CHARLES

CHARLES

THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING: A NEW HISTORY OF HUMANITY

This book is an absolute game-changing history of humanity that wipes the slate clean when it comes to most everything we were taught about our origins in prehistory. Graeber—the author of Debt, who coined the phrase “'the 99%”—and Wengrow begin here by dismantling the deeply unscientific influence of Hobbes and Rousseau on our understanding of the human timeline and how their bad assumptions can still be found in the works of contemporaries like Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker. After, they move on to a jaw-dropping discussion of the actual evidence for the incredible variety of ways people actually lived before and during the rise of “civilization.” All this is done in service of an Activist point of view; clearing the way for a more sophisticated understanding of who we are, where we come from, and the rich possibilities for real change in our societies now.

REVOLUTION IN OUR TIME: THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY’S PROMISE TO THE PEOPLE

A long-overdue history directed at kids, this introduction to the woefully underappreciated Black Panther Party is easily one of the most important children’s books this year.

MUTUAL AID: AN ILLUMINATED FACTOR OF EVOLUTION

Kropotkin’s most famous work, re-released here on the eve of its 100th anniversary. For those unfamiliar, Kropotkin was a Russian aristocrat who gave up his birthright and became one of the most important godfathers of modern anarchist thought. Mutual Aid was a direct attack on Social Darwinism by dismantling the cliche of “survival of the fittest” and replacing it with the much more accurate concept of “mutual aid as a factor in evolution.” To this day, Mutual Aid continues to be validated by each new breakthrough in our understanding of how the evolution of species actually works. This gifty volume is illustrated and includes an introduction by David Graeber.

LEVIATHAN FALLS (EXPANSE #9)

The last volume of The Expanse, one of the best sci-fi epics of the 21st century. This book will be followed quickly by the last season of The Expanse TV series, easily the best sci-fi show since Ronald Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. If you know what this is all about, you’ll definitely want this. If you don’t, I highly recommend the show and the first volume of the books, Leviathan Wakes. Fantastic stuff.

DANGEROUS VISIONS AND NEW WORLDS: RADICAL SCIENCE FICTION, 1950-1985

An exciting history/re-evaluation of literature’s disowned younger sibling: science fiction. Focusing on its radical shift to the Left in the 1960s, the essays here give long overdue credit to some of the sci fi greats that have only recently begun to find their way to acceptance within the pantheon. I’ve always found it to be teeth-grindingly frustrating how often the themes and tropes of sci fi are found in critically praised novels by “literary” authors without anyone ever giving props to how the same material has been dealt with for decades by very talented, but very ghettoized writers (I’m looking at you, The Road by McCarthy and you Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro, etc.). Our current apocalyptic trajectory as a society, for instance, has been predicted and discussed countless times over the decades in little pulp paperbacks with ridiculous cover art and found on spinner racks in grocery stores, only to be ignored by all the critics and award givers of literature. Meanwhile, the great themes of modern literature (alienation, transformation, absurdism, symbolism, the relativity of truth, etc.) are arguably dealt with just as well or better in the lesser known gems of sci fi. Anyway, this book will make the point better than I can …