A selection of our most anticipated releases of the month
This month, a graphic novel about young women recruited to an elite secret society founded by Marie Curie, a deep examination of Library and Information Science and Studies using Critical Race Theory, two new volumes in the Essential Knowledge series, and much more. If that’s not enough, you can browse all of our new and forthcoming releases here.
The Curie Society by Heather Einhorn, Adam Staffaroni, and Janet Harvey; edited by Joan Hilty
An action-adventure original graphic novel, The Curie Society follows a team of young women recruited by an elite secret society—originally founded by Marie Curie—with the mission of supporting the most brilliant female scientists in the world. The heroines of the Curie Society use their smarts, gumption, and cutting-edge technology to protect the world from rogue scientists with nefarious plans.
You might also like Women of Science Tarot by Massive Science
Annotation by Remi H. Kalir and Antero Garcia
Part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, Annotation offers an introduction to annotation as a genre—a synthesis of reading, thinking, writing, and communication—and its significance in scholarship and everyday life.
You might also like Critical Thinking by Jonathan Haber
Yesterday’s Tomorrow: On the Loneliness of Communist Specters and the Reconstruction of the Future by Bini Adamczak
The communist project in the twentieth century grew out of utopian desires to oppose class structures and abolish oppression. The attempts to realize these ideals, however, became a series of colossal failures. In Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Bini Adamczak examines these catastrophes, and in the process seeks a future that never happened.
You might also like The Monopoly of Man by Anna Kuliscioff
The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds by Christopher E. Mason
Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit. In The Next 500 Years, Christopher Mason argues that humans have a moral duty to do just that—and he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds.
You might also like CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans by Henry T. Greely
Hate Speech by Caitlin Ring Carlson
Hate speech can happen anywhere—in Charlottesville, Virginia, where young men in khakis shouted, “Jews will not replace us”; in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to target the Muslim Rohingya; in Capetown, South Africa, where a pastor called on ISIS to rid South Africa of the “homosexual curse.” This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines hate speech: what it is, and is not; its history; and efforts to address it.
You might also like Fake Photos by Hany Farid
YEAR 1: A Philosophical Recounting by Susan Buck-Morss
Conventional readings of antiquity cast Athens against Jerusalem, with Athens standing in for “reason” and Jerusalem for “faith.” And yet, recent scholarship has overturned this separation. Naming the first century as a zero point—“year one”—that divides time into before and after is equally arbitrary, nothing more than a convenience that is empirically meaningless. In YEAR 1, Buck-Morss liberates the first century so it can speak to us in another way, reclaiming it as common ground rather than the origin of deeply entrenched differences.
You might also like Conflicted American Landscapes by David E. Nye
Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory edited by Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight
In Knowledge Justice, Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color scholars use critical race theory (CRT) to challenge the foundational principles, values, and assumptions of Library and Information Science and Studies (LIS) in the United States. They propel CRT to center stage in LIS, to push the profession to understand and reckon with how white supremacy affects practices, services, curriculum, spaces, and policies.
You might also like Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education edited by Joe Karaganis
The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope by Daniel Greene
Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology, and what makes us feel that we need to learn to code—or else? In The Promise of Access, Daniel Greene argues that the problem of poverty became a problem of technology in order to manage the contradictions of a changing economy. Greene shows how the digital divide emerged as a policy problem and why simple technological solutions to complex social issues continue to appeal to politicians and professionals who should (and often do) know better.
You might also like Dependent, Distracted, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media by Susanna Paasonen
People Count: Contact-Tracing Apps and Public Health by Susan Landau
In order to stop a pandemic before a vaccine arrives, contact tracing is key, the first step in a process that has proven effective: trace, test, and isolate. Smartphones can collect some of the information required by contact tracers—not just where you’ve been but also who’s been near you. In People Count, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau looks at some of the apps developed for contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that issues of effectiveness and equity intersect.
You might also like Viruses, Pandemics, and Immunity by Arup K. Chakraborty and Andrey S. Shaw
The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez
Now in paperback, The Alchemy of Us by scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions—clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific labware, and silicon chips—and reveals how they shaped the human experience. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies.
You might also like Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject by Braxton Soderman