A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
Tag: Princeton University Press
“We Want More Housing, but How?” Talking with Max Holleran
“There are a lot of basic things that America has still not accepted in terms of how to live a happy urban life.”
Cooking, Monasteries, Arithmetic: Lorraine Daston on the History of Rules
“There is a deadly earnestness with which children take up whatever rules have been established for a particular context.”
Public Thinker: Ruha Benjamin on Uprooting Oppression and Seeding Justice
“Keep your cosmetic change, if you’re making no attempt to deal with the underlying practices that perpetuate harm.”
Public Picks 2022
What were the books of 2022 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?
“At the End of Everything”: Talking with Shannon Mattern
"My first book was used by actual librarians, planners, architects. I realized, wow I can do work that matters beyond the academy."
“Love and Beauty Their Prison”: Talking with Carolyn Dever on Michael Field
“The diary has challenged every category of literary analysis for me.”
Succeeding through Failure: Andrew Lakoff on Preparing for Emergencies
“What is the range of available measures to address our catastrophic future?”
Hiding in Plain Sight: Talking Aquifer Depletion with Lucas Bessire
“The everyday ways that people challenge environmental destruction can be quite powerful.”
Portrait of the Global Migrant Crisis
COVID-19 highlights how the global order is built on, and excels in, closing the path of migrants unjustly.
Hindu Nationalism: A Movement, Not a Mandate
Most authoritarian populists in power across the world are politicians, at the helm of parties that have won elections. Modi is more than that.
This Land Is My Land
Many landowners view themselves as environmental stewards. But can the environment ever be protected within the frame of private property?
Poe: America’s “Artificer”
Many view Edgar Allen Poe as a uniquely gloomy, mad writer. But what if Poe was normal, simply representative of a gloomy, mad era?
Can Anthropology Look to the Future?
Transhumanists want to transcend humanity. Where does that leave anthropology?
Freedom for Whom?
What right does a society have to extoll freedom as its highest virtue if that same society is dependent on the unfreedom of others?
The Manifest Destiny of Computing
Today is overwhelmingly defined by white-supremacist violence and the whiteness of AI technology. Can seeing them together help defeat them both?
Leaving Orthodoxy, Again
Losing faith in Orthodox Judaism is an old story. But today it’s often the “heretics” who rely on faith, and the “faithful” who draw on science.
Academia Trained You—but the World Needs You
Does leaving the academy mean someone failed? Or does it mean, instead, that their scholarly strengths can now be made useful to the public?
What Happens When a Metaphor Becomes Real?
The humanities can reveal the truth of the world’s crises, everything from contagions like the pandemic to apocalypses like right-wing violence.
How to Educate an American Citizen
What should schools teach about the Constitution? And should they teach feelings, aspiration, or fact?