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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“This book is my panoramic assault on nihilism.”
An invitation to get lost, and to make oneself at ease in that place of mystery.
A group of people “preadapted” to danger and stress have been recruited to run a power station at the bottom of the Pacific.
“AI presents a technological shift in the framework of society that will amplify austerity while enabling authoritarian politics.”
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 modern day worker, argues Byung-Chul Han, is an “entrepreneur of themselves.”
“I believe in the possibility of dorsal, or stabilizing practices in our own lives.”
Strangers to Ourselves asks questions about how we name and respond to people with “unsettled” minds.
This compact and intense treatise argues that we are living through a crisis of community and attendant loss of ritual power.
Inspector Tyador Borlú serves on the Extreme Crime Squad in the city of Besźel.
Tricia Hersey—aka “The Nap Bishop”—is here to tell us to rest, and I am ready to listen.
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.
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.
A world-ending weapon that makes its targets “go away” has, perhaps predictably, gone awry and left large parts of the world uninhabitable.
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.
Grady Kendall is biding his time in Maine, living with his mom as the pandemic swirls around them.