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The Life and Death of States

"Canonical theorists of sovereignty (Hobbes, Rousseau, and others) put the monopoly of power at the center of their definitions. These thinkers abstracted from western European experiences to universal norms. In the wake of their transformative contributions, states that did not fit the model appeared to be underdeveloped or deviant. Labels such as "provisional" or "irregular" rendered them irrelevant to theorizing and, worse, political problems that needed to be solved. One early "anomaly," says historian Natasha Wheatley, was the Habsburg Empire. Layered as it was with imperial, national, and regional sovereignty, its trajectory was not one of progress toward a unitary state. Instead, it encompassed compound polities, or states bundled together under experimental constitutional orders. Wheatley's aim in this book is to theorize from Central Europe to see how sovereignty can be produced in a complex world. In reconstructing this political and legal history, Wheatley treats Austria-Hungary as a crucible for modern legal theory. The serial remaking and eventual unmaking of imperial sovereigny in Central Europe showed how old-world dynastic conceptions of sovereignty were translated into abstract categories of modern legal thought. In so doing, she uncovers the irresolvable tensions and strategic silences in modern political theory: the presumed unity and timelessness of states. Eschewing explanations of "failure," she instead uncovers how the Central European experience crystallized legal questions that would arise again in the era of global decolonization, connecting the story of the end of empire to the birth of new nations throughout the twentieth century. In this respect, the work serves not only as a history of Central Europe but also a "prehistory" of the era of decolonization."-- Provided by publisher

Until the Last Gun Is Silent

"The untold story of the Black patriots-from soldiers in combat to peace protesters-who ended the Vietnam War and defended the soul of American democracy, from a pre-eminent civil rights historian and the award-winning author of Half American As the civil rights movement blazed through America, more than 300,000 Black troops were drafted and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. These soldiers, often from disadvantaged backgrounds and subjected to the brutalities of racism back home, found themselves thrust onto the frontlines of a war many saw as unjust. On the home front, Black antiwar activists faced another battle: Opposition to the Vietnam War, vilified by key allies in the media and government as anti-American, jeopardized the fight for civil rights. For Black Americans, the Vietnam War forced a generation to question what it truly meant to fight for justice. Award-winning civil rights historian Matthew F. Delmont weaves together the stories of two Black heroes of the Vietnam War era: Coretta Scott King, who bravely championed the antiwar cause-and eventually persuaded her husband to do the same-and Dwight "Skip" Johnson, a Medal of Honor recipient whose life ended tragically after returning from battle to his native Detroit. Together, these extraordinary accounts expose the contradictions of Black activism and military service during the Vietnam War. Through rich storytelling, Delmont offers a portrait of this period unlike any other, shedding light on a fractured civil rights movement, a generation of veterans failed by the country they served, and the valor of Black servicemen and peace advocates in the midst of it all. Vivid, revelatory, and meticulously researched, Until the Last Gun Is Silent: How a Civil Rights Icon and Vietnam War Hero Changed America is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the enduring legacy of Black military service, protest, and patriotism in the United States."-- Provided by publisher

Unspeakable Things

"In 2017, Brooke Nevils made a confidential HR complaint about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history--[Matt Lauer]--was fired, stunning millions of Americans in one of the MeToo era's defining stories. Demanding answers--and the intimate details of the most personal and painful humiliation of her life--the press soon discovered her identity ... As MeToo unfolded, Brooke learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception, and that nearly everything she'd believed about sexual harassment and assault--and how victims react to it--was wrong ... Through ... interviews with leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys, and frontline researchers, [this book] challenges our understanding of consent, power, and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame, power, and American media, Brooke's story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues to devastate lives and enable abusers."-- Provided by publisher

Sheer

"It's 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment. From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look-cosmetics through a female gaze-all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max's story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Told over nine intense days yet spanning a lifetime, Sheer is a gripping, incisive, and provocative tale of a complicated female vanguard's insatiable drive and the slippery ground between empowerment and abuse of power." -- Provided by publisher

Scavengers

"A cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother set off into the Wild West in search of buried treasure - and a way back to each other - before they run out of patience, money, and options. Junior commodities analyst Bea Macon prizes security and control over adventure - especially after being raised by free spirit Christy, who has recently been living in Utah on Bea's dime. But when Bea is fired from her job after taking an uncharacteristic risk that backfires spectacularly, she books a one-way flight to Salt Lake City, where she plans to lay low and regroup before returning to Wall Street. Though she's not about to tell Christy exactly what happened back east, Bea quickly realizes that she isn't the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an eccentric antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.? Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother's wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea's entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she's onto something - and she's not the only one. When Bea realizes Christy is planning to rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the man she's been obsessively trading theories with online, she refuses to let her go alone. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined. Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world's most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we'll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves." -- Provided by publisher

