Category: Author Video

January 10, 2021

Video: Eric Hayot in Conversation with Paul Saint-Amour about Humanist Reason

 “[Humanist Reason] is not another anxious apology or resentful jeremiad about the decline of the humanities. This is a confident and liberating gift that shows us how and why to practice humanist reason now.” —Chad Wellmon, coauthor of Permanent...

January 8, 2021

Video: Four Reasons to Reread A Visit from the Goon Squad

 “A brilliant investigation … Ivan Kreilkamp is a music critic as well as a literary scholar, versed in both Middlemarch and Minor Threat, so he brings revelatory insight into Egan’s punk-inspired story of time lost and time regained.” —Rob...

January 5, 2021

Video: Mark Blyth on Global Trumpism and the Future of the Global Economy

“With considerable sophistication and a good dose of humor, this book dissects the popular anger that has made our economics unsustainable and our politics dysfunctional. Lonergan and Blyth rightly call for a reset of our current model of capitalism. To...

January 3, 2021

Video: Prices and Decentralization Without Convexity

“This groundbreaking book of practical economic theory by Milgrom, the world’s most accomplished designer of complex auctions, describes the design of the most complex auction yet: the FCC incentive auction for electromagnetic spectrum. The book also illuminates why the magic...

December 9, 2020

Video: Mark C. Taylor Reads from His New Book, Intervolution: Smart Bodies Smart Things

 “Intervolution is at once informative and thought-provoking—a fascinating exploration of the ever-narrowing gap between men and machines. Mark C. Taylor uses his own experience of chronic illness to probe some of the central questions of our time.” ~Elizabeth Kolbert,...

December 5, 2020

Video: Michael Alexander on the Origins of Making Peace with the Universe

 “What happens when worlds fall apart? It’s a question that so many of us have asked ourselves in times of crisis. The marvel of Michael Scott Alexander’s book is that he has transformed his own search into a discovery...

October 25, 2020

Video: Matthew Hart Introduces Extraterritorial

 “A fascinating book about why the idea of being extraterritorial has come to preoccupy writers and artists and a rejoinder to celebrations of the cosmopolitan intellect or the ostensible age of postnational globalization. Hart highlights the aesthetic appeal and...

October 24, 2020

Video: Eric Bulson Introduces Ulysses by Numbers

 “Numbers in literature often have magical or secret meanings, but this remarkable book also shows us other, quite startling modes of literary counting, giving us the pleasure we find only in the best critical readings: we are surprised and...

October 10, 2020

Video: Todd McGowan in Conversation with Richard Boothby on Emancipation After Hegel

 “Todd McGowan’s Emancipation After Hegel could not come at a more appropriate time: the time when we truly need to carefully (re)think and reestablish the idea of emancipation. The book does this in a brilliant and compelling way, taking contradiction—as understood...

October 9, 2020

Video: Penelope Deutscher and Jana Sawicki in Conversation with Lynne Huffer on Foucault’s Strange Eros

 “In a provocative take on eros as a verb—as erosion of the thinking subject bound by grids of intelligibility that define her identity—Huffer offers the splendid final installment of her Foucault trilogy. Forcefully written with a capacious imagination, this book...

September 11, 2020

Video: Bernard E. Harcourt Asks, “Can Critical Theory Change the World?”

 “Today the paradigm has shifted and praxis must be posed as subjectivation. If before the problem consisted in responding to ‘What is to be done?,’ today the question is ‘What more am I to do?’ Harcourt thus transforms critical...

August 20, 2020

Video: Bruce D. Haynes on “What Makes Harlem Special?”

 “Bruce D. Haynes’s story is a classic American tale—which combines the big themes of history with the gritty reality of a single family’s extraordinary story.” ~Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNN...