Explorers

A New History

by Matthew Lockwood

The impulse to seek out new worlds is universal to humanity.

In a truly inclusive account of exploration, historian Matthew Lockwood interweaves stories of famous figures—including Sacagawea, Pocahontas, and Dr. David Livingstone—with tales of individuals who are usually denied the title “explorer.” Lockwood’s new cast of adventurers features figures often excluded from Western focused narratives on the early rise of globalization. Lockwood delves into the histories of Rabban Bar Ṣawma, a Uighur monk who traversed the Middle East and Europe; Yasuke, an East African traveler to Japan during the sixteenth century; and David Dorr, a man born in slavery whose travelogues reshaped Americans’ understanding of the African continent. As an assistant professor of history at The University of Alabama, where Lockwood teaches on the Age of Exploration and Conquest, he brings critical context readers need to reevaluate their understanding of how our modern world was shaped by early explorations. This intrepid re-imagining of our global past is vital for courses in histories of Western civilization or world history; exploration and empire; and more. 

KEY TOPICS ● exploration; travel and travelogues; indigenous knowledge of the environment; histories of natural science and geography; world history 

Matthew Lockwood

is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama and the author of This Land of Promise: A History of Refugees and Exiles in Britain, To Begin the World Over Again, and The Conquest of Death. He lives in Northport, Alabama.

Offshore

Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism

by Brooke Harrington

This eye-opening account of offshore finance reveals how a shadowy global system is fueling economic crises while also corroding democracy, capitalism, and the environment.

Sociologist Brooke Harrington trained as an offshore wealth manager then spent years immersed in tax havens around the world as part of an ethnographic study, observing and interviewing the experts who keep the secrets and protect the fortunes of the global ultra-rich. She highlights what offshore finance costs us all and how it has enabled the world’s billionaires to colonize the world. As politicians struggle to address the deepening economic and political inequality destabilizing the world, Harrington’s exposé of the offshore system helps students understand the most pressing crises of our time. This engrossing deep dive into the hidden realm of offshore finance is perfect for courses on economic sociology, globalization, and social inequality.

KEY TOPICS ● immersion ethnography; economic sociology; power elite; colonialism; tax havens; financial crimes; wealth inequality

Brooke Harrington

is a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth College, a certified wealth manager, and an advisor to the OECD and European Parliament, among other organizations. She is the author of several books, including the best-selling Capital without Borders.

Literary Theory for Robots

How Computers Learned to Write

by Dennis Yi Tenen

In the industrial age, automation came for the shoemaker and the seamstress. Today, it has come for the writer, professor, physician, programmer, and attorney. 

Chatbots are already impacting the way we read, write, and think. For better or worse, they are being used to find information, influence public opinion, diagnose illnesses, and shape political discussion online. How did we get to this point and what can we do to prepare? Literary Theory for Robots reveals the hidden history of modern machine intelligence, taking readers on a spellbinding journey from medieval Arabic philosophy to visions of a universal language, past Hollywood fiction factories and missile defense systems trained on Russian folktales. Former Microsoft engineer and professor of comparative literature Dennis Yi Tenen provides crucial context for the rapidly changing AI landscape and invites readers to consider how humans and smart technology might coexist in the future. This provocative reflection on the shared pasts of literature and computer science is essential for courses in literary theory, comparative literature, the philosophy of language, and the history of rhetoric. 

KEY TOPICS ● human intelligence vs. artificial intelligence; history of machine learning; rhetorical traditions; automation; knowledge work 

Dennis Yi Tenen

is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Originally a software engineer at Microsoft, Tenen is now an affiliate at Columbia’s Data Science Institute. He lives in New York City.

Imagination

A Manifesto

by Ruha Benjamin

Imagination isn’t a luxury; it’s a vital resource and a powerful tool for our collective liberation.

A world without prisons? Schools that foster the genius of every child? A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. Exactly. Princeton professor Ruha Benjamin believes in the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by mass incarceration, ableism, digital surveillance, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, but they have real-world impacts. To fight these systems and create a world that works for all of us, we will have to imagine things differently. As Benjamin shows, educators, artists, technologists, and others are experimenting with new ways of thinking and tackling seemingly intractable problems. Visionary and practical, Imagination: A Manifesto is an inspired selection for courses in inequality, race, technology, and sociology of education.

KEY TOPICS ● schooling and IQ; whiteness of the curriculum; play and childhood; eugenics; technology; inclusive worldbuilding

Ruha Benjamin

is a professor of African American studies and the founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton University. The author of the Stowe Prize-winning Viral Justice, as well as Race After Technology and People’s Science, Benjamin lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Wild Girls

How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation

by Tiya Miles

An award-winning historian shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America.

Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in nineteenth-century New England. The Indigenous women’s basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, regained a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World’s Fair. For the girls at the center of this book, woods, prairies, rivers, ball courts, and streets provided not just escape from degrees of servitude, but also space to envision new spheres of action. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, this book evokes rich landscapes and the rebellious spirit of the girls who roamed them—a perfect fit for courses in U.S. women’s or environmental history. 

KEY TOPICS ● gender and the domestic sphere; Indigenous knowledge; history of childhood and adolescence; history of sport; human/nature relationships 

Tiya Miles

is the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University, the author of five prize-winning works on the history of slavery and early American race relations, and a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship recipient. She founded and was the director of the Michigan-based ECO Girls program, and she is the author of the National Book Award-winning, New York Times best-selling All That She Carried. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Against Technoableism

Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

by Ashley Shew

A bioethicist explodes what we think we know about disability and argues that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability. 

When bioethicist Ashley Shew became a self-described “hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn’s disease and tinnitus,” there was no returning to “normal.” Suddenly, well-meaning people called her an “inspiration” while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Why do abled people frame disability as an individual problem that calls for technological solutions, rather than a social one? In a warm, spirited voice and vibrant prose, Shew argues that disabilities should be viewed not as liabilities but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world. This short, stirring book is ideal for courses in disability studies, philosophy of technology, bioethics, and philosophy or sociology of disability.

KEY TOPICS ● identity-first vs. person-first language; disability tropes; eugenics; medical vs. social models of disability; neurodivergence

Ashley Shew

is an associate professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech and specializes in disability studies and technology ethics. Her books include Against Technoableism, Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge, and Spaces for the Future (coedited). She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The Trafficker Next Door

How Household Employers Exploit Domestic Workers

by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

A renowned sociologist examines the pernicious societal forces that lead employers to exploit vulnerable domestic workers. The phrase “human trafficking” often conjures nightmarish images of sexual exploitation, but Rhacel Salazar Parreñas reveals that the vast majority of trafficking victims are domestic workers who suffer abuse not at the hands of shadowy crime lords but rather “ordinary” people. Drawing on twenty years of groundbreaking research across three continents, Parreñas exposes the grim realities faced by migrant workers ensnared in forced labor due to poverty and debt bondage. She uncovers how entrenched social and legal norms, coupled with a pernicious “employer savior complex,” foster a troubling sense of ownership among employers over “their” domestic workers. Parreñas’s urgent narrative challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about everyday household arrangements and calls for justice and fair treatment for all workers. The Trafficker Next Door will be great for courses on social problems and social inequality as well as sociology courses on work, gender, and globalization.

KEY TOPICS ● human trafficking; forced labor; migrant workers; care work; ethnography; globalization

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

is the Doris Stevens Professor in Women’s Studies and professor of sociology and gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University. The award-winning author of three previous books on labor, exploitation, and human trafficking, she lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Sex Beyond "Yes"

Pleasure and Agency for Everyone

by Quill R Kukla

In Sex Beyond “Yes”, philosopher Quill R. Kukla challenges the idea that consent alone can define ethical sex, arguing that this binary framework oversimplifies the complex realities of sexual agency. They examine scenarios shaped by intoxication, aging, social pressure, and power imbalances—ranging from sex work and dementia to kink and everyday encounters—to show that agency often goes beyond a simple “yes” or “no.” Kukla calls for a more nuanced, human-centered approach to sexual ethics, one grounded in honest communication, mutual respect, and the often messy dynamics of intimacy and pleasure. With a mix of sharp critique and deep empathy, they offer a bold rethinking of what it means to have ethical, fulfilling sex. This Norton Short would be well suited for courses such as Philosophy of Love and Sex, Ethics of Intimacy, and Gender, Sexuality, and Philosophy.

KEY TOPICS ● Philosophy of love and sex; sexual ethics; sexual agency; Consent; pleasure, power, and social dynamics

Quill R Kukla

lives in Washington, DC, and Berlin. They are Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. They are also an amateur competitive boxer and powerlifter, the parent of a young adult, and the devoted caretaker of a corgi and two cats. This is their fourth book.

Fear Less

Poetry in Perilous Times

by Tracy K Smith

The Pulitzer Prize–winning poet reveals how poetry is a powerful tool of connection and understanding in a fractured world.

Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterized as “inaccessible,” “irrelevant,” or “intimidating.” She argues that poetry is rooted in fundamentally human qualities innate to our capacities to love, dream, question, and engage across diverse cultures and backgrounds, and she shows how reading and writing poetry can allow us to confront uncertainty and loss, build connections with strangers, and better understand ourselves. Grounding readers in the technical elements of the craft, Smith provides in-depth analysis of her own creative process as well as close readings of works by contemporary poets such as Joy Harjo, Danez Smith, and Francisco Márquez alongside classic poems by Dickinson, Keats, Millay, and others. An essential text for courses on poetry, composition, and literary criticism, Fear Less is a warm invitation to find meaning, consolation, and hope through poems.

Tracy K Smith

is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States and is the author of five poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Life on Mars.