This month, take 30% off all of our books, including these 8 popular and timely reads.
Now through October 1st, all (yes, all) of our books are 30% off for our Back-to-School Sale. Hundreds of titles spanning dozens of disciplines are on offer: browse books by discipline, or check out our recent award winners and bestsellers, or, for those looking for a few quick recommendations, check out our list of 8 new and noteworthy titles below.
1
A Practical Education »
Why Liberal Arts Majors Make Great Employees
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
humanists, headhunters, and anxious parents of college-aged progeny
That liberal arts degrees are a poor choice for today’s job market is a seemingly unimpeachable truism—yet Randall Stross is on a mission to impeach it. Following the career paths of a few contrarian humanities majors, Stross points to their success as proof positive that a liberal arts education is vocational; that in an era where industries evolve at breakneck speed, the versatility and critical thinking skills of a humanist education are rare and valuable assets. Weaving these case studies together with a history of one of the nation’s top universities and an account of the longstanding pull-and-tug between humanist disciplines and technical learning, A Practical Education shows that liberal arts majors can excel not in spite of, but because of, their education.
ALSO SEE: A Practical Education was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and is excerpted here.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Cultures@SiliconValley by J.A. English-Lueck and The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges by Joseph A. Soares.
2
Behind the Laughs »
Community and Inequality in Comedy
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
comedy lovers and sociologists
Many in comedy insist that they have the best job in the world—and why wouldn’t they? The nature of their work fosters a strong community of performers and eccentrics, while the fun of hanging out with people who make you laugh makes work feel like play and becomes a reward in itself. But there is a dark side to the industry, argues Michael P. Jeffries, especially for women, people of color, and those who struggle to afford the pay-to-play rules that underpin the business. Behind the Laughs pulls back the curtain to explore the roadblocks and inequities in the entertainment world. Drawing on interviews with Daily Show correspondents, comedy club owners, standup veterans, and more, Jeffries reveals the dynamics of the industry at every level and shows us how the entertainers weather the storms and keep on laughing.
ALSO SEE: Jeffries’ features on Amy Schumer in The Boston Globe and Tiffany Haddish in The Atlantic.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump by Renée Ann Cramer and The New Entrepreneurs: How Race, Class, and Gender Shape American Enterprise by Zulema Valdez.
3
Witnesses of the Unseen »
Seven Year in Guantanamo
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
concerned citizens and human rights advocates
Guantanamo has the inauspicious distinction of being the most notorious prison in the United States and has been described as a “legal black hole.” In 2001, two men living in Bosnia, Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir, were apprehended by the U.S. military on suspicion of terrorism and thrown into that black hole without trial. Though innocent, they would be imprisoned there for the next seven years, estranged from their wives and children and subjected to the abuse and harsh conditions for which the prison has come to be known. Witnesses of the Unseen shares the firsthand accounts of these two men, from their arrest, to the details of their time in prison, to their years-long fight to clear their names and reclaim their freedom. Their harrowing story, which led to the historic U.S. Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush, changed American law and cast a light onto one of the most opaque prisons in the United States.
ALSO SEE: Mother Jones’ interview with Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir’s op-ed in USA Today.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Just Violence: Torture and Human Rights in the Eyes of the Police by Rachel Wahl and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies by Laleh Khalili.
4
Soundtrack of the Revolution »
The Politics of Music in Iran
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
musicians and students of revolution
Music was one of the first official casualties of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. When revolutionaries overthrew the shah’s regime and established the Islamic Republic, they vowed that their new society was not going to allow for music—in their view, it had been complicit in the moral corruption of the younger generations. But it was not long before they began to make concessions to this new policy, with the state supporting and broadcasting the melodies of musicians loyal to the new regime. Music has been deeply intertwined with politics ever since, argues Nahid Siamdoust, as both a medium of the state as well as an art form for the subversive. Soundtrack of the Revolution traces the role of music as a forum for social engagement and political debate in Iran, taking readers on a journey through underground concerts and state censorship offices to provide an alternative history of the Islamic Republic.
