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My Secret Brexit Diary
A Glorious Illusion
Michel Barnier
In June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. As the EU’s chief negotiator, for four years Michel Barnier had a seat at the table as the two sides thrashed out what ‘Brexit’ would really mean. His secret diary lifts the lid on what really happened behind the scenes of one of the most high-stakes negotiations in modern history.
October 2021
China’s Leaders
From Mao to Now
David Shambaugh
“A colourful and accessible introduction to China’s five main leaders to date.”
The Telegraph
“A fascinating look at China’s evolution since 1949 through the eyes and actions of the country’s top leaders: Mao, Deng, Jiang, Hu, and Xi. Fresh, fun, and insightful. Shambaugh has written a must-read book for understanding contemporary China.”
Elizabeth C. Economy, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution and Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Third Revolution
July 2021
After Lockdown
A Metamorphosis
Bruno Latour
After the harrowing experience of the pandemic and the lockdowns, both states and individuals have been searching for ways to exit the crisis, hoping to return as soon as possible to ‘the world as it was before the pandemic’. But there is another way to learn the lessons of this ordeal: as inhabitants of the earth, we may not be able to exit the lockdowns so easily after all, since the global health crisis is embedded in another larger and more serious crisis – that brought about by the New Climatic Regime. Bruno Latour provides a compass for a necessary re-orientation of our lives.
September 2021
Skin
Sergio del Molino
Skin is the border of our body and, as such, it is that through which we relate to others but also what separates us from them. Through skin, we speak: when we display it, when we tan it, when we tattoo it, or when we mute it by covering it with clothes. Skin exhibits social relationships, displays power and the effects of power, explains many things about who we are, how others perceive us and how we exist in the world. And when it gets sick, it turns us into monsters.
October 2021
In AI We Trust
Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms
Helga Nowotny
One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us.
September 2021
World Politics since 1989
Jonathan Holslag
1989 ushered in a new age of freedom and prosperity. Thirty years later, the golden era is over. What went wrong? How did the age of globalization – of growing connectivity, affluence and growth – give way?
“Jonathan Holslag’s tour de force is the most comprehensive and insightful account of post-Cold War international developments that I’ve read in the last decade.”
Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University and author of Reclaiming Patriotism
September 2021
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The Palliative Society
Pain Today
Byung-Chul Han
Our societies today are characterized by a universal algophobia: a generalized fear of pain. We strive to avoid all painful conditions – even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society: less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. It takes hold of politics too: politics becomes a palliative politics that is incapable of implementing radical reforms that might be painful, so all we get is more of the same.
July 2021
Love
A History in Five Fantasies
Barbara H. Rosenwein
We make sense of love with fantasies, stories that shape feelings that are otherwise too overwhelming, incoherent, and wayward to be tamed. Drawing on poetry, fiction, letters, memoirs and art, and with the aid of a rich array of illustrations, historian Barbara H. Rosenwein explores five of our most enduring fantasies of love: like-minded union, transcendent rapture, selfless giving, obsessive longing, and insatiable desire.
October 2021
