First devised as after-dinner entertainment at a decennial meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists in Great Britain, and first published by Prickly Pear Press in 1993, this expanded edition of Waiting for Foucault represents some of the brightest anthropological satire—mixed in with some of the most serious intellectual issues in the human sciences. Whether he's summing up the state of the discipline ("Some things are better left un-Said") or ruminating on the ancients, Sahlins delivers a strong mixture of wit and wisdom.

Waiting for Foucault, Still (Paradigm (Chicago, Ill.), 1.)

Literature & Fiction

Sahlins, Marshall

History & Criticism

Prickly Paradigm Press

Bruno Latour is best known for his work in the cultural study of science. In this pamphlet he turns his attention to another worthy pursuit: the project of peace. As one might expect, Latour gives us a radically different picture of this project than Kant or the philosophes, asserting that the West has been in a constant state of war both with other cultures and its own—although unwittingly so. Read through the lens of his trademark take on "the modern," his arguments are original, thoughtful, and, as usual, provocative.

War of the Worlds: What about Peace?

LATOUR, Bruno

Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehensive picture available of Richard Rorty's political views. This is Rorty being avuncular, cranky, and straightforward: his arguments on patriotism, the political left, and philosophy—as usual, unusual—are worth pondering. This pamphlet will appeal to all those interested in Rorty's distinct brand of pragmatism and leftist politics in the United States.

Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Deirdre McCloskey's work in economics always calls into question its reputation as "the dismal science." She writes with passion and an unusually wide scope, drawing on literature and intellectual history in exciting, if unorthodox, ways. In this pamphlet, McCloskey reveals what she sees as the secret sins of economics that no one will discuss—two sins that "cripple" economics as a "scientific enterprise."

The Secret Sins of Economics

Business & Money

McCloskey, Deirdre N.

Economics

Thomas Frank has been sending wake-up calls to just about everyone within reach over the past decade, in venues from The Village Voice to Harper's. His takes on labor politics, advertising, the virtues of the Midwest, and how un-cool you really are have won him a wide audience, and in this piece, Frank gives us a reading of cultural studies—viewed by some as an important new perspective in the academy, but by others as an unwieldy theoretical fad.

New Consensus for Old: Cultural Studies from Left to Right

Frank, Thomas

If politics as practiced is talk, then how does a political figure—especially an American President—talk politics? If someone can be all style and no substance, is there any actual political substance to style? Talking Politics looks at the alpha and omega of presidential image, its highs—Lincoln at Gettysburg—and lows—"W" at any microphone—demystifying the spun mists of political "message" on which an institution like the American presidency has always depended.

Talking Politics: The Substance of Style from Abe to "W" (Paradigm (Chicago, Ill.), 6.)

Reference

Silverstein, Michael

Words, Language & Grammar

We live in an age of "popular culture"—another term, to some, for an organic mess of marketing strategies aimed at giving us the illusion of choice. From Oprah Winfrey's Book Club to presidential politics, however, distinctions of taste are more accurately understood to be "blunt instruments of antidemocratic elitism." So argues Chris Lehmann, in a discussion that ranges over the work of Edward Shils, Clement Greenberg, and Jonathan Franzen with equal ease. The resulting pamphlet is an impassioned plea for the rebirth of culture with content."Think that the age of the pamphlet ended with Thomas Paine? Think again. Chicago-based Prickly Paradigm Press has launched a series of broadsides aimed at knocking holes in conventional thinking wherever it's found. . . . In Revolt of the Masscult, Chris Lehmann—deputy editor of Book World—assails the blurring of 'mass' into 'popular' culture and the 'comforting impression that all mass entertainments are as freely chosen as, say, our political leaders or our forms of worship.' . . . Lehmann enlists everything from Dwight Macdonald's Masscult, Midcult, and High Culture to the Jonathan Franzen Oprah's Book Club dustup of 2001 to plead for a return to culture that means something—that, in other words, has actual rather than market value."—Jennifer Howard, Washington Post

Revolt of the Masscult

Lehmann, Chris

The Companion Species Manifesto is about the implosion of nature and culture in the joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in "significant otherness." In all their historical complexity, Donna Haraway tells us, dogs matter. They are not just surrogates for theory, she says; they are not here just to think with. Neither are they just an alibi for other themes; dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience. They are here to live with. Partners in the crime of human evolution, they are in the garden from the get-go, wily as Coyote. This pamphlet is Haraway's answer to her own Cyborg Manifesto, where the slogan for living on the edge of global war has to be not just "cyborgs for earthly survival" but also, in a more doggish idiom, "shut up and train."

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Paradigm)

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Donna Haraway

Pets & Animal Care

In a series of snapshots after the attack on the World Trade Center—from a day, to a week, up to a year and beyond—Eliot Weinberger offers thoughtful and provocative reflections on his city, the country, and the state of the world. Originally published only outside the United States, these essays are now available together, and for the first time in English. Taken as a whole, they constitute a remarkable "archive of the moment," way-markers for a story that is still unfolding.

9/12: New York After

History

Weinberger, Eliot

Americas

Since the publication of Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian World, James Clifford has become one of anthropology's most important interlocutors. A key figure in theory and criticism, he has written seminal essays on topics ranging from art and identity to museum studies and fieldwork. This collection of interviews captures Clifford in exchanges with his critics in Brazil, Hawaii, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Portugal, offering a set of provocative reflections on an intellectual career in transformation.

On the Edges of Anthropology: Interviews (Paradigm)

Clifford, James

Anthropology

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