Explore some of our most anticipated new releases for December 2024
This month: an analysis of contemporary authoritarianism and the medium in which it flourishes, the internet; a timely collection that shows how design can animate public space and catalyze democratic processes; luminous essays on artists of the Italian Renaissance; and more. Explore these books and a selection of our other new and soon-to-be-released titles below.
The Emperor’s New Nudity: The Return of Authoritarianism and the Digital Obscene by Yuval Kremnitzer
In recent decades, a new style of authoritarian politics has taken hold throughout the liberal-democratic world. The new authority figures are characterized by obscene, transgressive behavior, reminiscent of the “crowd” leader as theorized by Freud, only far less transient. In The Emperor’s New Nudity, Yuval Kremnitzer considers the fraught intersection of authority and technology—the internet being the medium that has allowed contemporary authoritarianism to thrive—asking foundational questions such as: How can we think of the network as a social phenomenon? What can social and political phenomena teach us about the nature of the new technology? And how does technology reshape the very fabric of social and political life?
You might also like Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right by Adrienne L. Massanari
Interrogative Design edited by Ian Wojtowicz
“Design thinking” emphasizes the production of solutions after a period of research. By contrast, interrogative design focuses on activating the public sphere and enriching public discourse through the production of questions. A notable contribution to the fields of critical design and media art, interrogative design traces its development to Krzysztof Wodiczko and his 1990s public art projects, documented in the book Critical Vehicles. In Interrogative Design, Ian Wojtowicz showcases this lineage with new writing from Wodiczko and a host of contributions from diverse and influential practitioners, including Rosalyn Deutsche and Antoni Muntadas. This book highlights the dynamism of interrogative design as it is practiced today.
You might also like Design Strategy: Challenges in Wicked Problem Territory by Nancy C. Roberts
The Lies of the Artists: Essays on Italian Art, 1450–1750 by Ingrid D. Rowland
In the three centuries from 1450 to 1750 painters, sculptors, and architects emerged from the medieval craft guilds of Italy to claim a new social status as creators, whose gorgeous handiwork, now called “art,” expressed lofty inspiration as much as manual skill. In The Lies of the Artists, Ingrid Rowland takes us into the world of these artists, and into their seemingly miraculous ways of transforming transcendent ideas into tangible works of art that challenged and redefined reality, “lies” with the power to reveal a deeper truth.
You might also like The Polyhedrists: Art and Geometry in the Long Sixteenth Century by Noam Andrews
Darwinizing Gaia: Natural Selection and Multispecies Community Evolution by W. Ford Doolittle
First conceived in the 1970s, James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis proposed that living organisms developed in tandem with their inorganic surroundings, forming a complex, self-regulating system. Today, most evolutionary biologists consider the theory problematic. In Darwinizing Gaia, W. Ford Doolittle, one of evolutionary and molecular biology’s most prestigious thinkers, reformulates what evolution by natural selection is while legitimizing the controversial Gaia Hypothesis. As the first book attempting to reconcile Gaia with Darwinian thinking, and the first on persistence-based evolution, Doolittle’s clear, innovative position broadens evolutionary theory by offering potential remedies for Gaia’s theoretical challenges.
You might also like Properties of Life: Toward a Theory of Organismic Biology by Bernd Rosslenbroich
The Feeling of Space by Christopher Bardt
Place is something real, but space is generally conceived as abstract and immaterial. In The Feeling of Space, Christopher Bardt explores this damaging modern binary and traces the contradictory impulses that have dematerialized our sense of space through history: fear and wonder; a yearning for the infinite and the intimate; and the need for autonomy and for belonging. Using rich illustrations and examinations of art, technology, and philosophy, Bardt argues that if we can get back to first feeling space, then we can treat space as the substance that gives agency to our intersubjectivity—our exchange of conscious and unconscious thoughts.
You might also like The Monster Leviathan: Anarchitecture by Aaron Betsky
How to Research Like a Dog: Kafka’s New Science by Aaron Schuster
Written toward the end of Kafka’s life, “Investigations of a Dog” (Forschungen eines Hundes, 1922) is one of the lesser-known and most enigmatic works in the author’s oeuvre. Kafka’s tale of philosophical adventure is that of a lone, maladjusted dog who challenges the dogmatism of established science and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world. In How to Research Like a Dog, Aaron Schuster uses the canine as a guide dog to rediscover Kafka’s fictional universe, while taking up the cause of this ingenious, possessed, melancholy, comical, and revolutionary thinker.
You might also like Nihilism by Nolen Gertz
Playframes: How Do We Know We Are Playing? by Celia Pearce
Playframes builds on the work of Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman to take a deep dive into Bateson’s primary question: How do we know we’re playing? In this book, Celia Pearce addresses this question by building a comprehensive theory of the specific mechanisms that metacommunicate the message “this is play.” This “big tent” approach covers a broad swath of playframes, ranging from theme parks to cosplay, board and video games, and sports, and describes how spatial and temporal frames, as well as artifacts such as costumes and uniforms, toys, and sports equipment, let us know when a play activity is underway.
You might also like Play Matters by Miguel Sicart
Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer by Jesper Juul
The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun, Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years.
You might also like Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie ® by Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman