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History and Current Events
October 2026
Recent Releases
After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order by Rana Dasgupta
After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order
by Rana Dasgupta

A brilliant and visionary book. --Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America What has happened to the nation-state? From a prize-winning writer, a sweeping history of this most unquestioned of modern structures and a bold imagining of its future Until recently, the system of nation-states appeared settled and eternal. Not anymore. As American hegemony unwinds and Western countries slide into anxiety and debt, there is a resurgence of tyranny, imperialism and war. It is no longer clear that states can deliver minimal services, let alone defeat inequality and climate change. Even in rich countries, many feel they are being progressively neglected; in some parts of the world, populations are entirely abandoned by nation-states and must depend on improvised systems of their own. Rana Dasgupta traces the formation and rise of the nation-state system in order to explain its multiple failures today. He takes us from the fall of ancient empires and the expansion of European concepts of money and law right up to the emergence of twenty-first-century tech firms--the first significant new geopolitical actors to emerge since the inception of nation-states--and the epochal restoration of Chinese power. He posits that the time has come to develop a new conception of citizenship, law, and economy--one that corresponds to our globalized and ecologically fragile condition. Richly detailed, urgent, and told with remarkable clarity, After Nations is an essential text for anyone looking to understand why we seem to be losing our political hold on the world, and how we might try to restore it.
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State
by Jill Lepore

Taking inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore’s thought-provoking latest examines the origins and evolution of artificial intelligence, detailing AI’s damaging influence over politics, economics, and the everyday fabric of life. Try this next: Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy by Beth Simone Noveck.
The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men by Jon Ronson
The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men
by Jon Ronson

In his nuanced and compelling latest, bestselling investigative journalist Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed) explores the modern masculinity crisis, focusing on the eyebrow-raising exploits of predatory steel industry heir Chris Mark; actor and alleged cannibal Armie Hammer; Ronson’s former friend, disgraced Irish showrunner Graham Linehan; “manosphere” content creator Dan Bilzerian; and more. Try this next: What Is Wrong with Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything by Jessa Crispin.
No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis by Jessica Barrett
No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis
by Jessica Barrett

From award-winning journalist Jessica Barrett, an honest and urgent look at our housing crisis and lessons from around the world that will make better homes for all Canadians. After living in Vancouver for her entire adult life, Jessica Barrett packed up her apartment, quit her dream job as a magazine editor, and headed for Calgary in search of an affordable place to call home. In the years since Barrett was priced out of Vancouver, the issue of housing affordability has become a national crisis, fanning the flames of social inequality and setting us up for financial ruin. But our obsession with rising housing prices obscures a more complex and pressing issue: we have lost our reverence for and our understanding of home. In No Place Like Home, Barrett dives behind the headlines and statistics of Canada's housing crisis to examine how it has eaten away at our psyches by undermining our human needs for belonging, connection, and stability. Through a mix of powerful memoir and rigorous journalism, she delivers an eye-opening portrait of our housing system while scouring the world for examples of how we might do things differently, pulling inspiration from the slum communities of Harare, Zimbabwe, the stately streets of Vienna, Austria, and the Cold-war era apartment blocks of West Berlin. In the process, Barrett forms a framework for solutions and the basis for achievable change. Her biggest discovery? We cannot solve our housing crisis until we first address our crisis of home.
Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto by Barry Eichengreen
Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto
by Barry Eichengreen

A 2,500-year history of international currencies that reveals new insights about the future of the U.S. dollar--as well as crypto and central bank digital currencies Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar's prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow. Money Beyond Borders recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the greenback of the Renaissance, and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s. The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise--and why they fall.
The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud by Cecilia Rikap
The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud
by Cecilia Rikap

A brilliant analysis of capital accumulation in the AI era that charts a roadmap for battling against the predatory concentration of knowledge, data and narratives in the hands of Big Tech, by award winning economist. Capitalism's rulers are not abstract entities or shadowy operators. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are the cloud hegemons that subsume the world through the exercise of their intellectual monopolies. Giants like Disney, McDonalds, Nike or Walmart depend on them to use AI for knowledge and value extraction and for disciplining workers. States see some of their core functions sequestered. Innovation is not a free and neutral game, but a hierarchy topped by the rulers. Rikap's new theoretical framework is grounded in a unique trove of 112 interviews at the world's largest firms and data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents. They picture a map of the complexities and political implications of corporate power. In Rikap's counterimage, technology is developed by the people and for the people and the planet through democratic planning.
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