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Books: Next DraftNote: As I decide to publish something, I move it here. 1. Main SectionRelatively substantial entries, many with trailing lists of related books. When this section grows to 40 entries, I'll publish a post. Michael Lewis, ed: Who Is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service (2025, Riverhead Books): Introduction and final chapter by the editor, who previously wrote a fascinating book about public servants under threat from Trump, The Fifth Risk (2018). In between are six more proiles, by Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, for a fairly broad cross-section. This seems to have started off as an op-ed series in late 2024, when we had a general sense of foreboding but hadn't yet reached the fever-pitched panic since inauguration day, when Trump revealed just how serious his revenge-seeking would be. 2. Secondary SectionAdditional books to be included in a post, with very brief (or in most cases no) comments. There is no count limit here per post. It's possible I will write a further entry on these at a later date. 3. Draft SectionThese are candidate for the main section, that are not yet finished or not yet prioritized to post. They may include sub-lists. Gerard Baker: American Breakdown: Why We No Longer Trust Our Leaders and Institutions and How We Can Rebuild Confidence (2023, Twelve). Brendan Ballou: Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage Plan to Pillage America (2023, Public Affairs): DOJ antitrust prosecutor, has spent the last years looking into private equity. Gary J Bass: Judtment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (2023, Knopf): 912 pp. Jonathan Blitzer: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (2024, Penguin Press): On immigration, probably an important book on a fairly major topic. @@@later Joy Buolamwini: Unmasking AI: My Mission Is to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (2023, Random House): Founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. Judith Butler: Who's Afraid of Gender? (2024, Farrar Straus and Giroux). @@@later: "a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world." Previous books: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity; Undoing Gender; also has books on war and Zionism. Deb Chachra: How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World (2023, Riverhead Books). @@@later Daniel Chandler: Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society (2024, Knopf): Economist and philosopher, studied under Amartya Sen, draws heavily on John Rawls. Marlene L Daut: Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (paperback, University of North Carolina Press). @@@later Fredrik deBoer: How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement (2023, Simon & Schuster). Kelly Denton-Borhaug: And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War Culture (paperback, 2021, Equinox). Gary A Donaldson: America at War Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (2016, Carrel Books): Looks to be an update of a 1996 book, with only 24 pages "Post 9/11." Sebastian Edwards: The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism (2023, Princeton University Press): [05-23] David Enrich: Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful (2025, Mariner Books). New York Times reporter, has a couple books on Trump's legal efforts to throttle and ultimately control the press. Zeke Faux: Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (2023, Crown Currency). Mark Fisher: Capitalism Realism: Is There No Alternative? (revised, paperback, 2022, Zero Books): @@@later: bought and should read Daniele Ganser: USA: The Ruthless Empire (2023, Skyhorse). James E Gierach: The Silver Bullet Solution: Is It Time to End the War on Drugs? (2023, Gaudium): Retired prosecutor turned drug policy reformer. [11-14] Steven M Gillon: Presidents at War: How World War II Shaped a Generation of Presidents From Eisenhower and JFK through Reagan and Bush (2025, Dutton). Peter S Goodman: How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain (2024, Mariner Books): @@@later: this may be an important book Sarah Wynn-Williams: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025, Flatiron Books): A memoir of Facebook's former "director of global public policy." Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World (2025, Penguin Press): Big (768 pp) history of the entire Western Hemisphere, combining the United States and Latin America. Colleen M Grogan: Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State (2023, Oxford University Press): "The US government has always invested federal, state and local dollars in public health protection and prevention. Despite this public funding, however, Americans typically believe the current system is predominantly comprised of private actors with little government interference." Mary Harrington: Feminism Against Progress (2023; paperback, 2024, Regnery). Walter Hickey: You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything (2023, Workman): Stats nerd, covered culture for FiveThirtyEight, offers a "mix of research, deep reporting, and 100 data visualizations." Basic argument is not implausible, but methodology opens the door for all sorts of false correlations and silly causality guesses. [10-24] Bruce Hoffman/Jacob Ware: God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America (2024, Columbia University Press). Jeff Horwitz: Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets (2023, Doubleday). [11-14] Coleman Hughes: The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America (2024, Thesis). James Davison Hunter: Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis (2024, Yale University Press): This could have been relegated to lists on democracy and/or solidarity, but aims at something deeper. Amanda L Izzo/Benjamin Looker, eds: Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s (2023, University of Missouri Press). Julian Jackson: France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain (2023, Belknap Press). Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024, Dutton). Ramin Jahanbegloo: Nonviolence: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (paperback, 2023, Haus Publishing): 61 pp. [09-25] Marjorie Kelly: Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crises (paperback, 2023, Berrett-Koehler).
