Babel

R. F. Kuang

In the nineteenth century, the British empire has achieved exceptional power through its dominance of silver-working: an art that locates and exploits the magic in the gaps of meaning between languages.

When to Talk and When to Fight

Rebecca Subar

This short and impactful book outlines a concise and clear strategic framework for choosing whether to negotiate, to build power, or to vanquish your opponents.

Mutual Aid

Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin’s thesis is that it is mutual aid, cooperation, and solidarity—rather than competition—that permit evolution and survival among the species, both humans and more-than-humans.

Space Crone

Ursula K. Le Guin

I was unfamiliar with the titular essay in this collection, but as soon as I heard it, I realized with a start that my one great longing in life is to become a space crone.

Saving Time

Jenny Odell

“This book is my panoramic assault on nihilism.”

My Trade Is Mystery

Carl Phillips

An invitation to get lost, and to make oneself at ease in that place of mystery.

Starfish

Peter Watts

A group of people “preadapted” to danger and stress have been recruited to run a power station at the bottom of the Pacific.

Resisting AI

Dan McQuillan

“AI presents a technological shift in the framework of society that will amplify austerity while enabling authoritarian politics.”

Elite Capture

Olúfémi O. Táíwò

A cogent argument about how the elite has coopted identity politics in order to deliver a facade of change while leaving the underlying structures of racial capitalism in place.

The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han

The modern day worker, argues Byung-Chul Han, is an “entrepreneur of themselves.”

Undrowned

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

“I believe in the possibility of dorsal, or stabilizing practices in our own lives.”

Strangers to Ourselves

Rachel Aviv

Strangers to Ourselves asks questions about how we name and respond to people with “unsettled” minds.

The Disappearance of Rituals

Byung-Chul Han

This compact and intense treatise argues that we are living through a crisis of community and attendant loss of ritual power.

The City and the City

China Miéville

Inspector Tyador Borlú serves on the Extreme Crime Squad in the city of Besźel.

Rest Is Resistance

Tricia Hersey

Tricia Hersey—aka “The Nap Bishop”—is here to tell us to rest, and I am ready to listen.

Ways of Being

James Bridle

Amid a drive for more “artificial” intelligence, James Bridle here asks what counts as intelligence, and then reframes fears about a future AI takeover into more productive—and present—ends.

Nona the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

In the third book of the Locked Tomb series, Nona lives with her friends Camilla, Palamedes, and Pyrrha in a cramped apartment in a tall building in a city menaced by a great hulking creature in the sky.

The Gone-Away World

Nick Harkaway

A world-ending weapon that makes its targets “go away” has, perhaps predictably, gone awry and left large parts of the world uninhabitable.

Just Culture

Stanley Dekker

Drawing from safety practices in transportation and medicine, Sidney Dekker outlines how to (and how not to) create a culture of trust, learning, and accountability.

Hokuloa Road

Elizabeth Hand

Grady Kendall is biding his time in Maine, living with his mom as the pandemic swirls around them.