Motherdom

"Alex Bollen proposes 'motherdom', a more expansive conception of motherhood, which values and respects the different ways people raise their children. Instead of finding fault with mothers, motherdom shifts our focus to the relationships and resources children need to flourish"-- Provided by publisher

The Mattering Instinct

"Offering a new framework for understanding what can go tragically wrong in our lives and in society and how progress in each can be enhanced, best-selling author and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein returns with a book about the primal, biological drive in every living thing that, in our species alone, is transformed into one of the most persistent forces in human motivation and a force essential to human flourishing: the longing to matter. Mattering, Goldstein posits, is lodged deep in the core of humanity - it is our most profound longing, and our most opaque. It is the source of endless frustration, division, and tribalism (if this matters, how can this matter too; if we matter, how can you matter too?). And yet, this desire to matter can also save us. In a world where many of us are experiencing what Goldstein calls a crisis of mattering, perhaps we are finally poised to accept that this insatiable longing that drives humans to such different ends may also be the key to truly understanding each other. Goldstein first described "the mattering map"-a central idea in this book-in her 1983 novel, The Mind-Body Problem, and she has written many articles and given many talks on the subject for years. No surprise, then, that talk of 'mattering' has started to crop up in the mainstream conversation, especially in positive psychology and business circles. But Goldstein's decades-long obsession with the idea means that no one else can write the book Goldstein is writing: The Mattering Instinct is a major intellectual contribution, decades in the making, unfolded for a wide audience by a superb writer and storyteller."-- Provided by publisher

The Hitch

"From the author of the cult classic Treasure Island!!!, a novel following a woman as she attempts to exorcise the spirit of a dead corgi from her nephew and renegotiate the borders of her previously rational world. As an antiracist, Jewish secular feminist eco-warrior, Rose Cutler knows the right way to do everything, including parent her six-year-old nephew Nathan. But while she's looking after him in his parents' absence, things veer disastrously off course-Rose's Newfoundland attacks and kills a corgi at the park, and Nathan starts acting strangely: barking, overeating, talking to himself. Rose mistakes this for repressed grief over the corgi's death, but Nathan insists he isn't grieving, and the corgi isn't dead. Her soul leaped into his body, and she's living inside him. Now, Rose must banish the corgi from her nephew before his parents return." -- Provided by publisher

Half His Age

"Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn't know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn't? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it's just enough that he sees her when no one else does. Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles -- or attempts to overcome them -- in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved." -- Provided by publisher

Grand Rapids

Installed alongside the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, Alexander Calder's public sculpture La Grande Vitesse has come to symbolize the city. Tess moves there from Ypsilanti, Michigan in 2001--the same year that her mother dies, when everything begins to move, for her, in slow motion. Thrust into adolescence nearly rudderless, fifteen-year-old Tess is intoxicated, angsty, and sexually awake. A decade later, inspired by diary entries and TV reruns, she remembers this summer in the suburbs as the one that redefined her. Its echoes of death are frozen in time like the waves represented in the Calder sculpture or the concrete steps leading down to the churning river. She comes to see Grand Rapids as a collection of architecture and emblems, another home to which she cannot return--From publisher's website

A Gift before Dying

"In a gripping and hauntingly atmospheric novel set against the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, a disgraced police investigator discovers that his path to redemption is paved with ice-and blood." -- Provided by publisher

Five Bullets

"From CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a revelatory account of how one man, four teenagers, and a struggling city collided over race, vigilantism, and self-defense . . . and exposed the fault lines of a nation On a dirty New York subway car on December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, four teenagers from the Bronx, at point blank range. Goetz claimed they were going to mug him; the teens claim that they were just panhandling. Crime was at an all-time high. So was racial tension. Was Goetz, who was white, a hero who finally fought back? Or a bigot whose itchy trigger finger seriously wounded three unarmed black kids and condemned a fourth to irreversible brain damage? By the time Goetz went on trial for quadruple attempted murder, the saga of the "Subway Vigilante" had become a global sensation, and New Yorkers across race and class were almost equally split over whether he deserved decades in prison or a medal. In Five Bullets, Elliot Williams vaults back to gritty 1980s Manhattan and reexamines the first major true-crime story of the cable news era. Drawing on archives and interviews with many main characters, including Goetz, Williams presents a masterful and vivid tale that illuminates American divides and tells the origin stories of larger-than-life figures: Al Sharpton, a young local activist beginning his path to national stardom; Rudy Giuliani, a rising-star prosecutor with a polarizing decision to make; the NRA, which needed a poster boy as it transitioned from hunting club to political juggernaut; and Rupert Murdoch, whose new purchase, the New York Post, grew his empire by keeping a scary story in the headlines. A shocking account of a pivotal moment in our history, Five Bullets demonstrates why in order to understand debates that continue to this day about race, crime, the media, and safety, it's imperative to reflect on what went down in the subway more than forty years ago. As Williams's powerful narrative reveals, it was not just Goetz on trial, but the conscience of a nation." -- Provided by publisher

