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: The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter
In The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, Zachary D. Carter offers a new intellectual biography tracing the life and legacy of the influential economist, which argues that in the years since Keynes’s death, Keynesian economics has been stripped of Keynesian thought. Weaving together a dazzling array of Keynes’s private letters, journalistic works and academic research, […]
GalleryBook Review: Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives by Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross
In Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives, Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross present a timely and critical examination of different families’ relationships with digital technologies and how parents perceive and manage their children’s experiences and practices. This book does a very successful job of shedding light on parents’ perspectives of digital […]
GalleryBook Review: Narratives of Hunger in International Law: Feeding the World in Times of Climate Change by Anne Saab
In Narratives of Hunger in International Law: Feeding the World in Times of Climate Change, Anne Saab examines the role that the language of international law plays in constructing narratives of hunger, focusing on the case of climate-ready seeds. This consistently well-researched book reveals how international law influences the making of food (in)security, writes Ayse Didem Sezgin.
Narratives of Hunger in International […]
GalleryBook Review: A Brief History of Fascist Lies by Federico Finchelstein
In A Brief History of Fascist Lies, Federico Finchelstein offers a new historical examination of how fascism does not just embrace lies, but integrates them into a distinctive, irrational structure of ‘truth’ that serves its political ends. This is a worthwhile read that provides a clear and lucid overview of how fascism perceives ‘truth’, reason and leadership, writes Ben […]
GalleryBook Review: Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting by Trine Syvertsen
In Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting, Trine Syvertsen studies the politics of disconnection as a practice of resistance to the intrusion of digital technologies into everyday life, locating it within the context of neoliberal self-regulation. The book offers a highly accessible overview of the digital detox phenomenon and the politics of the attention economy, recommends Kim Harding.
Digital Detox: […]
GalleryBook Review: Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream by Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter
In Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream, Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter challenge the assumption that democracy is necessarily progressive through introducing the notion of ‘reactionary democracy’, showing how narratives that claim that the resurgence of racism, populism and the far right are the result of popular demands obscure the manipulation of the idea […]
GalleryBook Review: Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life edited by D. Asher Ghertner, Hudson McFann and Daniel M. Goldstein
In Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life, editors D. Asher Ghertner, Hudson McFann and Daniel M. Goldstein bring together contributors to explore how security is perceived and practised through a diverse range of examples of security aesthetics. The development of the concept of security as an aesthetic and sensory experience is an interesting contribution that will prove […]
GalleryBook Review: Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens Are Building from the Ground Up by Charles Taylor, Patricia Nanz and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor
In Reconstructing Democracy: How Citizens are Building from the Ground Up, Charles Taylor, Patricia Nanz and Madeleine Beaubien Taylor respond to the lack of public faith in the institutions of representative democracy by calling for a ‘bottom-up’ reconstruction of democracy at the local level, drawing on examples of local participatory democracy in action. While the book explores some inspiring […]
GalleryBook Review: The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea by Hannah Appel
In The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea, economic anthropologist Hannah Appel closely examines the operations of US oil companies in Equatorial Guinea, not only revealing the sheer extent and dimensions of corporate power in remaking the world, but also illuminating the ongoing project of capitalism itself. This is a revelatory study in its theoretical contributions […]
GalleryBook Review: Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War by Stephanie McCurry
In Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War, Stephanie McCurry challenges the tendency to position women outside of histories of conflict, examining the roles played by different groups of women during the US Civil War and its aftermath. The study collapses the gendered separation of war and women by positioning women as an integral part of military […]
