Social and political philosophy Books

When the Clyde Ran Red paints a vivid picture of the heady days when revolution was in the air on Clydeside. Through the bitter strike at the huge Singer Sewing machine plant in Clydebank in 1911, Bloody Friday in Glasgow's George Square in 1919, the...

Everything Must Change!brings together prominent commentators from around the world to present a rich and nuanced weighing of progressive possibilities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.In these pages you'll encounter influential voices across the...

It is often asserted that postmodernism emerged from 'leftist' Nietzsche-interpretations, but this claim and its implications are rarely explored. Deconstructing Postmodernist Nietzscheanism investigates how Deleuze and Foucault read Nietzsche and apply...

Andy Blunden's Hegel Marx & Vygotsky, Essays in Social Philosophy presents his novel approach to social theory in a series of essays. Blunden aims to use the cultural psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the Soviet Activity Theorists to renew Hegelian...

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated,...

Empiriomonism is Alexander Bogdanov's scientific-philosophical substantiation of Marxism. In Books One and Two, he combines Ernst Mach's and Richard Avenarius's neutral monist philosophy with the theory of psychophysical parallelism and systematically...

Ever since Plato'sRepublicewish scholars, thinkers, and popularizers have contributed notably to this genre, strikingly few have turned their attention to the history of Jewish leaders-that is, leaders specifically of the Jewish people-in particular.And...

The liberal arts are dying. They are dying because most Americans don't see the point of them. Americans don't understand why anyone would study literature or history or the classics-or, more contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the...

Written by a successful venture capitalist (and university dropout), this book is part memoir, part guide for the next generation of innovators who seek an alternative to the traditional path in higher education."Part adventure tale, part manifesto,...

The George Floyd riots that have precipitated great changes throughout American society were not spontaneous events. Americans did not suddenly rise up in righteous anger, take to the streets, and demand not just that police departments be defunded but...

We are living in the midst of an American Awakening, without God and without forgiveness. The first two Awakenings brought religious renewal; the third-the social gospel movement and its aftermath (1880-1910)-invoked the authority of religion to bring...

American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders' Constitution, as amended, and as grounded in the...

Americans have never been more divided, and we're ripe for a breakup. The bitterness, the gridlock, the growing tolerance of violence, invite us to think that we'd be happier were we two different countries. In all the ways that matter, save for the...

Sam Harris, a previously unknown neuroscientist, single-handedly generated the New Atheism with his best-selling book The End of Faith, which quickly became a huge best-seller following its release in 2004.Harris went on to write several more...

Microchips, government-replaced bird drones, QAnon and vaccine tracers: these are just a few of the most common conspiracies we have heard over and over again throughout most of 2020-2021's news cycles. There are common categories of conspiracy...

Y'all Means All is a celebration of the weird and wonderful aspects of a troubled region in all of their manifest glory! This collection is a thought-provoking hoot and a holler of "we're queer and we're here to stay, cause we're every bit a piece of the...

One hundred years after his death, Peter Kropotkin is still one of the most inspirational figures of the anarchist movement. It is often forgotten that Kropotkin was also a world-renowned geographer whose seminal critique of the hypothesis of competition...

Readers of Vaneigem's now-classic work The Revolution of Everyday Life, which as one of the main contributions of the Situationist International was a herald of the May 1968 uprisings in France, will find much to challenge them in these pages written in...

Was anarchism in areas outside of Europe an import and a script to be mimicked? Was it perpetually at odds with other currents of the Left? The authors in this collection take up these questions of geographical and political peripheries. Building on...

The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution-the product of compromises and an artifact of its time-and made it more democraticWho wrote the Constitution? That's obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in...

Washington's progressive champion explains how we can achieve a truly inclusive America that works for all of usIn November 2016, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Indian American woman to serve in that...

Gramsci's works, in particular his Prison Notebooks, are a real 'workshop' of activity. Even though these texts were the product of a great mind and an organic conception of the world, the particular context in which they are written poses challenges for...

C.L.R. James was a leading figure in the independence movement in the West Indies, and the black and working-class movements in both Britain and the United States. As a major contributor to Marxist and revolutionary theory, his project was to discover,...