The Great Global Transformation

"In The Great Global Transformation, acclaimed economist Branko Milanovic draws on original research to chart how these seismic shifts will shape the next century of the global economy. As both the US and China retreat into protectionism, Milanovic shows how a new and multipolar world order will follow--and how rising nationalism will have dramatically different effects on the two countries. And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving populist discontent to the breaking point. A worthy successor to Capitalism, Alone and his other landmark works, Milanovic's new book announces the arrival of a new era he terms "national market liberalism," in which liberalism survives in domestic economies, but not necessarily in the social arena. The Great Global Transformation is Milanovic's indispensable account of the new twenty-first century now underway. "-- From De Gruyter Brill

One Bad Mother

"We all have an idea what it means to be a good mom: little screen time, kids hitting their milestones, endless patience and understanding, and self-sacrifice on behalf of one's children. But what does it mean to be a "bad mom" in modern society? Women as wide-ranging as Meghan Markle, Hannah Neelman (of Ballerina Farm), and anyone giving birth over forty, have been labeled "bad moms." In a world where the rules are constantly changing, it feels like women simply cannot win. With this in mind, in her first book, Ej Dickson takes a sharp, provocative look at one of society's most polarizing labels: the "bad mom." What makes a mother "bad," and why? Through the lens of pop culture and American history, Ej Dickson explores how this trope has evolved--from Victorian "angels in the house" to the infamous Mommie Dearest, from Instagram influencers like EmRata and Mormon momfluencers to fictional icons like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Each chapter dives into a different archetype of so-called bad motherhood--like the Stage Mom, the Tiger Mom, the MILF, the MLM hun--challenging us to rethink our assumptions about femininity, parenting, and societal expectations. Drawing on insightful analysis and interviews, Dickson unpacks why our culture is obsessed with vilifying moms and how issues of race and class shape these narratives. Are bad moms truly "bad," or do they simply defy norms we don't fully understand--or fear?"-- Provided by publisher

Volga Blues

In this work of reported nonfiction, an Italian journalist travels undercover along the Volga River to document contemporary Russian society following the invasion of Ukraine and restrictions on foreign media. Framed as a historical and cultural journey, the narrative combines travel reporting, interviews, and analysis informed by Russian history and literature. Through conversations with a wide range of individuals, the author examines public attitudes toward war, nationalism, religion, and relations with the West, as well as perceptions of Russia's past and future. The book situates present-day Russia within longer historical, ideological, and cultural contexts and includes a map and black-and-white photographs.

Superfan

"Freshman Minnie is adrift at college in Austin, Texas, when she discovers a boy band called HOURglass and the online forums that worship them. She especially loves Halo, whose sharp edges feel somehow familiar. After a brief romance goes painfully awry, Minnie pours everything into her new fandom, clinging to each livestream and bonding with other fans online. But when a scandal threatens to expose Halo to harm, Minnie decides that she is the only one who can save him. Except Halo's secret is darker than anything the tabloids could imagine. Before he was a superstar heartthrob, he was Eason: a high school dropout haunted by a tragic accident. When he is recruited for HOURglass, it feels like a chance to become someone else. And when he is onstage in front of his fans, he can almost forget the horrors of his past--until one of those very fans threatens to destroy everything. Dazzling, entrancing, and deeply heartfelt, Superfan is about fandom in all its magic and its terror, and the extreme lengths to which we go to rid ourselves of loneliness."-- Provided by publisher

The School of Night

"Kristian Hadeland, young and ambitious, has moved to London to study photography; he knows that he and his art are destined for more. His family never understood him, and his fellow photography students bore him. But when he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist, the future he yearns for becomes possible—as long as he is willing to sacrifice everything and stop at nothing. Twenty-four years later, Kristian sees his dreams come to fruition when a major retrospective of his work is held in New York City. As his past catches up to him, Kristian’s world begins to crumble. Success comes at a price, but is he prepared to pay it? In a thrilling twist on Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Karl Ove Knausgaard masterfully spins a cautionary tale about the lengths that we will go to achieve success—and how far we are willing to fall. His most daring and macabre novel yet, The School of Night is an indelible tale about dark temptations and moral depravity, and what we forget when we bargain with the devil." -- Amazon

