This study of organizing and decluttering professionals helps us understand—and perhaps alleviate—the overwhelming demands society places on our time and energy.
For a widely dreaded, often mundane task, organizing one’s possessions has taken a surprising hold on our cultural imagination. Today, those with the means can hire professionals to help sort and de ... Show More
Today
Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ... Show More
44m 53s
Yesterday
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialized death machines—by racialized premature death. If this haunting is not adequatel ... Show More
58m 24s
Sep 2024
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson, "Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer" (U California Press, 2024)
Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer (U California Press, 2024) unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of passion by exploring work inside craft breweries.
As workers attempt new modes of employment in the era of the Great Resignation, ... Show More
49m 16s
Jul 2024
Amanda McMillan Lequieu, "Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people re ... Show More
41m 40s
Aug 2023
Marisa Holmes, "Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has b ... Show More
44m 19s
Oct 2024
When We Prioritize Data and Metrics, What Happens to Human Connections?
Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton University Press, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other is valuable and worth preserving. D ... Show More
53m 5s
Dec 2023
Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce, "Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World" (The New Press, 2023)
In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World (The New Press, 2023) offers winning strategies, history, and theory for a new generation of activists ... Show More
33m 4s
Feb 2024
Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Denielle A. Elliott, "Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Ethnographic research has long been cloaked in mystery around what fieldwork is really like for researchers, how they collect data, and how it is analyzed within the social sciences. Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024), a unique compe ... Show More
50m 43s
Nov 2023
Astra Taylor, "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart" (House of Anansi Press, 2023)
These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on?
In The Age of Insecurity (House of Anansi Press, 2023), author and activist Astra Taylor ... Show More
1h 1m
Nov 2023
Astra Taylor, "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart" (House of Anansi Press, 2023)
These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those who appear to have it all. What is going on?
In The Age of Insecurity (House of Anansi Press, 2023), author and activist Astra Taylor ... Show More
1h 1m
Jun 2024
David Zeitlyn, "An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
In Professor Zeitlyn's words, anthropology “has had enough of the big ideas already” -especially theories with a big ‘T’. In a discipline that seems to be constantly beset by ‘turns’, or agonising over its status and ‘commensurability’ across cultural differences, Professor Zeitl ... Show More
39m 49s
Oct 23
Joanna Woronkowicz, "Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers" (Stanford UP, 2025)
What does it mean to be an artist? In Artists At Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers (Stanford UP, 2025) Joanna Woronkowicz, the co-founder of the Center for Cultural Affairs and co-director of the Arts, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab at Indiana University Bloomingt ... Show More
40m 18s