Here are 100 books that The Demon of Writing fans have personally recommended if you like
The Demon of Writing.
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I’m an American intellectual historian and professor at Vanderbilt University. I’ve long been fascinated by the history and politics of data: the question of how publicly available knowledge shapes societies as well as individual selves. It’s led me to research the effects of popular polls and statistics on mid-century U.S. culture and to write about how ever-advancing techniques for “knowing” citizens shaped modern privacy sensibilities. My current obsession is with official identity documents—how they infiltrate people’s lives in ways that are at once bureaucratic and curiously intimate. The books I’ve selected lay bare the promise and the peril of documentation in wonderfully vivid detail.
Torpey’s book, first published in 2000, is now a classic. With it, he helped open up a whole field of inquiry into the history of official documents and identification techniques that both constrain—and make conceivable—modern society. Here, think of street addresses, fingerprints, birth certificates, credit records, driver’s licenses, tax forms, and visas. For Torpey, the passport, “that little paper booklet with the power to open international doors,” is a window into modern nation states’ interest in regulating movement. For his readers, it is a bracing reminder of how recent those controls are and how habituated we denizens of the 21st century have become to showing our papers.
This book presents the first detailed history of the modern passport and why it became so important for controlling movement in the modern world. It explores the history of passport laws, the parliamentary debates about those laws, and the social responses to their implementation. The author argues that modern nation-states and the international state system have 'monopolized the 'legitimate means of movement',' rendering persons dependent on states' authority to move about - especially, though not exclusively, across international boundaries. This new edition reviews other scholarship, much of which was stimulated by the first edition, addressing the place of identification documents…
She really gets at the heart of how Brown and Black bodies are seen, and what is fascinating to me is the approach through current “technical art” and a good discussion of architecture. I had a class focus on her discussion—lengthy—about surveillance and race. It’s extremely poignant, and something whites especially just don’t think about. I will never again go through an airport without thinking about her book.
In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the…
I’m an American intellectual historian and professor at Vanderbilt University. I’ve long been fascinated by the history and politics of data: the question of how publicly available knowledge shapes societies as well as individual selves. It’s led me to research the effects of popular polls and statistics on mid-century U.S. culture and to write about how ever-advancing techniques for “knowing” citizens shaped modern privacy sensibilities. My current obsession is with official identity documents—how they infiltrate people’s lives in ways that are at once bureaucratic and curiously intimate. The books I’ve selected lay bare the promise and the peril of documentation in wonderfully vivid detail.
Although it reads like a spy novel, this is the real-life account of a noted English journalist’s encounter with his own Stasi surveillance file. The file in question was compiled in the early 1980s by the East German secret police on Garton Ash (code name “Romeo”), then a young man living in Berlin and writing about Central European communism. Garton Ash opened his file fifteen years later, after the former German Democratic Republic made Stasi records accessible. Tracking those who tailed him, the book explores the uneasy sensation of reading one’s past life through the photographs, informant reports, surveillance notes, and speculations of those tasked with observing a target of suspicion. It’s a compelling and often chilling chronicle of the costs both of watching and being watched.
In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name 'Romeo'. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin.
In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and…
I’m an American intellectual historian and professor at Vanderbilt University. I’ve long been fascinated by the history and politics of data: the question of how publicly available knowledge shapes societies as well as individual selves. It’s led me to research the effects of popular polls and statistics on mid-century U.S. culture and to write about how ever-advancing techniques for “knowing” citizens shaped modern privacy sensibilities. My current obsession is with official identity documents—how they infiltrate people’s lives in ways that are at once bureaucratic and curiously intimate. The books I’ve selected lay bare the promise and the peril of documentation in wonderfully vivid detail.
Vargas’s memoir begins, “I do not know where I will be when you read this book.” An undocumented immigrant (and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist) who was brought to the United States from the Philippines as a child, Vargas only learned that he was in the country illegally when he applied for a driver’s license at age 16. In 2011, after two decades in the shadows, Vargas publicly revealed his legal status. His anxious, tireless quest for a driver’s license, like his quest to belong in the only country he knows as home, raises urgent questions about the power of documents and borders to define people’s life chances. I’ve taught this beautifully written book several times and it never fails to move my students – and me.
