille Alexa, Erin McKean, Jeff Stautz, and many others. The book also features illustrations by Kate Beaton, Kazu Kibuishi, Aaron Diaz, Jeffrey Brown, Scott C., Roger Langridge, Karl Kerschl, Cameron Stewart, and many others.

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Mortal Engines Quartet by Philip Reeve

MORTAL ENGINES launched Philip Reeve’s brilliantly-imagined creation, the world of the Traction Era, where mobile cities fight forsurvival in a post-apocalyptic future.

The first instalment introduces young apprentice Tom Natsworthy and the murderous Hester Shaw, flung from the fast-moving city of London into heart-stopping adventures in the wastelands of the Great Hunting Ground.

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Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver

Thousands of years ago, the land is one dark forest. Its people are hunter-gatherers. They know every tree and herb and they know how to survive in a time of enchantment and powerful magic. Until an ambitious and malevolent force conjures a demon: a demon so evil that it can be contained only in the body of a ferocious bear that will slay everything it sees, a demon determined to destroy the world.

Only one boy can stop it – 12-year-old Torak, who has seen his father murdered by the bear. With his dying breath, Torak’s father tells his son of his burden. He must lead the bear to the mountain of the World Spirit and beg that spirit’s help to overcome it.

A terrifying quest in a world of wolves, tree spirits and Hidden People, a world in which trusting a friend means risking your life.

”
The Kin by Peter Dickinson

Africa, two hundred thousand years ago: Suth and Noli were orphaned the night the murderous strangers came, speaking an unfamiliar language and bringing violence to the peaceful Moonhawk tribe.

Determined not to die in the desert, Suth and Noli slip away with Ko and Mana. Suth, the eldest, leads them; Noli’s dreams of the future guide them. Ko gives them courage; Mana gives them peace. Their search for a new Good Place, one of food and safety, will take them across the valleys and plains of prehistoric Africa and bring them together as a tribe and as a family.

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Unfinished Tales The Lost Lore of Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkien

A New York Times bestseller for twenty-one weeks upon publication, UNFINISHED TALES is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring, and further relates events as told in THE SILMARILLION and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The book concentrates on the lands of Middle-earth and comprises Gandalf’s lively account of how he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated party at Bag-End, the story of the emergence of the sea-god Ulmo before the eyes of Tuor on the coast of Beleriand, and the military organization of the Riders of Rohan and the journey of the Black Riders during the hunt for the Ring.

Japanese

The Setting Sun (1968) by Osamu Dazai

A full-length novel by Dazai Osamu, a novelist of the early Showa era who represented the doomed writers of the “Muirai School” and “New Gisaku School. It was first published in “Shincho” [1947]. It was composed around four people, his mother, Kazuko, Naoji, and Uehara, and cleverly incorporates Naoji’s “Diary of a Yugao”, Kazuko’s letters, and Naoji’s last will and testament, and depicts the beauty of a weak man’s declining fortunes with wonderful brushwork. It is the highest peak of Dazai’s literature, along with “No Longer Human” (Ningen Shikkaku), which has been praised incessantly from the time of its publication to the present day.

I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume

The first full-length novel by Natsume Soseki, a literary figure of the Meiji period. First published in Hototogisu [1905-1906]. 10, 1905 When the moon version was published, it sold out in 20 days. The Chino family and their surroundings through the eyes of “I am”, an unnamed cat that is kept in the house of middle school teacher Chino Kushaya. The author satirizes and laughs at the human condition of the people who gather there and the “peaceful people”. The humor in the story’s rakugo-like storytelling style attracts many readers and makes him a great novelist. It was a monumental work that established.

Illustrated

Brussels in Short by Dulk Wins 2nd Annual ‘Brussels in Shorts’ Graphic Short Story Competition

Now in its second year, Brussels in Shorts is an international graphic short story competition that invites illustrators and artist from around the world to create a predominantly visual story set against contemporary Brussels. The winners this year were graphic artist Antonio Segura Donat (a.k.a. Dulk) and brother Carlos out of Valencia, Spain who created this superbly illustrated short story titled Zomeravonden (Summer Evenings) based on sketches made while visiting the city center.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Beloved children’s classics are old friends. But they can become even more magnificent after makeovers with lush, gorgeous illustrations. This edition by legendary illustrator Don Daily is just such a book., It’s stunningly beautiful and full of the pictorial details children love to search over and over looking for new, undiscovered treasures. The story of a precious little stuffed rabbit, his love for a boy, and his journey to become real” is sure to delight toddlers and preschoolers and become a treasured keepsake in every family library.

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian W. Aldiss

The title story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, soon to be a major film directed by Steven Spielberg, tells of a young boy who, whatever he does, cannot please his mother. He is puzzled by this, not realising that he is an android, a cunning construct of artificial intelligence – as is his one ally, his teddy bear.

