In this section you can read reviews of academic books covering the USA, and its continental neighbours, Canada and Mexico. Each weekend we publish two reviews, aiming to cover a wide range of books on all aspects of public policy and politics.
GalleryBook Review: Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress by Alasia Nuti
In Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, Alasia Nuti explores the relationship between history and the provision of justice by focusing on women as a historical-structural group subject to historical injustices that continue to impact the present. This is a very welcome contribution to the literature, writes Ebru Demir, providing both deep and rigorous analyses of […]
GalleryBook Review: After Extinction edited by Richard Grusin
What comes after extinction? In After Extinction, editor Richard Grusin brings together contributors to address this question by considering extinction within cultural, artistic, media and biological debates. This is a timely contribution to contemporary discussions regarding the future of our planet, writes Anda Pleniceanu, that will leave readers with a renewed perspective on the relevance of the humanities to understanding our […]
GalleryBook Review: The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War by Joanne Freeman
In The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War, Joanne Freeman examines the increase of violence in the US Congress experienced from the 1830s to 1861 in the build-up to the US Civil War, a period that witnessed the rise of the mass political party and growing opposition to slavery and the power of the […]
GalleryBook Review: Here to Stay, Here to Fight: A ‘Race Today’ Anthology edited by Paul Field, Robin Bunce, Leila Hassan and Margaret Peacock
Here to Stay, Here to Fight, edited by Paul Field, Robin Bunce, Leila Hassan and Margaret Peacock, is a new anthology of the reports, essays and interviews published by the Race Today Collective, which ran from 1974-88. Tracing the arc of Race Today’s archive through this collection, Helen Mackreath observes that Here to Stay, Here to Fight is far from […]
GalleryBook Review: The Great Broadening: How Vast Expansion of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed American Politics by Bryan D. Jones, Sean M. Theriault and Michelle Whyman
In The Great Broadening: How Vast Expansion of the Policymaking Agenda Transformed American Politics, Bryan D. Jones, Sean M. Theriault and Michelle Whyman set out to prove that the period from the 1960s to the 1980s witnessed a ‘Great Broadening’ of the US government’s involvement in areas that had previously been off limits. Mining rich sources of data to provide insight […]
GalleryBook Review: Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media by Sarah T. Roberts
In Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media, Sarah T. Roberts explores the work conditions and experiences of people employed in ‘commercial content moderation’, drawing on interviews with those tasked with detecting and removing harmful and upsetting online content. As the problems faced by CCM workers reveal the economic, social and political distortions of the digital […]
GalleryBook Review: Taking the Floor: Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room by Daniel Beunza
In Taking the Floor: Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room, Daniel Beunza analyses how the use of economic models and the moral disengagement this has created have significantly transformed the global financial industry through an ethnographic study conducted at an equity derivatives trading room of an international bank located in New York City. This is a significant contribution […]
GalleryBook Review: In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy by Katrina Forrester
In In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy, Katrina Forrester explores how John Rawls’s justice theory became the dominant way of thinking about institutions and individuals in the second half of the twentieth century. This important work sheds light on the conceptual roots of modern political thought while at the same time disclosing its limits, […]
GalleryBook Review: The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias
In The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism, Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias argue that the quantified world is not a new frontier, but rather the continuation and expansion of both colonialism and capitalism. This book shines in using the theory underpinning the idea of data colonialism to articulate sites of resistance, […]
GalleryBook Review: Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It by Heather Boushey
In Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It, Heather Boushey offers an almost encyclopaedic account of inequality’s impact on the US economy, focusing on the way in which inequality obstructs, subverts and distorts. While this is a valuable compilation of the growing evidence that inequality is damaging the US economy, Liam Kennedy argues that the book neglects […]
