Books
Class Struggle in the 21st Century
Whoever keeps posting Karl Marx quotes on the breakroom bulliten board needs to stop.– Management Engage yourself with consequential reflections about labor and class struggle in the 21st century with these (not just thought but also action-provoking) five superb books: — Anderson, Elizabeth. 2023. Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers […]
Trump’s ‘God Bless the USA Bible’ is No Joke
As he makes another bid for the White House, Donald Trump is well aware of...
Book Release: “Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide”
I’m pleased to make note here of the release, on March 19th, of my book Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide published by Princeton University Press. Here is the book’s description and cover:
- Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn’t always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies—Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life—and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.
- Chopra shows that many philosophers—including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.
- Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.
Innocent Until Proven Muslim — A Q&A with Dr. Maha Hilal
To fight a War on Terror, the state needs terrorists. Indeed, it creates them. As...
Queer love and yearning
For all the progress we’ve seen in the gay rights movement, Lead Us Not is a well-crafted reminder that queer joy is still so often unattainable.
Private desires, collective dispossession
In her book Kassab looks horror in the eye, dignifies private desires and grieves their loss, and in doing so reminds us what being human looks like.
It is identity, stupid! Nationalism, trade, and the populist rage
by Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira* The literature on populism in the 21st century often assumes that far-right leaders draw their support from voters who have lost out to globalization. This is the case among low-skilled, white workers in Global North democracies, including the United States. But, there are also meaningful occurrences of backlash against the political establishment and […]
On Book Reviews
There has been discussion among some philosophers on social media about the decline in the number of book reviews published by Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR).
[detail of “Pile of Books” by Cornelius Volker]
Last year NDPR published 65 book reviews. But in the years 2006-2019 the number of reviews published there annually ranged from 250 to 426.
Of course, NDPR isn’t the only outlet for reviews of philosophy books. Many journals publish book reviews.
Last year, in attempt to provide a central hub for the listing of these book reviews, and greater publicity for them, Daily Nous started including in its Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Updates book reviews published in journals, provided they were open access.
Responsibility is with the journals to let us know when new open access reviews are published, however, and only a small number of journals do so regularly.
If more journals made their book reviews open access, and more journals regularly sent in to us their open access book reviews for inclusion in the Weekly Updates, that might go some of the ways to making up for the slowdown at NDPR. Journal editors, please consider doing both of these things, if possible. Thanks.
The post On Book Reviews first appeared on Daily Nous.
Unlock the Magic Eye
Reviewed: Doppelganger, Naomi Klein, Allen Lane In 2014, fresh from officiating an impromptu same-sex wedding in a New York bookstore, the comedian Joan Rivers made an off-colour joke. When asked by a reporter whether she thought she’d live to see a gay president, Rivers replied that they already had one in Barack Obama. Rivers started to walk away before adding, ‘You know Michelle is a tranny.’ A few months later, Rivers was dead after complications during a routine medical procedure. According to some, the Obamas had killed her, House of Cards-style, because Rivers had come too close to […]