Political science and theory Books

A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year‘Magnificent’The Times ‘Dazzling’ New Statesman ‘It filled me with hope’ Zadie Smith What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to ‘always be optimising’?...

In the early 1970s, Australian governments began to treat Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander as 'peoples' with capacities for self-government. Forty years later, confidence in Indigenous self-determination has been eroded by accounts of Indigenous...

Charities play an outsize role in the social, cultural and economic life of the nation, delivering goods and services on which lives depend. To effectively serve their communities, charities also participate in politics: campaigning for changes to law...

The years 1956-72 were as eventful as any that had gone before, and Julius Stone touched on many international issues. The hydrogen bomb and the space race were popular topics. Decolonisation and independence in Asia and Africa were covered, especially...

Queen Elizabeth's visit showed a strong remaining affection for the crown, despite the nation's shift of its power alliances to the USA. In the USA, McCarthyism crashed with the discrediting of its leading figure; in Argentina the autocratic populist...

In the Pacific, Australia entered the multi-lateral ANZUS treaty, consolidatingthe nation's independence of Britain; Communist China pressed its claims toreplace Taiwan on the Security Council; Queen Elizabeth II began her longreign; and adventurism by...

Originally broadcast by the ABC between 1942 and 1972 and re-discovered in 2006, these conversational opinion pieces by jurist Julius Stone take the reader back to the mid-20th century, bringing to life the people, events and the sweep of affairs during...

Letters to Australia is a collection of Julius Stone's radio talks, originally broadcast by the ABC between 1942 and 1972. Recently discovered in the nation's archives, they take the reader back to the mid-20th century, bringing to life the...

Letters to Australia is a collection of Julius Stone's radio talks, originally broadcast by the ABC between 1942 and 1972. Recently discovered in the nation's archives, they take the reader back to the mid-20th century, bringing to life the...

In Hoodie Economics, Jack Manning Bancroft builds a values system revolution that centres a relational economy, offering urgent and transformative solutions to embrace Indigenous thinking and ideas from outside the margins and pushing the...

The acclaimed book Oliver Stone called “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance,” JFK and the Unspeakable details not just how the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy was carried out, but WHY it was done…and why...

In The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of Twenty-First-Century Fascism, New York Times bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck argues that the American way of life will not survive the Great Reset and warns us to stop it...

This is the first full-length study of the material and visual culture of the British labour movement in almost half a century. It draws together the fruits of recent research into a comprehensive material and visual analysis of the nineteenth-century...

"Insightful...empathetic...a thoughtful consideration of a topic that will have a substantial impact on our future."-BooklistReadable Feast, Book Award Winner for Socially Conscious Writing * Civil Eats' Food and Farming Book PickEver wonder if there's a...

Over the last three decades the historian Gabriel Kolko has redefined the way we look at modern warfare and its social and political effects. Century of War gives us a masterly synthesis of the effects of war on civilian populations and the political...

Winner of Outstanding Book Award of Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human RightsAn award-winning and canonical history of radical feminism, whose activist heat and intellectual audacity powered second-wave feminism-30th anniversary edition A...

An innovative argument that vindicates our normative commitment to basic equality, synthesising philosophy, history, and psychology.What makes human beings one another's equals? That we are 'basic equals' has become a bedrock assumption...

The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards - and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property...

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the post mortem continuity of monarch and monarchy,...

This description is based on the MIT professor's writings on linguistics in the 1950s; but beginning with his criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky became much better known for his radical politics than for his theories of language. Over the...

Neil Davidson explores classic themes of nation, state, and revolution in this collection of essays. Ranging from the extent to which nationalism can be a component of led-wing politics to the difference between bourgeois and socialist revolutions, the...

In this wide-ranging book of essays, Deutscher prize-winning author Neil Davidson offers theoretical reinterpretations and appraisals of key thinkers and themes of interest to contemporary radicals. Throughout Davidson demonstrates the enduring...

America Besieged deals with the underlying forces within U.S. society that deeply affect our lives. Showing how we are being misled and harmed by those who profess to have our interests at heart, Michael Parenti writes: "We are indeed a nation besieged,...

A rousing commentary on the history of labor and the future of work. An Atlantic Edition, featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine's 165-year archive.On Work gathers a...

An incisive guide to abolitionist strategy, and a love letter to the movement that made this moment possible.long-time organizers Rachel Herzing and Justin Pich reveal a movement that has made the struggle for abolition as real as the institutions they...

Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist, 2024 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn't...

'Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today.' John Vaillant, author of Fire WeatherThe essays in...

A powerful case for why majority rule not representation is the defining feature of democratic politics.The idea that democratic governance rests on active self-rule by citizens plays surprisingly little part in current theories of democracy, which...

A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy.At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual...

Mental health care and its radical possibilities reimagined in the context of its global development under capitalism.The contemporary world is oversaturated with psychiatric programs, methods, and reforms promising to address any number of "crises" in...

Political strategies for tackling climate change and other "long problems" that span generationsClimate change and its consequences unfold over many generations. Past emissions affect our climate today, just as our actions shape the climate of tomorrow,...

After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental...

An invaluable reflection on the essence of liberal democracy - and an ideal introduction to the work of political philosopher Raymond Aron.Liberty and Equality is the first English translation of the last lecture delivered at the Collge de France by...

Howrace shapes expectations about whose losses matterIn democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can't always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up...

In 2017, the Government's attempt to trigger Article 50 and so leave the European Union resulted in a judgement by the Supreme Court, which stated that the Government was unentitled to do so without the consent of Parliament, directly citing the Bill of...

A powerful case for democracy and how it can adapt and survive - if we want it to.Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country's system of governance is being...

How the utopian tradition offers answers to today's environmental crisesIn the face of Earth's environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won't save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound...

The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated the right to abortion and is revisiting other fundamental questions today - about voting rights, affirmative action, gun laws, and much more. Once-arcane theories of constitutional interpretation are profoundly...

A provocative new history of liberalism that also provides a road map for today's liberalsFreedom from Fear offers a striking new account of the dominant political and social theory of our time: liberalism. In a pathbreaking reframing of the historical...

Why debunked political rumors persist and how to combat themPolitical rumors and misinformation pollute the political landscape. This is not a recent phenomenon; before the currently rampant and unfounded rumors about a stolen election and vote-rigging,...

Tracing the origins of modern political thought through three sets of arguments over history, morality, and freedom.In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by...

Utopia poses a question. Not simply in the sense of a problem to be resolved and at the same time eliminated . . . but in the sense that, within the economy of the human condition, utopia, the aim of social alterity of all social otherness is ceaselessly...

The term "Mexican Drug War" misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair.But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just...

By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism-New York City. This book, a collection...

The manifesto that launched the Situationist International (SI) into the public eye and sparked an uprising is back-with the story of its creation and the histories of its publication told like never before.When the Situationist International was a...

Mario Tronti was the principal theorist of the radical political movement of the 1960s known in Italy asoperaismoand in the Anglophone world as Italian workerism, a current which went on to inform the development of autonomist Marxism. His "Copernican...

"The interconnected works of Volodine-think Faulkner, but after an apocalypse-constitute the most exciting project in contemporary French literature."-Maria ClementiThat is what we had called post-exoticism. It was a construction connected to...

Fully revised and expanded, this stirring account reveals how the U.S. government permitted the illegal entry of Nazis into North America in the years following World War II. This extraordinary investigation exposes the secret section of the State...