Noah Giansiracusa, "Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life" (Penguin, 2025)
Everything we do today is recorded as data that’s sold to the highest bidder. Plugging our personal data into impersonal algorithms has made government agencies more efficient and tech companies more ...
20 Aug 20251h 2min
Steve L. Monroe, "Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World" (Cornell UP, 2025)
In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and social connections between state and capital underpin the A...
19 Aug 202524min
Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystem...
18 Aug 20251h 31min
Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This boo...
17 Aug 202551min
Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, "Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian rule for a more sophisticated, globall...
14 Aug 202555min
Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025)
The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the auto...
13 Aug 20251h 3min
Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers are Changing the World
We all have the power to change the world through the products we buy. This simple premise has driven the growth of the conscious consumer movement for decades. Indeed, what started with a handful of ...
12 Aug 202557min
Vijay Selvam, "Principles of Bitcoin: Technology, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. By stripping away the hype, jargon, and superficial ...
11 Aug 202558min
