Through January 14th, take 30% off everything on our site, including these 5 staff picks.
In celebration of the year’s end, we’ve picked out a few of our favorite titles from 2017 to share with you—all of which are 30% off through January 14th as part of our site-wide Winter 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 staff picks below, and get ready to stuff your stockings or your book bags with titles guaranteed to entertain, enlighten and intrigue.
1
RECOMMENDED BY:
Linda Stewart, Marketing Specialist
A novel that plays with voice and narration, Us&Them is a beautiful look at family life in all its intricacies, intimacies, and difficulties. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani takes us on a journey through Paris, Tehran, L.A., Germany, Australia, and beyond, opening our eyes to the ways immigration and alienation shift our ideas of belonging and home. The three generations of women at the heart of the novel come alive through strained interactions and rich inner monologues. Through a series of non-linear, interconnected stories, the novel unfolds into a witty, charming, and very familiar tale of the human connection that we all crave.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani and Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran by Roxanne Varzi.
2
Adcreep »
The Case Against Modern Marketing
RECOMMENDED BY:
Michelle Lipinski, Senior Editor
Am I trying to sell you something right now? How did you get to this website, and will you find my pitch compelling? Do you trust my personal recommendation, or am I being paid as an “influencer”? Have I used neuromarketing techniques to anticipate your deepest desires? Are you disoriented, befuddled, and fed up yet? Good.
Because I’d like to personally recommend Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing. Mark Bartholomew journeys through the tangled, at times claustrophobic world of the non-stop sell, which I regret to inform: you’re in. Facing a near-constant bombardment of ads in previously ad-free spaces, what’s a book-reading, anti-consumerism troglodyte like you or me to do? Bartholomew helps us sort through the curious and sometimes troubling world of modern advertising, drawing on a variety of sources, including psychological experiments, marketing texts, communications theory, and historical examples. Adcreep mounts a damning critique of the modern American legal system's failure to stem the flow of invasive advertising into our homes, parks, schools, and digital lives, and presents a case for what might be done in the future to staunch it. BUY IT NOW!
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Selling Under the Swastika: Advertising and Commercial Culture in Nazi Germany by Pamela E. Swett and Attacking Judges: How Campaign Advertising Influences State Supreme Court Elections by Melinda Gann Hall.
3
The Moral Power of Money »
Morality and Economy in the Life of the Poor
RECOMMENDED BY:
Marcela Maxfield, Acquisitions Editor
This book is meaningful to me for number of reasons—it was the first book I put into production here at Stanford University Press, and its publication this month has capped off an exciting year for our new Culture and Economic Life series. Ariel’s vivid descriptions are engaging and powerful, offering a window into life in a slum of Buenos Aires. Blending theory and ethnography he constructs a unique understanding of the ways money, power, and morality interact for the residents of Villa Olimpia.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa by Deborah James and Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina by Daniel Fridman.
4
The Art of Revolt »
Snowden, Assange, Manning
RECOMMENDED BY:
Kalie Caetano, Digital Media Specialist
In this concise and incisive volume, French theorist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie dives into the brave new world of twenty-first-century truth-tellers, leakers, and whistleblowers to probe the question of how the digital revolution is transforming the very nature of political protest. His account at once offers an engrossing recapitulation of the titular lightning rods—Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning—as well as a philosophical framework for grappling with the changing nature of popular and standalone resistance in the Internet Age. How, for instance, do projects like Anonymous and WikiLeaks reinvent existing notions around civil disobedience, civic duty, and radical politics? Lagasnerie’s answers to questions such as these chart a compelling political theory of the modern-day digital rogue.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age by Dawn C. Nunziato and The End of Intelligence: Espionage and Power in the Information Age by David Tucker.
5
The Work of Art in the
Age of Deindustrialization »
RECOMMENDED BY:
Faith Wilson Stein, Associate Editor
The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization is, to my mind and on my bookshelf, an apt complement to recent variations on the theme of late capitalism and its discontents. By homing in on our modern means of production and productivity, rather than the more usual critical subject of consumption—whose sins can be laid so neatly at our own feet—Jasper Bernes unpacks an argument that is both bracing and bolstering.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Mapping Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Digital Age edited by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Michael Marrinan and Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First-Century Culture by Annie McClanahan.
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