Monthly Archives: August 2023

A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern (eds.), Sacred Kinship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence – Columbia University Press, May 2022 Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of … Continue reading →

Thomas Nail, Matter and Motion: A Brief History of Kinetic Materialism – Edinburgh University Press, December 2023

Andrew Mason, What’s Wrong with Lookism? Personal Appearance, Discrimination, and Disadvantage – Oxford University Press, July 2023 People are treated differently as a result of their looks. But when is appearance discrimination, or “lookism” as it is often called, morally … Continue reading →

Lauren Benton, They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence – Princeton University Press, February 2024 Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slaving, and plunder. European empires amassed global power by asserting a right to use unilateral force at … Continue reading →

Adam Bobbette, The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java – Duke University Press, August 2023 The Introduction is available here In The Pulse of the Earth Adam Bobbette tells the story of how modern theories of the earth emerged from the slopes of Indonesia’s … Continue reading →

Krešimir Vuković, Wolves of Rome: The Lupercalia from Roman and Comparative Perspectives – December 2022 The study is a fresh interpretation of the Roman foundation myth and one of the most important Roman festivals – the Lupercalia, an annual celebration … Continue reading →

Irene Cheng, The Shape of Utopia: The Architecture of Radical Reform in Nineteenth-Century America – University of Minnesota Press, August 2023 In the middle of the nineteenth century, a utopian impulse flourished in the United States through the circulation of … Continue reading →