It was a story that hugely affected Stanley Kubrick (director of 2001) and Steven Spielberg (who perhaps saw in his forthcoming movie AI (Artificial Intelligence) a complement to his ET!). This collection contains three SUPERTOYS stories, and they are the fabric of Spielberg’s movie.

The other stories in the collection, whether SF, utopian fantasy or dark fable show a master writer at the peak of his considerable powers.

The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb

Envisioning the first book of the Bible like no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator, retells the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest and deeply moving way.

Now, readers of every persuasion can gain astonishing new insights from these stories. Crumb’s Book of Genesis reintroduces us to the bountiful tree-lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured the Bible’s most dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of biblical originals: from the serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing like an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a ‘kind of depressed guy who doesn’t strike you as physically courageous’, and his bother, Esau, ‘a rough and kick-ass guy’, to God himself, ‘a standard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard’.

Crumb’s Book of Genesis, the culmination of five years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling that celebrates the astonishing diversity of one of our greatest artistic geniuses.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle

Famously referred to as part of the ‘Axis-of-Evil’, North Korea remains one of the most secretive and mysterious nations in the world today. A series of manmade and natural catastrophes have also left it one of the poorest. When the fortress-like country recently opened the door a crack to foreign investment, cartoonist Guy Delisle found himself in its capital Pyongyang on a work visa for a French film animation company, becoming one of the few Westerners to witness current conditions in the surreal showcase city.

Armed with a smuggled radio and a copy of 1984, Delisle could only explore Pyongyang and its countryside while chaperoned by his translator and a guide. But among the statues, portraits and propaganda of leaders Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il – the world’s only Communist dynasty – Delisle was able to observe more than was intended of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered.

His astute and wry musings on life in the austere and grim regime form the basis of this remarkable graphic novel. Pyongyang is an informative, personal and accessible look at an enigmatic country.

”
Duncan: the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines

What if animals could talk? Would some of them form a militant group in reaction to how humans treat them? Would humans treat them different?
Come explore this dense tome of an alternate universe where the lavish renderings recall Dave McKean. Duncan the Wonder Dog WILL be one of the most talked about books of 2010.

”
Dykes to watch out for by Alison Bechdel

Grin, giggle, and guffaw your way through this celebrated cartoonist’s graphic commentary of contemporary lesbian life.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran’s last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. This is a beautiful and intimate story full of tragedy and humour – raw, honest and incredibly illuminating.

Surrogates by Robert Venditti

The year is 2054, and life has been reduced to a data feed. The fusing of virtual reality and cybernetics has ushered in the era of the surrogate, a new technology that lets users interact with the world without ever leaving their homes. It’s a perfect world, and it’s up to Detectives Harvey Greer and Pete Ford of the Metro Police Department to keep it that way. But to do so they’ll need to stop a techno-terrorist bent on returning society to a time when people lived their lives instead of merely experiencing them. Welcome to The Surrogates, a daring, five-issue, full-color miniseries coming this July from Top Shelf Productions.

Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman & David Polonsky

One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection between the dream and their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties.

Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing about that period of his life anymore. Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images. These recollections accumulate until, one day, Ari recalls Sabra and Shatila, and the terrible truth of what happened there is uncovered…

An Illustrated Book Of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi and Alejandro Giraldo

Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, a la Aristotle).

Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that fall short ― plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn’t believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn’t like the result (the argument from consequences).

Once you learn to recognise these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from parliamentary debate to YouTube comments ― which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions. It’s the antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals!

”
Diary of a Miscreant: A Morgenmuffel Zine Anthology by Isy Morgenmuffel

Isy has been publishing her zine Morgenmuffel for over ten years now, and to celebrate, Last Hours has released an anthology of some of her best comics! The anthology covers a decade of Isy’s life. Included are personal accounts of G8 mobilizations, climate camp and other protests as well as more personal stories of feminist health, living in a housing co-op, and much more.

Calvin and Hobbes (Volume 1) by Bill Watterson

This is the first collection of the classic comic strip that features Calvin, a rambunctious 6-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who comes charmingly to life. Filled with a mix of Watterson’s standard and full-page Sunday strips, this collection is sure to please fans and newcomers alike.

East of West by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

This is the world. It is not the one we wanted, but it is the one we deserved. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse roam the Earth, signaling the End Times for humanity, and our best hope for life, lies in DEATH!

Saga by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples

When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous old universe. From New York Times bestselling writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina) and critically acclaimed artist Fiona Staples (Mystery Society, North 40), Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. Fantasy and science fiction are wed like never before in this sexy, subversive drama for adults.

Table of Contents

Non-Fiction

Philosophy

Compilations

Consequentialist

Virtue

Deontologist

Subjectivist/Intuitionist

Nihilist Ethics

Psychology

Folklore Studies

Political Theory

Labor Organizing

Social Organizing

Feminist

Anti-Racist

Anti-Imperialism

Animal Liberation

History

Migration Studies

Wanderlust

Art

Science

Comedy

Fiction

Fiction

Japanese

Illustrated

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