Bookshelf

Adkins, Lisa, Melinda Cooper, and Martijn Konings. The Asset Economy: Property Ownership and the New Logic of Inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2020. 176 pp. $23.95 paper  

An account of the ways in which modern capitalism privileges asset ownership, with special attention paid to the class and generational lines that shape both our economic and political fates.  

Ávila, Renata and Sercko Horvat, eds. Everything Must Change! The World After Covid-19. New York and London: O/R Books, 2020. 326 pp. $25.50 paper 

Progressive authors from around the world examine the possibilities for radical change and the forces that might deliver it—above all, in the view of many authors, the Progressive International and DiEM25.  

Brown, Wendy. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 248 pp. $33.00 paper 

Argued both theoretically and with practical examples, a study of how neoliberalism has unleashed ugly antidemocratic movements on the far-right.   

Chamayou, Grégoire. The Ungovernable Society: A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism. Translated by Andrew Brown. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2021. 350 pp. $31.95 paper 

Chamayou, a philosopher, offers a critical “genealogy” of neoliberalism by looking beyond the usual suspects.  

Gordon, Bob. Life after Covid-19: Lessons from Past Pandemics. Horncastle, U.K.: Banovallum Books, 2020. 157 pp. $30.50 paper 

An historical overview of pandemics, concluding with a forecast that Covid-19 will “have the greatest impact of any pandemic event since the Black Death.” 

Kiely, Ray. The Neoliberal Paradox. Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2018. 435 pp. $71.45 paper.

Neoliberalism rigorously explored as a form of undemocratic authoritarianism, in a major challenge to those who identify its practice with small government. 

Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. New York and London: Verso, 2016. 488 pp. $39.95 paper 

Magnum opus of one of the world’s most significant environmental thinkers, charting humankind’s reckless and interlinked experiments with capitalism and planetary transformation.  

Mann, Geoff and Joel Wainwright. Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of our Planetary Future. New York and London: Verso, 2020. 224 pp. $25.95 paper 

As the global climate crisis becomes impossible to ignore, our politics will be transformed. While the form of that transformation remains up for grabs, Mann and Wainwright show us the sorts of political arrangements we can expect to come and what we might strive for instead.  

Milanovic, Branko. Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System that Rules the World. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. 287 pp. $25.95 paper 

Capitalism dominates the globe, and yet fundamental political-economic cleavages exist. In the struggle between the distinct systems of capitalism led by the United States and China, the future will be made.  

Monbiot, George. Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. New York and London: Verso, 2018. 214 pp. $33.00 paper 

A major British thinker imagines a post-neoliberal future trajectory that preserves democratic freedoms, on the understanding “you cannot take away someone’s story without giving them a new one.” 

Tansel, Cemal Burak, ed. States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 300 pp. $64.00 paper 

Despite its promise of freedom under the aegis of the market, neoliberalism has delivered an authoritarian system reliant upon coercion, discipline and surveillance, argue the 13 chapters in this important anthology.  

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. 352 pp. $26.99 paper 

Surprising, fascinating, and liberating, if we want to think about living amidst the mess we’ve made, the world’s most valuable mushroom gives us very much to think about indeed.