Check out my holiday gift guide!
Nice shout out in the Atlantic →
A short but wonderful trip to Brussels for the 2023 Festival of Freedom
So many memories in only 3 days!
Everyday Utopia in Maine!
Check out this amazing drone footage of the Cribstone Bridge
Everyday Utopia in Harpswell, Maine
Scenes from my May 24th book event with Joan Wallach Scott at the Institute for Advanced Study
Thanks very much to Andrea Kane for her lovely photographs!
In conversation with Arwa Mahdawi at the Philadelphia Free Library →
Birth announcement
An excerpt of Everyday Utopia in Penn Today →
Spotted on the Staff Picks wall at McNally Jackson in Rockefeller Center
So happy to still be on the nonfiction staff picks wall!
3 days only (April 26-28)! Preorder Everyday Utopia with 25% off in North America
3 days only (April 26-28)! Preorder Everyday Utopia with 25% off in North America on Barnes & Noble
The cover of the Dutch translation of Everyday Utopia →
2023 Reading Challenge: The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin
I have dipped in and out of this book for decades, but I finally sat down and read it cover-to-cover. There’s so much to process in this book, and so much that is still very relevant to the present day.
“A revolution is more than the destruction of a political system. It implies the awakening of human intelligence, the increasing of the inventive spirit tenfold, a hundredfold... It is a revolution in the minds of men, more than in their institutions”
2023 Reading Challenge: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
One of my favorite books of all time, I just reread it for my class on Anarchism and I can see the influence of Godwin, Goldman, Bakunin, and Kropotkin everywhere. So much to discuss with this book, and I am so excited for teaching my class today. There are days where I just really love my job.
2023 Reading Challenge: The Overstory by Richard Powers
So I need to limit the number of 500-page books that I read if I am ever going to make my reading goal for the year, but I’ve been meaning to get through this one for a while.
Trees. Trees. Tress. All I can see now is trees.
2023 Reading Challenge: Left is Not Woke
This is an advanced galley of a book that is coming out in March. It’s a slim little volume, but it packs a powerful punch. Here’s the full blurb I wrote for it:
“Susan Neiman’s provocative book is an impassioned and accessible defense against the corrosive particularisms that have eroded solidarity and cooperation on the left. To face the many challenges of the 21st century, she argues that we must reclaim those strategic universalisms that historically helped to forge diverse coalitions of activists in shared struggles for social progress. To build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world, we need to acknowledge the victories of our past, recognize the contingent malleability of our present, and embrace a radical politics of hope for our future.”
Some ink in 34th Street
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I shared a lovely conversation with Norah Rami for this piece.
Full review of Red Valkyries in the Chicago Review of Books →
Spotted in the wild
So nice to see my book in the English language bookstore in Sofia.
Winter reading: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful book about a book and the power of words spanning generations. It’s about all of the stories that link us together and the beauty of writing. It’s a 600-page novel with three different sets of protagonists in different time frames whose stories all somehow converge at the end. The first 150-pages of exposition can be a little confusing and hard to follow, but it is definitely worth it. One of the best novels I have read in a very long time, and I just re-read The Plague by Camus.
One of my favorite quotes: “That’s what the gods do, they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.” page 439
The Bulgarian translation of Second World, Second Sex arrived in the post today
It looks so nice! I am so grateful to the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, ROI Books, and Iztok-Zapad books for publishing this translation.