The Reckoning

"California, Southern Humboldt County, 1985. Renata Drake steps off a Greyhound bus and into small-town Garberville, hoping to disappear. She checks the papers. She's not headline news. Not yet. But she's made a mistake. The FBI have the cannabis-producing "Emerald Triangle" town-- and its corrupt residents--in their sights. Even worse, a teenage girl is missing, and when she turns up dead, the third in three years, it's clear a serial killer is living among them. Renata knows about murdered girls and the burning desire for justice--and for revenge. Her younger sister Josie is gone, and now, so is the man who killed her. Renata didn't stay in Washington, D.C. to be arrested for executing a murderer, and she shouldn't stay here either. But Renata decides to investigate, and what she uncovers will trigger a final reckoning: For herself, for a killer, and for all of Southern Humboldt." -- Page 2 of cover

The Mixed Marriage Project

Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the "color line." Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn't just a part of her upbringing, it was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her entire childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages--a project he never finished but shaped every aspect of their family life. As a 21-year-old graduate student, Dorothy's father dedicated himself to the study of interracial marriage and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together over the years they interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about interracial marriages that took place as early as the 1880s--studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality. Decades later, while sorting through her father's papers, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her family: her father's research didn't begin with her parents' love story--it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father's intentions, her own views about interracial relationships, and where she fits in that story. Rather than finish the book her father never published, Roberts immerses herself in their archive of interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own. Though grounded in her parents' research, it's Roberts' captivating storytelling that drives this memoir. In following the arc of her parents' interviews and marriage, The Mixed Marriage Project invites us into the everyday lives of interracial couples in Chicago over four decades. Along the way, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today's most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, The Mixed Marriage Project is a deeply moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love.

Life after Ambition

"Channeling the subversive and sharp-eyed voice showcased in her popular column for The Cut, this memoir stylishly interrogates the aspirations of young adulthood, early middle age, motherhood and life after ambition-- for readers of Ada Calhoun, Jia Tolentino, Jessi Klein, and Maggie Smith. Building off her wildly popular viral essays "Losing My Ambition" and "The Mindfuck of Mid-Life," rising star Amil Niazi explores what life looks like "post-ambition." With sly humor and a deep literary sensibility, she interrogates her own evolving ambitions, and how they intersect with adulthood, motherhood, age, identity, class, and race, and how it has shaped her and a generation of Millennials. And, most importantly, now that she is "done with ambition"--what happens next? Life After Ambition is an achingly relatable, intensely funny punch to the gut which reveals that, though we hide them from one another, we all have the same painful bruises. Niazi has written a book that is, at its core, about optimism, about the joy of choosing something different, and about the thrill of finding ourselves when we thought all was lost. A whip-smart reimagination of how to live our lives, Life After Ambition will set the stage for rising star Amil Niazi for many years (and books) to come." -- Provided by publisher

Just Watch Me

Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister--a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption. Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She's behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she's being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy. Dell is her stream's dungeon master, banishing those who don't abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform's ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something--but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means. Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell's livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg's debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen.

Jean

"Set over one hot summer, a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole. Seventeen-year-old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with "problems." Dyslexic, antisocial, and prone to violent outbursts, Jean has never made friends easily and school has never been a place of safety or enjoyment. Compton Manor is his last chance, but even here, despite the unconventional teaching methods, Jean is marked by difference. The other boys are fee-paying, while Jean is on a grant; they have good, English families, while Jean's mother, Rosa, is a German-Jewish refugee and his father is an absent memory. Having broken the rules several times, Jean is on thin ice. But there is only one summer to get through and then Jean will pass his exams and get out. All of a sudden, he is befriended by Tom--confident, charming, buoyed by years of good breeding and privilege--and it seems as if Jean's world might change. When things turn romantic, Jean is tipped into a heady, overwhelming infatuation. Now Jean skips class to venture into the woods, or sneaks across moonlit fields to see Tom, wondering whether the relationship might offer a way out of a life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear altogether. Spellbinding and evocative, Jean is a meditative narrative of loss and escape distilled into the heartrending story of an intense and dangerous adolescent love." --Dust jacket

Island at the Edge of the World

"A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts--a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island's collapse."-- Amazon.com

Girls Play Dead

This work combines memoir, reportage, and cultural analysis to examine how fear and trauma influence responses to sexual violence. Drawing on personal experience, family history, and interviews with survivors, Jen Percy explores behavioral and psychological reactions to assault, as well as societal misconceptions surrounding these responses. The book analyzes how trauma affects memory and narrative, the ways institutions interpret survivors' accounts, and the broader cultural frameworks that shape understandings of violence, self-preservation, and healing.