On justification

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be expl...

On language

The two most popular titles by the noted linguist and critic in one volume—an ideal introduction to his work.  On Language features some of Noam Chomsky’s most informal and highly accessible work. In Part I, Language and Responsibility, Chomsky presents a fascinating self-portrait of his politica...

On leadership

This book offers a comprehensive look at interdisciplinary leadership, featuring contributions from various sectors like education, business, government, military, law enforcement, and healthcare. It highlights best practices for effective leadership in the 21st century and beyond.

On liberty

Discussed and debated from time immemorial, the concept of personal liberty went without codification until the publication of this enduring work which applies an ethical system of utilitarianism to society and the state which to this day remains well known and studied.

On liberty and its enemies

This collection of twenty of Kenneth Minogue's essays, written over a period of more than fifty years, celebrates the advent of modern liberty. They describe the conditions under which liberty and individuality can flourish and the threats to liberty's flourishing in our time. Minogue offers a po...

On limited nuclear war in the 21st century

The last two decades have seen a slow but steady increase in nuclear armed states, and in the seemingly less constrained policy goals of some of the newer "rogue" states in the international system. The authors ofOn Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century argue that a time may come when one of th...

On loop

How struggles over Black sound have shaped Oakland’s culture, politics, and geography.   Chicago has house. Detroit has techno. But Oakland slaps.  On Loop explores the role of Black dance music and sonic politics in recurring struggles over race and space in Oakland, California. Insisting on the...

On love

On Love is globally bestselling novelist-philosopher Alain De Botton’s iconic debut—the novel that launched his decorated literary career; and a funny, profound, and searingly true-to-life exploration of love.A man and a woman meet over casual conversation on a flight from Paris to London, and s...

On making fiction

Friederike Danebrock shows how texts insist that we take them seriously as agents and interlocutors in our world- and culture-making activities.

On making sense

On Making Sense juxtaposes texts produced by black, Latino, and Asian queer writers and artists to understand how knowledge is acquired and produced in contexts of racial and gender oppression. From James Baldwin's 1960s novel Another Country to Margaret Cho's turn-of-the-century stand-up comedy,...

On malice

On Malice is watching you—new poems about and by surveillance, from Griffin-winning Ken Babstock.

On mary wollstonecraft's a vindication of the rights of woman

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) made a pioneering and durably influential argument for women’s equality. Drawing on extensive experience teaching and writing about Wollstonecraft, Susan J. Wolfson provides fresh perspectives both for first-time readers and those ...

On matricide

Despite advances in feminism, the "law of the father" remains the dominant model of Western psychological and cultural analysis, and the law of the mother continues to exist as an underdeveloped and marginal concept. In her radical rereading of the Greek myth, Oresteia, Amber Jacobs hopes to rect...

On mental illness

A compassionate guide to normalizing mental illness and achieving emotional wellbeing. This is a guide to coping with a wide variety of mental unwellness, from the very mild to the severe. It explains how and why we become mentally ill, how we can explain our experiences to friends and family, an...

On mercy

Is mercy more important than justice?Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had been exiled from political life. In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment’s rejection of mercy. Political realism, Bull argues...

On microfascism

On Microfascism uncovers the disturbing composition of the contemporary fascist movement in the United States through its emergent forms.

On my country and the world

Drawing on his own experience, rich archival material, and a keen sense of history and politics, Mikhail Gorbachev speaks his mind on a range of subjects concerning Russia's past, present, and future place in the world. Here is Gorbachev on the October Revolution, the Cold War, and key figures su...

On my way to liberation

How do you imagine trans liberation while living in a cis world? On My Way To Liberation follows a gender nonconforming body moving through the streets of Chicago. From the sex shop to the farmers market, the family dinner table to the bookstore, trans people are everywhere, though often erased. ...

On new terrain

An insightful and timely analysis of how global economic restructuring will impact workers' struggles in the US.

On niccolò machiavelli

Gabriele Pedullà—a leading Italian expert and acclaimed writer—provides a vivid and engaging introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works that sheds new light on his originality and relevance.

On nostalgia

From Mad Men to MAGA: how nostalgia came to be and why we are so eager to indulge it. From movies to politics, social media posts to the targeted ads between them, nostalgia is one of the most potent forces of our era. On Nostalgia is a panoramic cultural history of nostalgia, exploring how a fo...

On our own

The U.S. has experienced a dramatic increase in births to unmarried women in recent decades—from 4% of births in 1950, with most of the babies then adopted, to more than 30% today. Melissa Ludtke's book is the only in-depth analysis of this radical change in family formation to compare and contra...

On ovid's metamorphoses

Drawing on many years of teaching Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Gareth Williams offers a brisk and lively reading of the poem that emphasizes why it speaks in compelling ways to a twenty-first-century audience. He shows how the Metamorphoses is not just a colorful collection of stories about change but a...

