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 recent titles 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
The Manhattan Project »
A Theory of a City
RECOMMENDED BY:
Max Shanley, Sales Assistant
What if Walter Benjamin did not in fact die in 1940 but, rather, changed his name, moved to New York, and lived on there until 1987? What if, in 1957, he began a sequel to his gargantuan The Arcades Project called The Manhattan Project, shifting his focus from Paris to New York? What if the composing of this text would become his sole occupation for his remaining 30 years? What if that manuscript found its way to the New York Public Library where it wasn't discovered again until 2008? This wildly imaginative book entertains this premise with edge, heart, and humor and, in doing so, breathes new life into Benjamin's ideas and body of work, broadening the possibilities of what writings on cities can accomplish.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Benjamin’s Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory edited by Gerhard Richter and Vanishing Streets: Journeys in London by J. M. Tyree.
2
RECOMMENDED BY:
Faith Wilson Stein, Associate Editor
In both content and form—under 100 pages!—The Burnout Society is a perfectly cohesive read. It not only describes our current cultural anxieties and compulsory/compulsive connectivity; it claims, clearly and unapologetically, the personal and the political necessity of resisting the paths of least resistance.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han and Theory of Society, Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Niklas Luhmann, translated by Rhodes Barrett.
3
Witnesses of the Unseen »
Seven Years in Guantanamo
RECOMMENDED BY:
Stephanie Adams, Marketing Manager
Imagine being torn from your family, your home, and your country—in essence everything you’ve ever known and that has any meaning to you, and imprisoned in a horrendous jail thousands of miles away. This Kafkaesque scenario really did happen to two individuals—Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir, who were going about their everyday lives in Bosnia when they were arrested and taken to Guantanamo Bay in the early months after 9/11. They were subjected to subhuman conditions and treatment in the seven years they were at Guantanamo, with no standard due process for until finally the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in their favor and they were released.
Witnesses of the Unseen is Lakhdar and Mustafa’s story, told in first person in alternating chapters. It is horrifying and disturbing but also deeply moving. I defy anyone who reads it not to feel profound anger at the people who put them in that situation. It ends on a sort of grace note—at this point, having rebuilt their respective lives in Europe, they’re focused on sharing their story with all Americans as a cautionary tale.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran by Shahla Talebi and Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve.
4
Forgotten Disease »
Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine
RECOMMENDED BY:
Marcela Maxfield, Acquisitions Editor
This book tells a fascinating and important story, and challenges the West-centric worldviews that dominate so much of history. Hilary synthesizes a huge body of scholarship, across centuries, to tell a story that forces readers of medical history to question long-accepted facts. The change in meanings associated with various diseases might well seem like random, neutral—or even benevolent—occurrences, but in this book we find out how they are intricately related to historical power structures. Plus—it has a great cover!
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World by Londa Schiebinger and Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic by Thomas A. Apel.
5
Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age »
Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices
RECOMMENDED BY:
Margo Irvin, Acquisitions Editor
Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age takes a deep dive into one of the largest-scale Holocaust memory resources: the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive of over 50,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors. Jeffrey Shandler shows us how public memory projects are participatory by nature and in a constant state of evolution—and reminds us that the act of remembering is one way of resisting intolerance during troubling times.
OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY LIKE: A History of the Grandparents I Never Had by Ivan Jablonka, translated by Jane Kuntz and Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization by Michael Rothberg.
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