Pauline Harmange’s Controversial ‘I Hate Men’ Takes on Blind Privilege
Is misandry the best response to male misogynists? In I Hate Men, Harmange argues that a form of misandry is necessary for women's survival.
social science
This Is Why the Right Is Winning the Internet
Could it be that the internet and social media is innately in sync with conservative, right-wing ideology? On Jen Schradie's The Revolution That Wasn't.
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The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti (By the Book)
With discussions of characters like Leon Ray Livingston (a.k.a. "A-No. 1"), credited with consolidating the entire system of hobo communication in the 1910s, and Kathy Zuckerman, better known as the surf icon "Gidget", Susan A. Phillips' lavishly illustrated The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti, excerpted here from Yale University Press, tells stories of small moments that collectively build into broad statements about power, memory, landscape, and history itself.
How, in These Times, Can We Reconcile ‘Anger and Forgiveness’?
There's a lot of anger in the ugly, infuriatingly stupid, and implacable discourses of our political culture, to say nothing of the distorting, amplifying, and accelerating effects new media has for our anger. Perhaps it's time to revisit Martha Nussbaum's Anger and Forgiveness.
Southeastern European History Work, ‘The Great Cauldron’, Will Demand of You as Much as It Yields
Marie-Janine Calic's history of Southeastern Europe is undeniably well-researched, but it's also a cumbersome reading experience for anyone but the specialist.
Wednesday Martin’s ‘Untrue’ Questions Bases of Monogamy
The follow-up to Martin's bestselling Primates of Park Avenue, Untrue, digs into recent scientific research and explains why monogamy may be a fool's errand.
Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Barracoon’ Casts a Spotlight on America’s Sordid, Still Festering History
Through Oluale Kossola's telling of his story as the "last" slave in America, Hurston captures the voice of the suppressed while foisting a mirror up to modernity.
The Devil’s Music Captures How Evangelicals Went from Condemning Rock ‘n’ Roll to Harnessing It
Religious conservatives have spent as much time studying popular culture as they have condemning it, and they have arguably learned its lessons more effectively than social progressives.
‘Bring the War Home’ Digs into the Trenches of the White Power Movement in America
Historian Kathleen Belew painstakingly details the influence of the Vietnam wartime experience on the evolution of white power ideology.
What Do We Mean When We Say America Is a Christian Nation?
Matthew Bowman provides a dutiful if rather too clinical examination of how Americans have clashed or convened as to what Christianity encompasses and how this concept alters as the nation debates itself.
Certainty Interrupted: ‘Exact Thinking In Demented Times’
As a history of ideas, this work is especially good at mapping the Vienna Circle's fascinating afterlife in the English-speaking countries where many prominent thinkers landed and flourished in the 20th century.