On pain of speech

On Pain of Speech tracks the literary rant, an expression of provocation and resistance that imagines the power to speak in its own name where no such right is granted. Focusing on the “politics of address,” Dina Al-Kassim views the rant through the lens of Michel Foucault's notion of the biopol...

On palestine

Chomsky and Pappé discuss the past and future of Palestine.

On pandemics

Containing important information about the coronavirus, this comprehensive, easy-to-follow primer on pandemics, epidemics, and the panics they ignite around the world also shares solutions for a safer, healthier future. “A quiet little gem of understanding in a cacophony of panic and fear.” —Quil...

On pedantry

A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual viceIntellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downright aggression. Many learned individuals have cast such hostility as a badge of honor, a sign of envy, or a form of resistance to inconvenient trut...

On personal and public concerns

Eliezer Schweid’s career as philosopher, scholar, educator and public intellectual has spanned the history of the State of Israel from the pre-war Yishuv period to the present. In these essays he recalls his formative years in the Zionist youth and the Hebrew University. He reflects on the existe...

On pestilence

In the spring of 1576, the Health Office of Venice, fearful of a growing outbreak of plague, imposed a quarantine upon the city. The move was controversial, with some in power questioning the precise nature of the disease and concerned about the economic and political impact of the closure. A tri...

On philosophy

This book re-examines important figures from the entire history of philosophy to show how and why philosophy must renew itself as a critical practice dedicated to dialogue with women, people of color, LGBTs, and others who seek liberation from age-old oppressions.

On poetry, culture, and democracy

“Robert Pinsky belongs to that rarest category of talents, a poet-critic.”—Robert LowellTwo important books of criticism by the Pulitzer Prize finalist and former U.S. poet laureate—now combined in a single volume with a new preface by the authorFor Robert Pinsky, poetry’s individual, human scale...

On power and ideology

This succinct series of lectures lays out the parameters of Noam Chomsky's foreign policy analysis.

On practice and institution

The concepts of practice and institution are of longstanding importance across the social sciences, that have been too disconnected. Bringing together novel theoretical statements and empirical studies that bridge these social worlds, these two volumes provide a major touchstone for scholars inte...

On psychological and visionary art

The first English translation of Jung’s landmark lecture on Nerval’s hallucinatory memoirIn 1945, at the end of the Second World War and after a long illness, C. G. Jung delivered a lecture in Zürich on the French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval. The lecture focused on Nerval's visionary memoir, A...

On purpose

A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western thought, from ancient Greece to the presentCan we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and even Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which profoundly shook the idea, was una...

On retaliation

The book constitutes a unique interdisciplinary approach. It brings together contributions from psychologies, economic science, legal history, international law, criminology, social anthropology. The book forges a bridge from the fundamental analysis of the concept and theories of re...

On risk

With COVID-19 comes a heightened sense of everyday risk. How should a society manage, distribute, and conceive of it?

On roman time

Because they list all the public holidays and pagan festivals of the age, calendars provide unique insights into the culture and everyday life of ancient Rome. The Codex-Calendar of 354 miraculously survived the Fall of Rome. Although it was subsequently lost, the copies made in the Renaissance r...

On rumors

Many of us are being misled. Claiming to know dark secrets about public officials, hidden causes of the current economic situation, and nefarious plans and plots, those who spread rumors know precisely what they are doing. And in the era of social media and the Internet, they know a lot about how...

On russian music

Over the past four decades, Richard Taruskin's publications have redefined the field of Russian-music study. This volume gathers thirty-six essays on composers ranging from Bortnyansky in the eighteenth century to Tarnopolsky in the twenty-first, as well as all of the famous names in between. Som...

On screen and off

On Screen and Off shows that the making of Nazism was a local affair and the Nazi city a product of more than models and plans emanating from Berlin. In Hamburg, film was key in turning this self-styled "Gateway to the World" into a "Nazi city." The Nazi regime imagined film as a powerful tool to...

On seamus heaney

A vivid and original account of one of Ireland’s greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographerThe most important Irish poet of the postwar era, Seamus Heaney rose to prominence as his native Northern Ireland descended into sectarian violence. A national figure at a time w...

On security

On sexuality and power

It is widely supposed that the most suitable partner will be someone very much like oneself; gay fiction and cinema are often organized around this assumption. Nonetheless, power differentials are remarkably persistent—as well as sexy. What are the personal and political implications of this insi...

On shedding an obsolete past

A renowned historian and writer dismantles foreign policy decisions of the Trump and Biden administration. 

On shifting ground

On Shifting Ground examines how it is to become a man in a place and time defined by economic contraction and carceral expansion. Jamie J. Fader draws on in-depth interviews with a racially diverse sample of Philadelphia's millennial men to analyze the key tensions that organize their lives: isol...