Mark Lilla: Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know (2024, Farrar Straux and Giroux). Domenico Losurdo: Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn (paperback, 2024, Monthly Review Press): @@@later: translation, author lived (1941-2018), has other books. William MacAskill: What We Owe the Future (2022; paperback, 2023, Basic Books): Philosopher of "effective altruism," which had a moment with futurist billionaires. I wrote about this book when in 2022, but got the title wrong.
Charles S Maier: The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (2023, Harvard University Press). Dana Mattioli: The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power (2024, Little Brown). Andrey Mir: Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers: The Media After Trump: Manufacturing Anger and Polarization (paperback, 2020, Andrey Mir):
Loretta Napeoloni: Techno-Capitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good (paperback, 2024, Seven Stories Press). Richard Overy: Why War? (2024, WW Norton): @@@later: military historian, explains his life love. David Parkman: The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America (2025, Beacon Press). Anti-right podcaster. Frederic L Paxson: History of the American Frontier: 1763-1893 (paperback, 2022, Houghton Mifflin). Aakar Patel: Price of the Modi Years (paperback, 2021, Westland): On the effects of the rise of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi's rise as prime minister of India.
Thomas Piketty: Nature, Culture, and Inequality: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (2024, Other Press): Short (96 pp). Alison Place, ed: Feminist Designer: On the Personal and the Political in Design (2023, The MIT Press). Anna Reid: A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into the Russian Civil War (2024, Basic Books). Terence Renaud: New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition (paperback, 2021, Princeton University Press): Focuses on Europe, from the 1930s through the 1960s. Aaron Robertson: The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (2024, Farrar Straus and Giroux). @@@later Ingrid Robeyns: Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth (2024, Astra House). @@@later David L Roll: Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged From Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World (2024, Dutton). @@@later Kohei Saito: Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto (2024, Astra House). Ruchir Sharma: What Went Wrong With Capitalism? (2024, Simon & Schuster). [06-11] Abigail Shrier: Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up (2024, Sentinel). Hampton Sides: The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (2024, Doubleday). Quinn Slobodian: Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right (2025, Zone Books): "How neoliberals turned to nature to defend inequality after the end of the Cold War." Kate Soper: Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism (paperback, 2023, Verso): English philosopher, has a previous book from 1990, possibly more. Adds to post-capitalist literature. Previously wrote:
Daniel Suskind: Growth: A History and a Reckoning (2024, Belknap Press). Clay Travis: American Playbook: A Guide to Winning Back the Country From the Democrats (2023, Threshold Editions): Admits that Republicans are "in a losing period," but promises "new ways to win elections and attract enthusiastic voters," using "a surefire gameplan inspired by winning strategies in sports." Batya Ungar-Sargon: Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women (2024; paperback, 2025, Encounter Books): Self-proclaimed "MAGA Lefty" stands up for the working class, and their last great hope, Donald Trump.
