Bookshelf

Gardini, Gian Luca, ed. The World Before and After Covid-19: Intellectual Reflections on Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations. Stockholm: European Institute of International Studies Press, 2020. Link to source.

Gardini and other contributors reflect on the likely consequences of the pandemic and provide judgements and possible changes in the various subfields of International Relations.

Garrett, Bradley. Bunker: Building for the End Times. New York: Scribner, 2020.

Garrett analyses “preppers” and how their work to prepare for coming catastrophes has made its way into our wider societal infrastructure and zeitgeist.

Joustra, Robert and Alissa Wilkinson. How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016.

Joustra and Wilkinson examine what the prevalence of apocalyptic scenarios in our media reveals about the deepest tensions and anxieties of our age.

Lachenal, Guillaume and Gaëtan Thomas. “COVID-19: When history has no lessons,” History Workshop 91, 30 March 2020; Link to source.

Lachenal and Thomas point out some of the problems that come from an over-reliance on historical precedent, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, to guide our response to modern crisis.

Lennox, John C. Where is God in a Coronavirus World? Epsom, U.K.: The Good Book Company, 2020.

Lennox demonstrates how various religious belief systems can provide hope and certainty in these unprecedented times.

Letwin, Oliver. Apocalypse How? Technology and the Threat of Disaster. London: Atlantic Books, 2020.

Letwin uses his governmental experience to demonstrate the vulnerability our of technological infrastructure to major crisis and how we can prepare for it.

Lewis, Michael. The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. New York: W.W. Norton, 2021.

Lewis tells the story of a group of American officials who responded to the pandemic in its early stages despite the Trump administration’s dismissal.

Lord, Matt, ed. Thinking in a Pandemic: The Crisis of Science and Policy in the Age of Covid-19. Cambridge, Mass.: Boston Review, and London: Verso Books, 2020.

Lord and other contributors bring the full scope of social sciences and humanities analysis to confront the challenges of the pandemic and “affirm the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a healthier and more just world.”

Lovelock, James with Peter Appleyard. Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence. London: Penguin, 2020.

Lovelock and Appleyard argue that the Anthropocene is ending to be replaced by the Novacene.

MacCormack, Patricia. The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Patricia MacCormack argues that post-human and transhuman analysis of future possibilities are incomplete. In their stead, she argues for a “ahuman” perspective in a way that combines activism, artistic practice, and affirmative ethics to confront the world’s problems in a non-nihilistic way.

Macip, Salvador. Modern Epidemics: From the Spanish Flu to Covid-19. Trans. by Julie Wark. Oxford: Polity, 2020.

Macip explores the history of modern pandemic and epidemic diseases, our responses to them, and how we can live in a world full of such invisible challenges.

MacKenzie, Debora. Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How To Stop the Next One. New York: Hachette Books, 2020.

Mackenzie outlines all the lessons we learned from previous pandemic and outlines a step-by-step guide of the failures that turned a manageable covid outbreak into a global pandemic.

Martínez-Brawley, E. and E. Gualda. “Transnational social implications of the use of the ‘war metaphor’ concerning coronavirus: A bird’s-eye view.” Culture e Studi del Sociale 5, 1 (2020), 259-272.

Martinez-Brawley and Gualda examine how war metaphors were used by public officials in the US and Spain to talk about the pandemic and the effect this had on pandemic response.  

McKibben, Bill. Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? New York: Henry Holt, 2019.

McKibben builds on his classic analysis of climate change by examining the trends that have stopped us from addressing it consequences. He argues we must confront our bleak reality or watch our civilization fade away.

Mercola, Joseph and Ronnie Cummins. The Truth about COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal: Why We Must Unite in a Global Movement for Health and Freedom. White River, Vermont and London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021.

Mercola and Cummins provide a sufficient summary of all the arguments against our current pandemic response and the conspiratorial arguments that undergird their perspective.

Middleton, Guy D. Understanding Collapse: Ancient History and Modern Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Middleton offers a fresh perspective on societal collapse and why it is a more complex phenomenon than the myths we have shrouded it in often admit.

Read, Rupert and Samuel Alexander. This Civilisation is Finished: Conversations on the End of Empire  – And What Lies Beyond. Melbourne: Simplicity Institute, 2019.

Read and Alexander argue that the downfall of industrial capitalism will inevitably occur as the contradiction between limitless growth and a finite planet plays itself out. How can we mindfully navigate this inevitable descent.

Rothman, Barbara Katz. The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021.

Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the “medical industrial complex” have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power.

Siegel, Marc. Covid: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science. Nashville: Turner Publishing, 2020.

Siegel argues that fears over Covid are overblown. He argues that our reaction is one of a long line of anxious reactions that has put the threat way out of proportion because of this “culture of fear.”

Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2020.

Wallace-Wells expands the analysis of climate change to take in not just sea level rise, but the wider geopolitical significance of the consequences of inaction. An impassion call to action called “this generation’s Silent Spring” by The Washington Post.

Zhang, Li. The Origins of Covid-19: China and Global Capitalism. Stanford: Stanford University Pres, 2021.

Zhang argues that positive and negative appraisals of China’s response to the pandemic miss the larger problems that we must address to contain Covid. China’s victory or culpability is less important that the wider political-economic changes that make new diseases more likely.