Reviews Archives - Page 13 of 17

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What Are the Costs of Libertarianism?

Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, Revisited

August 10, 2017 • by Claire Potter

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking Press, 2017.) Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy MacLean's account of James McGill Buchanan and public choice economics, has caused an unusual stir in the few months since its publication. You may have followed the lengthy ...

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We Are Swarming, Again.

Thoughts on William Connolly’s new book, Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming

August 7, 2017 • by Richard Porteous

‘Swarming’ has a rich and complex history in political and philosophical literatures. That history percolates in political theorist William Connolly’s recent book Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming in which he proposes a ‘Politics of Swarming,’ and even resonates in his writing style. The question of ‘swarming’ intersects ...

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How Buddhism and Marxism Can End Our Suffering

Interdependence as a Response to Global Crisis

August 6, 2017 • by Hawa Allan

Terry Gibbs, Why the Dalai Lama is a Socialist: Buddhism and the Compassionate Society (Plymouth, UK: Zed Books, 2017). Distributed in the United States by the University of Chicago Press. Paper: 19.95. "I’m not going to argue in this book that we all need to be Buddhist Marxists," writes Terry Gibbs in ...

How Buddhism and Marxism Can End Our Suffering

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We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

A Review of Adam Greenfield’s Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life

July 23, 2017 • by James Daniel

As new technologies course towards cultural and economic supremacy, Silicon Valley CEOs and digital advocates have become increasingly circumspect about the question of risk. Many leaders in the industry like Apple CEO Tim Cook have effectively banished the word from their lexicon. As he noted in a recent keynote address ...

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The Controversy Over Democracy in Chains

A Review Essay

July 18, 2017 • by Andrew Seal

You may be aware that the new book by Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (Viking, 2017) has received a lot of notice over the past week or two. Some of this notice has been very positive, but much more has been ...

The Controversy Over Democracy in Chains

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The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization

Poetry, Art, and the New Spirit of Capitalism

July 16, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Updating Walter Benjamin -- whose famous essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' on which the title of his book riffs -- poet and critic Jasper Bernes seeks nothing less than a complete reconsideration of poetry and art over the past 50 years, coinciding with the ...

The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization

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Practice Makes Practicable

From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art

July 11, 2017 • by Vince Carducci

Clocking in at nearly 900 pages of dense text plus index, Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art, edited by artist and researcher Samuel Bianchini and curator and critic Erik Verhagen, is a door-stopper of a book. Its ambition is equal to its mass -- it proposes to rewrite postwar Western ...

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Revisiting the Scourge of Human Folly

A Review of Charles Ludlam’s ‘The Artificial Jungle’

June 22, 2017 • by Dara Levendosky

“A theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a madly farcical manner without losing the seriousness of the theme. Show how paradoxes arrest the mind. Scare yourself a bit along the way.” – Charles Ludlam During the 1960s, New York City experienced a surge in ...

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Homesteading the Lower East Side

A Review of Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

June 7, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016) The Lower East Side has long been an object of fascination for those who study New York. It has been a location for bohemia, from the early 20th century to the Beats and ...

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Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

May 31, 2017 • by Lisa Aslanian

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...

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Fame, Truth, and Justice

A Review of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro

May 17, 2017 • by Simone Lewis

“…The general reaction to famous people who hold difficult opinions is that they can’t really mean it. It’s considered, generally, to be merely an astute way of attracting public attention, a way of making oneself interesting...”- James Baldwin, No Name in The Street James Baldwin was more than a writer and ...

Reviews

Uncovering Freakonomics Radio

A Review

April 19, 2017 • by Tracy Varites

Freakonomics Radio, a podcast produced by WNYC Studios, explores the “hidden side of everything.” Inspired by the book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economics Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, written in 2005 by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist, Stephen J. Dubner, it touches on a range of topics from crime ...