Sander van der Linden: Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (2023, WW Norton). Michael Waldman: The Fight to Vote (2016; paperback, 2022, Simon & Schuster). Benjamin Weber: American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (2023, New Press). [10-03] 4. Noted SectionThese are candidate for the secondary section, that are not yet prioritized to post. Jonathan A Rodden: Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (2019, Basic Books). Ran Abramitzky/Leah Boustan: Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (2022, Public Affairs). John Abramson: Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It (2022, Mariner Books). Michael Albert: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World (paperback, 2021, Zero Books). Elizabeth Anderson: Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back (2023, Cambridge University Press). Jonathan B Baker: The Antitrust Paradigm: Restoring a Competitive Economy (2019, Harvard University Press). Fritz Bartel: The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism (2022, Harvard University Press). Elizabeth Popp Berman: Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy (2022, Princeton University Press). @@@later Paul Betts: Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II (2020, Basic Books). Nigel Biggar: Colonialilsm: A Moral Reckoning (2023, William Collins). Edward H Bonekemper III: The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won (2022, Regnery). Elena Botella: Delinquent: Inside America's Debt Machine (2022, University of California Press). Michael Brooks: Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right (2020, paperback, Zero Books). 96 pp. Dorothy A Brown: The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans -- and How We Can Fix It (2022, Crown). Stephen Brown: The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire (2020, Doubleday). Julia Cagé: The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do About It (2020, Harvard University Press). Jonathan Calvert/George Arbuthnott: Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus (2021, Mudlark). Andy B Campbell: We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism (2022, Hachette Books). Bruce Clarke/Sébastien Dutreuil, eds: Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock & Lynn Margulis (2022, Cambridge University Press). [11-10] Claude A Clegg III: The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama (2021, Johns Hopkins University Press). Jon Clifton: Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It (2022, Gallup Press). Tressie McMillan Cottom: Thick: And Other Essays (paperback, 2019, New Press). Cynthia Cruz: The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class (paperback, 2021, Repeater). Ashley Dawson: Extinction: A Radical History (paperback, 2016; paperback, 2022, OR Books). Laura DeNardis: The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World With No Off Switch (2020, Yale University Press). Robin DiAngelo: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm (2021, Beacon Press). Matthew Dicks: Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Chang Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling (paperback, 2018, New World Library). Marco Dondi: Outgrowing Capitalism: Rethinking Money to Reshape Society and Pursue Purpose (2021, Fast Company Press) Rob Dunn: A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us About the Destiny of the Human Species (2021, Basic Books). Kathryn J Edin/H Luke Schaefer: $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2015, Houghton Mifflin; paperback, 2016, Mariner Books). Liran Einav/Amy Finkelstein/Ray Fisman: Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It (2023, Yale University Press). Jon D Erickson: The Progress Illusion: Reclaiming Our Future From the Fairytale of Economics (paperback, 2022, Island Press): Author is a "Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy." [12-01]. Max Fisher: The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (2022, Little Brown). Emily Flitter: The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America (2022, Atria/One Signal). [10-25] Clyde W Ford: Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth (2022, Amistad). Peter Foster: What Went Wrong With Brexit: And What We Can Do About It (2023, Canongate Books). Max Fraser: Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class (2023, Princeton University Press). Nancy Fraser: Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It (2022, Verso). @@@later - probably need a whole section on limits of capitalism Adom Getachew: Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (paperback, 2020, Princeton University Press). Julian Gewirtz: Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Ecnomists, and the Making of Global China (2017, Harvard Univerity Press). Julian Gewirtz: Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s (2022, Belknap Press). Jacob Helberg: The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Strugle for Power (2021, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster). David Helfand: A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind (paperback, 2017, Columbia University Press). Michael Heller/James Salzman: Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (2021, Doubleday). Mollie Hemingway: Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections (2021, Regnery). Rebecca Henderson: Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (2020, PublicAffairs). Linda Hirshman: The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation (2022, Mariner Books): Studies of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrisonn, and Maria Weston Chapman. Maha Hilal: Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 (2022, Broadleaf Books). Alex Hochuli/George Hoare/Philip Cunliffe: The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century (paperback, 2021, Zero Books). Bob Hoffman: ADSCAM: How Online Advertising Gave Birth to One of History's Greatest Frauds and Became a Threat to Democracy (paperback, 2020, Type A Group). Sabine Hossenfelder: Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2022, Viking). Evan Hughes: