April books: Counting Feminicide, Gaia’s Web, The Secret Life of Data, and more

Explore some of our most anticipated new releases for April 2024

This month: data feminism in practice; an exploration of the “Internet of Living Things;” the future of data surveillance; and more. Explore these books and a selection of our other new and soon-to-be-released titles below.


Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action by Catherine D’Ignazio

What isn’t counted doesn’t count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting such murders—and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. Drawing on Data Against Feminicide, a large-scale collaborative research project, Catherine D’Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account.

You might also like Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein


Gaia’s Web: How Digital Environmentalism Can Combat Climate Change, Restore Biodiversity, Cultivate Empathy, and Regenerate the Earth by Karen Bakker

At the uncanny edge of the scientific frontier, Gaia’s Web explores the promise and pitfalls the Digital Age holds for the future of our planet. Instead of the Internet of Things, environmental scientist and tech entrepreneur Karen Bakker asks, why not consider the Internet of Living Things? At the surprising and inspiring confluence of our digital and ecological futures, Bakker explores how the tools of the Digital Age could be mobilized to address our most pressing environmental challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss. Interspersed with ten elegiac, enigmatic parables, each of which is based on an existing technology, Gaia’s Web evokes the conundrums we face as the World Wide Web intertwines with the Web of Life.

You might also like A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for the Twenty-First Century by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta


The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert

In The Secret Life of Data, Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The authors build on this basic premise: no matter what form data takes, and what purpose we think it’s being used for, data will always have a secret life. How this data will be used, by other people in other times and places, has profound implications for every aspect of our lives—from our intimate relationships to our professional lives to our political systems.

You might also like The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Development in India by Janaki Srinivasan


Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey by Erika Dyck

Interest in psychedelics has grown considerably in recent years—one might even say psychedelics are experiencing a renaissance. But these mind-altering plants have always been with us. They have a rich and controversial history, in fact: plumbed from the depths of ancient Greek culture, infused with Christian symbols of sacrament, enriched by Buddhist philosophies, protected through Indigenous ceremonies, and, by the latter part of the twentieth century, catapulted into cultural consciousness through science, music, posters, blotter art, and fashion. In Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey, Erika Dyck takes readers on an epic visual trip through some of the diverse ways that our fascination with psychedelics have been imagined throughout history.

You might also like Expanding Mindscapes: A Global History of Psychedelics by Erika Dyck and Chris Elcock


Juice: A History of Female Ejaculation by Stephanie Haerdle

For over 2000 years, vulval sex fluids were understood to be a natural part of female pleasure, only to become disputed or categorically erased in the twentieth century. Today what do we really know about female ejaculation and squirting? What does the research show, and why are so many details unknown? In Juice, Stephanie Haerdle investigates the cultural history of female genital effluence across the globe and searches for answers as to why female ejaculation—which, according to some reports, is experienced by up to 69 percent of all women and those who have vulvas upon climaxing—has been banished to the margins as just another male sex fantasy.

You might also like Sexus Animalis: There Is Nothing Unnatural in Nature by Emmanuelle Pouydebat


The Human Disease: How We Create Pandemics, from Our Bodies to Our Beliefs by Sabrina Sholts

The COVID-19 pandemic won’t be our last—because what makes us vulnerable to pandemics also makes us human. That is the uncomfortable but all-too-timely message of The Human Disease, which travels through history and around the globe to examine how and why pandemics are an inescapable threat of our own making. Drawing on dozens of disciplines—from medicine, epidemiology, and microbiology to anthropology, sociology, ecology, and neuroscience—as well as a unique expertise in public education about pandemic risks, biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts identifies the human traits and tendencies that double as pandemic liabilities, from the anatomy that defines us to the misperceptions that divide us.

You might also like Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion by Richard Conniff


Job Crafting by Benjamin Laker, Lebene Soga, Yemisi Bolade-Ogunfodun and Adeyinka Adewale

Job Crafting is a rigorous, modern take on job redesign that empowers workers to transform the jobs they have into the ones they want. Through the process of job crafting, a worker proactively alters their job to emphasize tasks that better align with their skills or that allow opportunities to learn new skills, with the help of executives who are willing to transform their organizations into supportive work environments. Offering practical guidance grounded in empirical evidence, British researcher Benjamin Laker and coauthors Lebene Soga, Yemisi Bolade-Ogunfodun, and Adeyinka Adewale describe the steps necessary for businesses and organizations to facilitate that support.

You might also like Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone by Lynda Gratton


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