"This riveting, courageous memoir ought to be mandatory reading for every American." -Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow
"l cried reading this book, realizing more fully what my parents endured." -Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins
"This book couldn't be more timely and more necessary." -Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of What Is the What and The Monk of Mokha
Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called "the most famous undocumented immigrant in America," tackles one of the…
I’ve been fascinated by UFOs since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until I met a Martian in 2016 that I started writing about them. To be more specific, I stumbled across a bizarre 1926 article about a man in telepathic communication with a Martian named Oomaruru. I then delved deeper into the beliefs about intelligent Martians at that time. It led to my writing The Big Book of Mars, which touched on the UFO phenomena in the 1940s and ‘50s. But knowing there was so much more to explore, I began writing We Are Not Alone, which is now my 8th book.
Before Leslie Kean co-authored the 2017 New York Times article that brought the Pentagon’s secret UFO research program to the public and shared videos of unidentified aerial phenomena from Navy pilots, she wrote this book.
In it, you’ll find written accounts of UFO experiences from the type of people described in the book’s title. In other words, credible people worth listening to. I had the pleasure of interviewing Kean for my book, enabling me to share the behind-the-scenes of her remarkable UFO-based journalism.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Impeccably researched, this riveting journalistic investigation separates fact from fiction, and documents the existence of—and government reactions to—actual UFOs.
“A treasure trove of insightful and eye-opening information.”—Michio Kaku, PH.D., bestselling author of Physics of the Future
Leslie Kean, a veteran investigative reporter who has spent the past ten years studying the still-unexplained UFO phenomenon, reviewed hundreds of government documents, aviation reports, radar data, and case studies with corroborating physical evidence. She interviewed dozens of high-level officials and aviation witnesses from around the world. Among them, five Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including…
I’m a historian of medieval Europe who specializes in twelfth-century England and France. I’ve been fascinated with history since childhood and distinctly remember being obsessed with a book on English monarchs in my mom’s bookcase when I was young. In college, I took a class on Medieval England with a professor whose enthusiasm for the subject, along with the sheer strangeness of the medieval world, hooked me. I’ve been exploring medieval Europe ever since, and deepening my understanding of how our own world came into being in the process.
This is one of those books that completely changes the way you understand a subject.
Clanchy looks at how the growth of bureaucracy in England fostered the growth of literacy and changed the world in the process. That’s an important subject in its own right, but I love this book for all of the little details it includes.
It’s full of information about how the definition of literacy has changed over time, how knights and kings were educated, how courts functioned, how oral testimony was heard, how records were kept, how books were produced, how much it cost to produce them, and how forgery developed.
This is very much an academic book, but it explores a whole range of practices and attitudes that have shaped the world we live in.
The second edition of Michael Clanchy's widely-acclaimed study of the history of the written word in the Middle Ages is now, after a much lamented absence, republished in an entirely new and revised edition. The text of the original has been revised throughout to take account of the enormous amount of new research following publication of the first edition. The introduction discusses the history of literacy up to the present day; the guide to further reading brings together over 300 new titles up to 1992. In this second edition there are substantially new sections on bureaucracy, sacred books, writing materials,…
I grew up loving the works of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets. Now I write romantic fantasy with a lyrical, fairy-tale vibe. The Seasons Cycle is a spin-off series from my main Lake Traveler saga. My poetry includes Poems of Myth & Magick, andSongs of Love & Longing. I compose songs and background music for key scenes in my stories. My music has been described as GoT meets LoTR with a lyrical twist and a musical theatre vibe. You can check out my songs and instrumental pieces on my youtube channel and my music website.
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" may not be Keats’ most well-known poem but it’s right up there with his best, and Keats’ best might just be the very best when it comes to romantic poetry. This is a beautiful fantasy poem that’s both hot and disturbing. It’s dark fantasy at its best. Its lyrical and sensuous beauty will give you chills and goosebumps.Other fantasy-themed poems in this collection include "Endymion," "Lamia and Hyperion," "Isabella," and "St Agnes’ Eve," all based on myths and legends.
'What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth' So wrote the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in 1817. This collection contains all of his poetry: the early work, which is often undervalued even today, the poems on which his reputation rests including the 'Odes' and the two versions of the uncompleted epic 'Hyperion', and work which only came to light after his death including his attempts at drama and comic verse.