The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup (2022, Doubleday). Louis Hyman: Temp: The Real Story of What Happened to Your Salary, Benefits, & Job Security (2018, Viking; paperback, 2019, Penguin). Trevor Jackson: Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (2022, Cambridge University Press). Simcha Jacobovici/Sean Kingsley: Enslaved: The Sunked History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2022, Pegasus Books). Dahr Jamail/Stan Rushworth, eds: We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices From Turtle Island on the Changing Earth (2022, New Press). Yang Jisheng: Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962 (paperback, 2013, Farrar Straus and Giroux). Yang Jisheng: The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (2021, Farrar Straus and Giroux). Robert P Jones: The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future (2023, Simon & Schuster). Sebastian Junger: Freedom (2021, Simon & Schuster). Blair Kamin: Who Is the City For? Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago (2022, University of Chicago Press). [11-17] Steve Keen: The New Economics: A Manifesto (paperback, 2022, Polity). Kim Kelly: Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (2022; paperback, 2023, One Signal). Marjorie Kelly: Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today's Crises (paperback, 2023, Berrett-Koehler). [09-12] Sarah Kendzior: They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (2022, Flatiron). Perri Klass: A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future (2020, WW Norton). Mark Koyama/Jared Rubin: How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (paperback, 2022, Polity). Tony Kushner: The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures (paperback, 2023, Theatre Communications Group). [10-10] Jeremy Kuzmarov/John Marciano: The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (paperback, 2018, Monthly Review Press). Jeremy Kuzmarov: Obama's Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (paperback, 2019, Clarity Press). Jeremy Kuzmarov: Warmonger: How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the US Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (paperback, 2023, Clarity Press). Hélène Landemore: Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (2020, Princeton University Press). Richard Lapper: Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro (2021, Manchester University Press). Sung-Yoon Lee: The Sister: North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World (2023, Public Affairs). Eviane Leidig: The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization (paperback, 2023, Columbia University Press). Bruno Leipold/Karma Nabulsi/Stuart White, eds: Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition's Popular Heritage (2022, Oxford University Press). Max Liboiron: Pollution Is Colonialism (2021, Duke University Press). Bilyana Lilly: Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West (2022, Naval Institute Press). Peter H Lindert: Making Social Spending Work (2021, Cambridge University Press). Nancy Lindisfarne/Jonathan Neale: Why Men? A Human History of Violence and Inequality (2023, Hurst). [12-01] Wendy Liu: Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism (paperback, 2020, Repeater). Julie Livingston/Andrew Ross: Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt and Carcerality (paperback, 2022, OR Books). Andrew Lownie: Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor (paperback, 2022, Pegasus). [11-08] Michael Patrick Lynch: Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture (2019, Liveright). Heather Mac Donald: When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (2023, DW Books). Christopher Marquis/Kunyuan Qiao: Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (2022, Yale University Press). [11-15] Roland S Martin/Leah Lakins: White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds (2022, BenBella Books): 160 pp. Daniel Martinez Hosang/Joseph E Lowndes: Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right Politics of Precarity (paperback, 2019, University of Minnesota Press). Tara Dawson McGuinness/Hana Schank: Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology (2021, Princeton University Press). John McWhorter: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (2021, Portfolio). Jon Meacham: And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (2022, Random House): 720 pp. [10-18] Laura Meckler: Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity (2023, Henry Holt). Rafael Medoff: The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S Wise, and the Holocaust (2019; paperback, 2021, Jewish Publication Society). Casey Michel: American Kleptocracy: How the US Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (2021, St Martin's Press). Max Miller: Tasting History: Explore the Past Through 4,000 Years of Recipes (2023, Simon & Schuster). Ashoka Mody: India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today (2023, Stanford U niversity Press). George Monbiot: Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet (paperback, 2022, Penguin). George Monbiot/Peter Hutchinson: The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life) (paperback, 2025, Penguin Books). Stella Morabito: The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer (paperback, 2022, Bombardier). Cover photo of Anthony Fauci, pasted into a very old television. Joshua Alan Morris: Thrive in the Coming Dark Age: How to Build the Ultimate Survival Homestead (paperback, 2023, independent). Kristy Nabhan-Warren: Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (paperback, 2021, University of North Carolina Press). Jenni Nuttall: Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women's Words (2023, Viking). Ijeoma Oluo: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (paperback, 2021, Seal Press). Vicky Osterwell: In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action (2020, Bold Type Books). Fintan O'Toole: The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism (2019, Liveright). Fintan O'Toole: Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (2019, Liveright). Fintan O'Toole: