Essays Social

A new, expanded collection of both new and previously published essays and articles from one of the mainstays of the Washington, DC underground rock-and-roll scene, The Psychic Soviet is the most complete collection of writings by Ian Svenonius. The selections are written in a scholarly yet engaging style, filled with parody and biting humor that subvert capitalist culture, and cover such topics as the ascent of the DJ as a star, the “cosmic depression” that followed the defeat of the USSR, and the status of rock and roll as a religion.

Love, for Emerson, is neither simple nor sweet. It is a force—wild, untamable, and yet profoundly human. In Love, he explores the deep currents that pull us together and push us apart, not with the softness of romance, but with the clarity of a philosopher who sees love as a transformative, even unsettling, experience. It is not just an emotion, but a vital, unpredictable energy that shapes and redefines us. Emerson doesn't idealize love; he insists on its complexity.

Taking one of the most politicised and misused words associated with Muslim women and Islamophobia, It’s Not About the Burqa is poised to change all that. Here are voices you won’t see represented in the national news headlines: 18 Muslim women speaking frankly about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about feminism, queer identity, sex and the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country. Funny, warm, sometimes sad and often angry, each of these essays is a passionate declaration.

What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued, Blood Rites takes listeners on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of 20th-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place - not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed.

In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.

A graphic and biting polemic that still holds a fierce political relevance and impact despite being written over half a century ago. First published in 1937 it charts George Orwell's observations of working-class life during the 1930s in the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire. His depictions of social injustice and rising unemployment, the dangerous working conditions in the mines amid general squalor and hunger also bring together many of the ideas explored in his later works and novels.

Against the Written Word is the most important, most revolutionary book produced since the advent of the printing press; the book that will liberate readers from reading, writers from writing, and booksellers from peddling their despicable wares. This book ushers in a new era of freedom from reading and all its attendant bedfellows such as Enlightenment thinking and the mass alienation wrought by the phonetic alphabet. Against the Written Word will be a tremendous best seller and simultaneously the last book that anyone will listen to.

In this prize-winning essay for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest, Dr. Ruickbie examines the evidence for the survival of consciousness after death (“life after death”). Initially skeptical, he found that there was sufficient evidence from a wide variety of sources, including apparitions, reincarnation, near-death experiences, after-death communication, and premonitions, that met the contest’s criteria of being “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Australian politics is shifting. The two-party system was broken at the last federal election, and another minority government is a real possibility in the future. Politics-as-usual is not enough for many voters. In this richly insightful essay, George Megalogenis traces the how and why of a political realignment. This is an essay about the teals, the Greens and the Coalition.

Con el espectro de la anarquía invocado por la derecha para sembrar el miedo, nunca ha sido más urgente una explicación convincente de la filosofía política conocida como anarquismo. Sobre el anarquismo arroja una luz muy necesaria sobre los fundamentos del pensamiento de Chomsky, específicamente su constante cuestionamiento de la legitimidad del poder atrincherado. El libro reúne algunos de sus ensayos y entrevistas, para proporcionar una breve y accesible introducción a su visión distintivamente optimista del anarquismo.

This combination of serious artistic engagement with warmth and clarity of prose revels in the experiences and pleasures of art and the body, identity, and community.

P.J. O'Rourke traces his development from hippie protester to conservative grouch to jaded humorist. Along the way, we are privy to his strange, twisted days as editor in chief of National Lampoon, as well as the in-depth looks at appropriate sports for middle-aged Republicans, namely those which can be engaged in with a smuggled Havana between the teeth - fly-fishing, bird hunting, deep-sea fishing, and of course, golf. Plus, you'll hear O'Rourke's take on the Virtues of Automobiles - because what good was oil doing sitting in the ground for millions of years? - and many other hilarious rants in this off-the-wall collection by America's premier political humorist.

For Jenn Shapland, the barrier between herself and the world is porous; she was even diagnosed with extreme dermatologic sensitivity—thin skin.

The first ever collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California, in the 1970s.

Australia is on the brink of momentous change, but only if its citizens and politicians can come to new terms with the past. In this inspiring essay, Mark McKenna considers the role of history in making and unmaking the nation. From Captain Cook to the frontier wars, from Australia Day to the Uluru Statement, we are seeing fresh debates and recognitions. McKenna argues that it is time to move beyond the history wars and that truth-telling about the past will be liberating and healing. This is an urgent essay about a nation’s moment of truth.

This collection of 24 essays is a perfect introduction to the world of Lewis Thomas. Topics ranging from the riddle of smelling to nuclear proliferation carry the gentle, unassuming persuasiveness that characterizes the author’s work. Here we are also introduced to the concerns that have distinguished Thomas’ literary career: the natural altruism of organisms; the inter-relatedness of all creatures; the fragility of the human species; the uneasiness of life on a threatened planet.

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish - with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings listeners under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

In this powerful, concise set of essays, world-renowned finance PhD Dr. Boyce Watkins explains that African Americans must dramatically and immediately shift the way we think about wealth, education, family, and community. We must educate our own children, own our own businesses, strengthen our families, and do what is necessary to ensure that the next generation is able to compete in a global, high-tech society.

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore Bell Hooks's electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As Hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a "powerful site for intervention, challenge and change." And intervene, challenge, and change is what hooks does best.

The international sensation that illuminates the experiences women are supposed to hide - from addiction, anger, sexual assault, and infertility to joy, sensuality, and love. In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the events that have marked her life - those emotional disruptions for which our society has no adequate language, at once bittersweet, clandestine, and ordinary. She writes with radical honesty on the unspeakable grief of infertility, on caring for an alcoholic parent, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self.