It all demonstrates the extent to which he tested his own dictum throughout his short creative life. That life spanned one of…
In my research and teaching, I have long been fascinated with the effects of the French Revolution on France, Europe, and the broader world. In my most recent book, Our Friends the Enemies, I sought to examine the aftermath of the wars provoked by the Revolution, which lasted (with only two short breaks) from 1792 to 1815. In particular, I wanted to reconstruct the story—which had long been overlooked by historians—of the occupation of France by the Allies who defeated Napoleon. Lasting from 1815 to 1818, this occupation was the first modern peacekeeping mission, with profound consequences for the history of France and Europe in the nineteenth century and beyond.
It is widely accepted that the French Revolution would not have occurred without the preceding Enlightenment. But what exactly was the Enlightenment? In this now classic study, Robert Darnton broadened the perspective on this question, to examine the writers, publishers, booksellers, peddlers, and smugglers responsible for the circulation of “enlightened” ideas. Often operating illegally underground or even abroad in “Grub Street,” these producers and distributors of Enlightenment played a key role in subverting the Old Regime centered on monarchy, Church, and aristocracy, which would come crashing down in 1789.
Robert Darnton introduces us to the shadowy world of pirate publishers, garret scribblers, under-the-cloak book peddlers, smugglers, and police spies that composed the literary underground of the Enlightenment.
Here are the ambitious writers who crowded into Paris seeking fame and fortune within the Republic of Letters, but who instead sank into the miserable world of Grub Street-victims of a closed world of protection and privilege. Venting their frustrations in an illicit literature of vitriolic pamphlets, libelles, and chroniques scandaleuses, these "Rousseaus of the gutter" desecrated everything sacred in the social order of the Old Regime. Here too are the workers…
I’m a historian of eighteenth-century France, above all, the French Revolution. Throughout my career, my primary goal has been to try to reconstruct the experience of revolution in all its dimensions. I have published extensively on subjects relating to the French Revolution, including the French revolutionary terror; the politics of the Jacobins; ideology, emotions, and revolution; revolutionary leaders – including Robespierre and Saint-Just; fear of conspiracy as a driver of actions; the influence of classical antiquity; women participants in the Revolution.
There is a reason why this book, published during the darkest days of World War Two, is still in print eighty years later. It is a profound study, deeply informed by Palmer’s own experience of living through a time of war, crisis, and fear. It focuses on the twelve men who served on the Committee of Public Safety and together played a leading role in revolutionary government throughout the critical period of the Year II (1793-94).
This was the first book I ever read on the period of existential crisis known as ‘the Terror’, and it helped me make sense of what was happening and why. If you want to know what it was like to be leading a government during war and revolution. Palmer’s book is the place to start. Forty years since I read it, Palmer’s book still occupies a prime place on my bookshelf.
The Reign of Terror continues to fascinate scholars as one of the bloodiest periods in French history, when the Committee of Public Safety strove to defend the first Republic from its many enemies, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in revolutionary France. R. R. Palmer's fascinating narrative follows the Committee's deputies individually and collectively, recounting and assessing their tumultuous struggles in Paris and their repressive missions in the provinces. A foreword by Isser Woloch explains why this book remains an enduring classic in French revolutionary studies.
As a child (and budding feminist), I inhaled historical fiction about queens and other formidable women. This led to my scholarly interest in female power and authority. Aristocratic women had meaningful political influence in Old Regime France through family networks and proximity to power. However, with the French Revolution of 1789, women’s exclusion from political power (and the vote) was made explicit. This led me to examine the tools women had to accumulate political and social capital, including beauty and the control of fashion. We need to take the intersection of beauty, fashion, and politics seriously to understand the operation of power in both history and the modern world. The books I chose privilege my own interest in eighteenth-century France, but have a broader significance. And they are all really fun to read!
Ribeiro is the author of numerous books on beauty and fashion, but this is the one I always come back to. Here, she explicitly connects social and political trends to changes in dress, beginning in the 1780s to the rise of Napoleon. The analysis is straightforward and compelling, although she also acknowledges the nuance. It’s a terrific introduction to the political importance of fashion during a period when fashion could not have been more politically salient.
Aileen Ribeiro's book explores the changes in dress during the French Revolution and links them with the rapidly shifting political climate. At a time of immense and violent change, clothing could sometimes be used to demonstrate either conformity or reaction to the prevailing situation. The author looks at the elaborate dress of French society and the court in the 1780s and the way in which plain clothing became identified with "democracy". The part played in the Revolution by the "sans-culottes" with their "bonnet rouge" and "pantalon", is explored, together with the role of militant women and the emergence of feminism.…