We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland (2022, Liveright). Matt Palumbo: The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros (paperback, 2022, Liberatio Protocol). Another right-wing hatchet job on George Soros. Morris Pearl/Erica Payne: Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer (paperback, 2021, New Press). Nicole Perlroth: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2021, Bloomsbury). Paul Pettitt: Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins (2023, Thames & Hudson). Shreerekha Pillal, ed: Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices Against State Violence (paperback, 2023, University of Illinois Press). Maarten Prak/Jan Luiten van Zanden: Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800 (2022, Princeton University Press). [12-13] Jon Roy Price: The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider's Perspective on Nixon's Surprising Social Policy (2021, University Press of Kansas). Prabit Purkayastha: Knowledge as Commons: Towards Inclusive Science and Technology (paperback, 2023, LeftWord). Derecka Purnell: Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom (paperback, 2022, Astra House). Nomi Prins: Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever (2022, Public Affairs). William Quinn/John D Turner: Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles (2020; paperback, 2021, Cambridge University Press). Jennifer Raff: Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (2022, Twelve). Denver Riggleman/Hunter Walker: The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th (2022, Henry Holt): Former Congressman (R-VA). Tara Ross: Why We Need the Electoral College (paperback, 2019, Gateway Editions). Elaine Scarry: Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom (2014, WW Norton). Jenny Schuetz: Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems (paperback, 2022, Brookings Institution Press). Klaus Schwab: The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2017, Currency). Klaus Schwab: Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018, Currency). Klaus Schwab/Thierry Malleret: Covid-19: The Great Reset (paperback, 2020, Agentur Schweiz). Klaus Schwab/Thierry Malleret: The Great Narrative: For a Better Future (paperback, 2021, Schweizer Buchhändler). Klaus Schwab: Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet (2021, Wiley). Patrick Sharkey: Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence (paperback, 2019, WW Norton). Jared Yates Sexton: The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis (2023, Dutton). [2023-01-17] Clint Smith: How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (2021, Little Brown): Journalist, takes a tour of historic sites, from Monticello to Angola Prison, to examine how slavery is remembered at each one. Justin EH Smith: The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning (2022, Princeton University Press). Mychal Denzel Smith: Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream (2020, Bold Type Books). Michael Sonenscher: Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word (2022, Princeton University Press). Walter Stahr: Salmon P Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2022, Simon & Schuster): 848 pp. Previously wrote Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man () and Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary (), as well as John Jay: Founding Father (). Farah Stockman: American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears (2021, Random House). Tyler Stovall: White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea (2021, Princeton University Press). Mark Synnott: The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest (2021, Dutton). Olúfemi O Táiwò: Reconsidering Reparations (2022, Oxford University Press). Shashi Tharoor: An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (2016, Aleph). Shashi Tharoor: Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (2017, OKThings; paperback, 2018, Scribe). Helen Thompson: Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (2022, Oxford University Press). David K Thomson: Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union (paperback, 2022, University of North Carolina Press). Gönül Tol: Erdogan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria (2023, Oxford University Press). [2023-01-15] Rebecca Traister: Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (2019, Simon & Schuster). Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: The Undocumented Americans (paperback, 2021, One World). Ali Vitali: Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet (2022, Dey Street Books): NBC correspondent, covered 2020 presidential race, starting with Elizabeth Warren, then on through the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with backward glances at other women who have run for president or VP, most obviously the failed Hillary Clinton campaign(s). Kenji Yoshino/David Glasgow: Say the Right Thing: How to Talk About Identify, Diversity, and Justice (2023, Atria Books). Harsha Walia: Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021, Haymarket Books). Jesse Wegman: Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (2020, St Martin's Press). Alex Wellerstein: Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (2021, University of Chicago Press). Dorothy Wickenden: The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights (2021, Scribner): On Harriet Tubman, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright. Jocko Willink/Leif Babin: Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win (2017, St Martin's Press): Two ex-SEALS exploit their credentials to leadership skills classes to wannabe assholes. Peter H Wilson: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500 (2023, Belknap Press): 976 pp. [2023-02-14] Ward Hayes Wilson: It Is Possible: A Future Without Nuclear Weapons (2023, Sticky Notes). Gabriel Winant: The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America (2021, Harvard University Press). Colin Woodard: Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (2020, Viking). Baynard Woods: Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness (2022, Legacy Lit). Donald Yacovone: