CityReads│Recommended Festive Reads from LSE Review of Books
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Recommended Festive Reads
From LSE Review of Books
LSE Review of Books has featured reviews ofmany of the best new books being published across the social sciences and the humanities. For the festive season, we recommend some of the most interestingreads.
Sources: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/12/21/recommended-festive-reads-from-lse-review-of-books-part-one/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2015/12/22/recommended-festive-reads-from-lse-review-of-books-part-two/
Picture source: google doodle, New Year, 2015
For the Cinephile:
The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism. Delphine Bénézet. Wallflower Press. 2015.
Delphine Bénézet explores the filmmaker’s career through a particular focus on her lesser studied films. Sander Hölsgens praises the book for drawing attention to the diversity of Varda’s oeuvre, as well as to the crucial role played by the corporeal across her filmic works.
For the Economist:
Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future. Paul Mason. Allen Lane. 2015.
Alongside comprehensive insight into the failings of the current economic system, this book outlines the emergence of a new economic paradigm – postcapitalism – partly instigated by rapid developments in information technologies. For Paul Mason, technological innovation fosters myriad changes that can challenge the traditional categories of classical economics to instead offer the possibility of forging a more socially just and sustainable economy. But, Simon Horton asks, is Mason overly optimistic in assuming that the information economy will necessarily engender a transition away from existing capitalist structures?
Forthe Environmentalist:
Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change. Nicholas Stern. MIT Press. 2015.
Nicholas Stern expands upon the 2006 Stern Review to offer a timely argument in favour of global action on climate change. As Stern goes beyond economic analysis to discuss the scientific, political, ethical and practical aspects of forging pathways to international cooperation, Chandni Singh welcomes the book as a valuable contribution to the task of tackling the twin challenges of this century: global poverty and climate change.
For the Gender Scholar:
Being Gorgeous: Feminism, Sexuality, and the Pleasures of the Visible. Jacki Willson. I. B. Tauris. 2015.
Jacki Willson explores the ways in which ostentation, flamboyance and dressing up can allow women to subvert traditional notions of femininity through ‘pastiche, parody, or pleasure’. Taking examples from ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, this book examines how modern-day female performers can establish their own version of femininity through its reappropriation.
For the Historian:
A Historical Atlas of Tibet. Karl E. Ryavec. University of Chicago Press. 2015.
Following two decades of research, Karl E. Ryavec expertly presents the historical and cultural transformations of Tibet since the Palaeolithic period through a series of 49 maps supplemented by detailed keys, essays and accompanying photographs. The first work of its kind, this is a beautiful reference book of value to a range of scholars and students including historians, anthropologists, historical geographers and digital cartographers, writes Tim Chamberlain.
For the IR(International Relations) Scholar:
Women and Power in Postconflict Africa. Aili Mari Tripp. Cambridge University Press. 2015.
Aili Mari Tripp provocatively argues that major conflict can have disruptive, egalitarian effects, catalysing women’s increased legislative representation. She demonstrates how conflict has often pushed women into socially valued domains, where they demonstrate their equal abilities and thereby undermine prevailing gender ideologies. This book sheds light on much broader processes of egalitarian social change common to the Global North and South alike.
For the Media Studies Scholar:
The Media and Public Life: A History. John Nerone. Polity. 2015.
John Nerone details the emergence of journalism as a practice grounded in the representation of public opinion, positing a number of key transformative moments in its evolution. Exploring the tensions between the ideal of the journalist as a public intellectual and the realities that jeopardise this role, Nerone presents an interesting and thought-provoking read, writes Elizabeth Folan O’Connor, producing insights that, while occasionally general, extend beyond the book’s predominant US focus.
Forthe Philosopher:
Of God and Man. Zygmunt Bauman and Stanislaw Obirek. Polity. 2015.
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and ex-Jesuit priest Stanislaw Obirek engage in a dialogue about the place of spirituality and religion in the everyday lives of individuals. Setting their discussion against the backdrop of twentieth- and twentieth-first-century politics and society, Bauman and Obirek explore their differences as well as their separate paths to agnosticism.
For the Political Scientist:
The End of Representative Politics. Simon Tormey. Polity Press. 2015.
Simon Tormey challenges the assumption that politics and democracy are ‘dead’, blighted by chronic distrust of the political class and undermined by the perceived failure of representative democracy to secure social justice. As Tormey instead points towards emergent forms of ‘subterranean’ politics indicative of a ‘post-representative’ era, he proposes a novel and informative expansion of the scope of ‘democracy’ and ‘politics’ in the contemporary moment, writes Ali Dadgar.
Forthe Sociologist:
The Sociologist and the Historian. Pierre Bourdieu and Roger Chartier. Polity Press. 2015.
The first English-language publication of conversations held between the sociologist Bourdieu and the historian Roger Chartier in 1988, this book focuses particularly on the disciplines of history and sociology. Canan Bolel praises this frequently witty and engaging insight into the relationship between sociological and historical practice and the construction of academic knowledge.
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