In this section you can read reviews of academic books covering the USA, and its continental neighbours, Canada and Mexico. Each weekend we publish two reviews, aiming to cover a wide range of books on all aspects of public policy and politics.
GalleryBook Review: Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions by Don Grant, Andrew Jorgenson and Wesley Longhofer
In Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions, Don Grant, Andrew Jorgenson and Wesley Longhofer analyse the impact of power plants on climate change, demonstrating the disproportionate role that a small number of major plants play in a nation’s overall CO2 emissions. The book is a valuable read for scholars, students and policymakers interested in discussing climate change, […]
GalleryBook Review: Easy Living: The Rise of the Home Office by Elizabeth A. Patton
In Easy Living: The Rise of the Home Office, Elizabeth A. Patton explores how the status of the home as an intimate space and locus of economic activity is closely tied to the economic, social and cultural transformations of the past century. This accessible and engaging account sheds necessary light on the history of working from home and the vested interests […]
GalleryBook Review: The End of Asylum by Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Philip G. Schrag
In The End of Asylum, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Philip G. Schrag offer a new study of the laws, policies and regulations adopted by the Donald Trump administration to severely restrict, if not outright remove, access to asylum. While questioning the book’s positioning of Trump’s treatment of asylum as an anomaly in US political history, Rémy-Paulin Twahirwa finds this […]
GalleryBook Review: The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and Control on Social Media by Jeremy Weissman
In The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and Control on Social Media, Jeremy Weissman explores the role of ‘peer-to-peer’ surveillance through social media and how this is increasingly shaping our behaviour. This is a welcome addition to the scholarly work on surveillance and privacy, writes Matt Bluemink, with a clear, approachable writing style and a wealth of empirical examples.
The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and […]
GalleryBook Review: Planet On Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown by Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton
MSc Environmental Policy and Regulation candidate Flora Parkin reviews Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton’s new book, Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown, which encourages the reader to reimagine an economy that can foster a healthy and flourishing environment for all.
This review was originally posted on the LSE International Development blog.
Planet On Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of […]
GalleryBook Review: Online Afterlives: Immortality, Memory and Grief in Digital Culture by Davide Sisto
In Online Afterlives: Immortality, Memory and Grief in Digital Culture, Davide Sisto explores how digital technologies have come to impact our relationship with death, traversing the numerous digital devices and practices that are shaping mourning and grief today. Illustrated by multiple real-world examples and supported by relevant literature, this book offers an excellent introduction to death and digital culture, finds Mona Oikarinen.
Online Afterlives: […]
GalleryBook Review: New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives by Alex de Waal
In New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease and its Alternatives, Alex de Waal offers a new political history of epidemics, identifying and critiquing a repeated mobilisation of the ‘war metaphor’ of pandemic disease to show our persistent (mis-)framing of biological illness. The book is an extremely comprehensive and fascinating history of previous epidemics, their metaphors and […]
GalleryBook Review: China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption by Yuen Yuen Ang
In China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, Yuen Yuen Ang examines China’s growth trajectory through the prism of corruption, challenging the notion of Chinese exceptionalism when it comes to corruption by comparing its rise to the growth of the US in the nineteenth century. This sophisticated and nuanced analysis will encourage readers to look […]
GalleryBook Review: Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism by Christopher Marquis
In Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism, Christopher Marquis offers a new study of the history of the B Corp movement as well as its goals, international expansion and its struggles, arguing that it has the potential to redefine capitalism based on principles of accountability, performance, standards and transparency. Marquis’s access to the movement and ability to write […]
GalleryBook Review: Corporate Citizen: New Perspectives on the Globalized Rule of Law edited by Oonagh E. Fitzgerald
In Corporate Citizen: New Perspectives on the Globalized Rule of Law, editor Oonagh E. Fitzgerald brings together contributors to explore how the notion of corporate global citizenship has enabled corporations to evade responsibilities and liabilities and block or weaken measures that might increase corporate accountability. This volume serves a valuable purpose in demonstrating the far-reaching and multi-faceted problems surrounding the governance […]