Teaching White Supremacy: America's Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity (2022, Pantheon). RJ Young: Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History of the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (2022, Counterpoint). [11-01] Alexander Zaitchik: Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine From Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines (2022, Counterpoint): Important book on the problem of patents in pharmaceuticals. Peter Zeihan: The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder (2014; paperback, 2016, Twelve). Peter Zeihan: The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America (2017, Zeihan on Geopolitics). Peter Zeihan: Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (2020, Harper Business). Peter Zeihan: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization (2022, Harper Business). Kate Zernike: The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023, Scribner). Kim Zetter: Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (paperback, 2015, Crown). 5. Paperbacks of Previously Noted BooksI used to published these regularly, but haven't been collecting them systematically lately. Sarah Chayes: On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake (2020, Knopf; paperback, 2021, Vintage Books). Anand Gopal: No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes (2014, Metropolitan; paperback, 2015, Picador). 6. Old BooksThese are books that I probably should have listed at some point in the past, but are no longer "current" for purposes of these posts. Not sure how to handle these: most likely at each post I'll move these quietly into the archive file. David Hackett Fischer: Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historial Thought (paperback, 1970, Harper & Row). David Hackett Fischer: Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989; paperback, 1991, Oxford University Press). Anand Giridharadas: India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking (2011, Times Books; paperback, 2012, St Martin's Griffin). Anand Giridharadas: The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014; paperback, 2015, WW Norton). Al Gore: Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992; revised, 2000, Houghton Mifflin; paperback, 2006, Rodale). Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming (2006; paperback, 2007, Viking). Arthur Herman: Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (2012; paperback, 2013, Random House): AEI "scholar," claiming for the private sector what the government paid a premium for. Albert O Hirschman: The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (paperback, 1991, Belknap Press). Albert O Hirschman: The Essential Hirschman (2013; paperback, 2015, Princeton University Press). Gilbert King: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012, Harper). George Lipsitz: Class and Culture in Cold War America: "A Rainbow at Midnight" (1981, Praeger; paperback, 1983, Bergin & Garvey). George Lipsitz: A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (1988; paperback, 1995, Temple University Press). George Lipsitz: Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (1990; paperback, 2001, University of Minnesota Press). George Lipsitz: Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Cuture in the 1940s (paperback, 1994, University of Illinois Press). George Lipsitz: Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics of Place (1994; paperback, 1997, Verso). George Lipsitz: American Studies in a Moment of Danger (paperback, 2001, University of Minnesota Press). George Lipsitz: Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music (paperback, 2007, University of Minnesota Press). George Lipsitz: How Racism Takes Place (paperback, 2011, Temple University Press). Jedediah Purdy: For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (1999, Knopf). Adolph Reed Jr: Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (2000; paperback, 2001, New Press). Heather Cox Richardson: Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre (2010; paperback, 2011, Basic Books). Michael L Ross: The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (paperback, 2013, Princeton University Press). Philip Short: Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (2006; paperback, 2006, Henry Holt). Philip Short: A Taste for Intrigue: The Multiple Lives of François Mitterand (2014, Henry Holt). Philip Short: Mao: The Man Who Made China (1975; paperback, 2001, Henry Holt; revised, paperback, 2017, IB Tauris). Michael Tomasky: Left for Dead: The Life, Death, and Possible Resurrection of Progressive Politics in America (1996; paperback, 2013, Free Press). 7. Music BooksSome day I should do a music book post. These are things I've run across: Jonathan Abrams: The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop (2022, Crown): 544 pp. Bob Dylan: The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022, Simon & Schuster). Gillian G Gaar/Martin Popoff/Richie Unterberger/Matt Anniss/Ken Micallef: In the Groove: The Vinyl Record and Turntable Revolution (2023, Motorbooks). [10-31] Kristina R Gaddy: Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden Hisory (2022, WW Norton). James Kaplan: 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool (2024, Penguin Press). Greil Marcus: Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs (2022, Yale University Press): "Blowin' in the Wind" (1962); "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1964); "Ain't Talkin'" (2006); "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (1964); "Desolation Row" (1965); "Jim Jones" (1992); "Murder Most Foul" (2020). Susan Rogers/Ogi Ogas: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You (2022, WW Norton). Paul Sexton: Charlie's Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Stones: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts (2022, Harper). Jann S Wenner: Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir (2022, Simon & Schuster). 8. Food BooksSome day I should do a food book post (mostly cookbooks). These are things I've run across: Book counts by list section:
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