ALSO SEE: Nahid Siamdoust’s interview on BBC Newshour and her podcast, “10 Songs That Define Modern Iran.”
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran by Roxanne Varzi and The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race by Neda Maghbouleh.
5
The Art of Revolt »
Snowden, Assange, Manning
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
hacktivists, philosophers, and subversives
At a slim 128 pages, The Art of Revolt is an indispensable primer on the evolving role and strategies of political protest in the information age. By taking stock of the scope and stakes of what Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning have brought to light, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie looks at the latest iteration of a struggle that has been unfolding around the world for years: the defense of civil liberties and the rule of law from the tendency, on the part of government, to dismantle them. Abolishing all the obscurity built into state operations; making the government’s functions, decisions, and motivation for those decisions transparent; and doing away with the very idea of state secrecy have become the axes of the modern struggle to preserve and bolster democracy. The era of the Internet, the era of Anonymous and Wikileaks and hacktivism, is, Lagasnerie argues, drastically changing the terms and tactics of political engagement.
ALSO SEE: The Introduction to The Art of Revolt.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information by Mark Fenster and If God Were a Human Rights Activist by Boaventura de Sousa Santos.
6
Aurangzeb »
Aurangzeb The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
history buffs and contrarians
The Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb Alamgir, who reigned over the subcontinent for nearly half a century, was one of the most powerful rulers of his time. Though he exited this world over three hundred years ago, his legacy is a live wire of history that sparks fires to this day: In India, people hotly debate his reign and often condemn him as a vile and bigoted Muslim conqueror whose oppression of Hindus was legendary. But the popular memory of this much-maligned king bears little resemblance to the historical emperor, argues Audrey Truschke. Though his memory has been revived and weaponized in contemporary tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India, Truschke reveals that the myth of the evil emperor has been grounded in shockingly thin evidence. In Aurangzeb, she digs into India’s premodern past, sifts through the historical record of one of the last Mughal kings, and dispels the inflammatory haze that has grown around this galvanizing historical personality.
ALSO SEE: Audrey Truschke’s commentary on the contemporary controversy around Aurangzeb at Scroll.in and Indian Express.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire by Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed and The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India by Ajay Verghese.
7
Bernie Madoff and the Crisis »
The Public Trial of Capitalism
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
ethicists, journalists, and the 99 percent
Bernie Madoff’s 2008 arrest happened at a moment when the United States economy was reeling from a devastating recession that cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes, or their jobs, or both. Though Madoff’s multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme had nothing to do with the root causes of the financial crisis, the business tycoon-turned-fraudster was nonetheless swept up in the public anger over Wall Street’s reckless and extravagant culture. His crimes and subsequent trial provided a lightning rod as the question of how to punish those who were responsible, not only for the Ponzi scheme but also for the financial crisis and its widespread devastation, became a matter of public speculation and the focus of populist anger. In Bernie Madoff and the Crisis, Colleen P. Eren examines how and why Madoff became the epicenter of public fury and titillation, drawing on media portrayals, the accounts of journalists and editors, as well as extensive interviews with Bernie Madoff himself.
ALSO SEE: Colleen P. Eren’s interview with Crime Report and New Yorkers, watch out for her upcoming event at Book Culture, co-sponsored by Harper’s Magazine.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution by Timothy K. Kuhner and Foreclosed America by Isaac Martin and Christopher Niedt.
8
Crook County »
Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
activists, ethnographers, and law students
Most people presume that racism exists adjacent to our courts (if at all), in legislation, policing, and incapacitation. In fact, the violent deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Laquan McDonald have, for many, revealed an alternative and harsh reality: that there are two systems of justice in the United States, one for upper- and middle-class whites and another for the poor and people of color. In Crook County, Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, who spent a decade embedded in the country’s largest criminal court in Chicago, reveals the everyday forms of racism built into the culture of the legal system, challenging the notion that our legal systems are purely objective or free from prejudice.
ALSO SEE: Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve’s interview with NBC News and her op-ed on racism and justice in Chicago in The New York Times.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings Trump Facts in an Era of Colorblindness by Paula Ioanide and The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation by Leo R. Chavez.
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