All information sourced from publishers.
Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War, Ash Sarkar
Most of us are getting screwed over. Our world is defined by inequality, insecurity, lack of community and information overload. As the world burns, mega-corporations are reporting record profits. How are they getting away with it?
“Minority rule” is the term Ash Sarkar uses to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. She reveals how minority elites rule majorities by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics, stoking fear and panic in our media landscape. Because despite what they’ll have you believe, antiracist campaigners aren’t actually silencing the “forgotten” working class, immigrants aren’t eating your pets, trans-activists aren’t corrupting your children, and cancel culture isn’t crushing free speech.
In Minority Rule, Sarkar exposes how a strategic misdirection of blame over who is really screwing everything up is keeping the majority divided, while the real ruling minority of hedge fund managers, press barons, landlords and corporations remain on top. And it’s facilitating one of the biggest power grabs in history. Most crucially, she shows us how what we really have in common is being concealed by a deafening culture of distraction – and that the first step towards a better future is understanding what is happening now, and how we got here.
The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East, Christopher Harding
From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards, the West’s relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the 20th century, much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back.
The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship.
Can Feminism be African?: A Most Paradoxical Question, Minna Salami
What happens when we consider Africa through a feminist lens and feminism through an African one? And what does it mean to centre selfhood in this journey?
In this wide-ranging inquiry, Minna Salami explores these questions through an unhesitating and incisive vision of African feminist political philosophy.
Drawing from feminist thought, postcolonial theory, historical insights, and African knowledge systems, Salami combines personal reflection with cultural criticism to offer a vivid and cohesive discussion about power, identity, patriarchy, imagination, and the human condition. Grounded in Africa’s enduring visions of agency and autonomy, Can Feminism Be African? opens new paths for rethinking the narratives that shape our world.
Friends in Youth: Choosing Sides in the English Civil War, Minoo Dinshaw
At the Inns of Court, the intellectual, literary, and social heart of early 17th century London, many pivotal friendships were forged: few closer than that of Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward (Ned) Hyde. Both young men were lively characters, industrious, well-connected, principled and optimistic. They dreamed of reforming the government of Charles I, a young court with age-old problems, by restoring the traditional harmony of the Crown and Parliament. This is the story of how their hopes climbed, overreached, and fell into an abyss of relentless civil war.
Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller, Peter Conrad
Peter Conrad’s rediscovery of Dickens suggests that he alone rivals Shakespeare and in some ways betters him. In addition to re-examining the great novels, Conrad’s book probes the journalism in which Dickens reports on his risky ventures into the urban underworld. It also describes the celebrated but dangerously over-intense public readings in which, as at a seance, he allowed his most terrifying characters to take possession of him. Ultimately it reveals how the forces of creation and destruction come together in Dickens, who despite his reputation for jollity and effusive sentiment found it increasingly hard to control the madness and violence of his own self-destructive genius.
Last Call for Bud Light: The Fall and Future of America’s Favorite Beer, Anson Frericks
Anson Frericks, a former president at Anheuser-Busch – formerly the home of America’s most popular brewery – watched as the company unravelled at the hands of globe-trotting financiers and progressive middle management.
Rather than pursue shareholder profits, Anheuser-Busch suddenly became focused on stakeholder capitalism and the vague mandates of environment, social, and governance (ESG). This ill-advised change cumulated in the shocking evaporation of $30 billion in market cap after releasing an advertising campaign starring political activist Dylan Mulvaney.
Now, Anheuser-Busch’s evolution and its subsequent fallout is brought to light as never before with this ultimate insider’s look. Compelling and eye-opening, Last Call for Bud Light is the story of the downfall and future of an American icon.