Throughout history, kings and emperors have promised "freedoms" to their people. Yet these freedoms were really only permissions handed down from on high. The American Revolution inaugurated a new vision: people have basic rights to life, liberty, and...

Taking its cue from Michel de Montaigne, this book asks what COVID-19 can teach us about the 'art of living'. It examines eight themes from a philosophical perspective, including attitudes to old age, populism and life under lockdown, arguing that the...

This punchy and provocative book asks a simple but overlooked question: why do we have the political views that we do? Offering a lively and original analysis of five worldviews - conservatism, national populism, liberalism, the new left and...

The rise of populism, Donald Trump's election and the result of the EU referendum in the UK have been widely interpreted as a rejection of the post-war liberal order - the manifestation of a desire to undermine the political system that people feel has...

This book presents thirteen essays from a leading contemporary political scientist, with a substantial introduction bringing together the themes. The topics covered include political and social power, freedom, choice, rights, responsibility, the author's...

An influential thinker's fascinating reflections and meditations on reacclimating to his native Senegal as a young academic after years of study abroad The call to morning prayer. A group run at daybreak along the Corniche in Dakar. A young woman...

A pathbreaking new genealogy of statelessnessJust as the modern state and the citizenship associated with it are commonly thought of as a European invention, so too is citizenship's negation in the form of twentieth-century diaspora and statelessness...

A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory's intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist...

A vital and timely reminder that modern life owes as much to outlandishthinking as to dominant ideologies.What do the Nag Hammadi library, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, speculativefeminist historiography, Marcus Garvey's finances, and maps drawn by...

The Villa Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928, is an icon of architectural modernism. Behind the Glass tells the true story of the large family connected to it, who rose to prominence through industrial textile manufacturing.The book traces...

"It is safer to be feared than loved." These words embody the spirit of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli's classic work of political philosophy. Machiavelli's advice for how a ruler should acquire and ruthlessly exercise power over others continues to be...

Henri Lefebvrereviews the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for analysis on the life andgrowth of the city, describing its transition from life under feudalism tomodern industrial capitalism. Now available in English, Marxist Thought andthe City...

An incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as primitive, in order...

In the 21st century we face innumerable material and existential challenges both now and in the future, from religious fanaticism, mass migration, unfettered corporate power, to inequality, big data and climate change. Ahead of these global threats and...

"Each century," wrote Charles Dickens "[is] more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries before." Victorians in theory explores the startling conceit that nineteenth-century poetry is amazed by twentieth-century literary theory. In a...

How to put democracy at the heart of AI governance.Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping our world. Police forces use them to decide where to send police officers, judges to decide whom to release on bail, welfare agencies to decide...

An invigorating exploration of the pleasures and social benefits of conversationTalking Cure is a timely and enticing excursion into the art of good conversation. Paula Marantz Cohen reveals how conversation connects us in ways that social media never...

Why the tools of philosophy offer a powerful antidote to today's epidemic of irrationalityThere is an epidemic of bad thinking in the world today. An alarming number of people are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas. They believe that vaccinations...

A bold new interpretation of Augustine's virtue of hope and its place in political lifeWhen it comes to politics, Augustine of Hippo is renowned as one of history's great pessimists, with his sights set firmly on the heavenly city rather than the public...

A panoramic history of American individualism from its nineteenth-century origins to today's bitterly divided politicsIndividualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike...

An eminent philosopher explains why we owe it to future generations to take immediate action on global warmingClimate change is the supreme challenge of our time. Yet despite growing international recognition of the unfolding catastrophe, global carbon...

In Losing Ourselves, Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us and improve our lives, our relationships, and the...

A new model for the relationship between science and democracy that spans policymaking, the funding and conduct of research, and our approach to new technologiesOur ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and...

Richard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, warned of the rise of a Trumpian strongman in America. What Can...

A timely defense of liberalism that draws vital lessons from its greatest midcentury proponents.Today, liberalism faces threats from across the political spectrum. While right-wing populists and leftist purists righteously violate liberal norms,...