I have a deep passion for the psychology of revolution because my family has experienced revolution in our country of birth, and I have expertise on this topic because, as a psychologist, I have extensively studied revolutions for decades. This is a topic seldom studied by modern psychologists, perhaps because most research psychologists live in Western countries and have not experienced revolutions. Western psychologists have no experience with revolutions. The last book published with the title of my book, The Psychology of Revolution, came out in 1894! I am very enthusiastic about putting together this diverse reading list, which is made up of research books, novels, and a poetry collection.
I include Robert Putnam’s book because, in a sense, it is about continuity rather than change, so it is about how things stay the same in some ways rather than revolutions that change things. What I particularly like about this book is Putnam’s discussion of inheritance, which he sees as being about far more than monetary wealth. Inheritance includes all the social networks, friends, connections, social knowledge, and everything else of value that your family passes on to you. Many inherited things are intangibles–like what you learn while sitting around as a child with your family, listening to grown-ups speak.
Because inheritance is so vast, kids who are ‘poor’ are not just poor materially; they are poor because they lack the vast social knowledge and informal networks that rich kids inherit. This makes it far more difficult for poor kids to move up and make a success of themselves–so there…
A New York Times bestseller and "a passionate, urgent" (The New Yorker) examination of the growing inequality gap from the bestselling author of Bowling Alone: why fewer Americans today have the opportunity for upward mobility. Central to the very idea of America is the principle that we are a nation of opportunity. But over the last quarter century we have seen a disturbing "opportunity gap" emerge. We Americans have always believed that those who have talent and try hard will succeed, but this central tenet of the American Dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true…
Since I was very young, I’ve had experiences with the paranormal. Whether it be a soft graze along my cheek or a spirit standing in front of me, I’ve always been drawn to things behind the veil. Joining the world of the living with the dead comes natural for me, and reading the genres of paranormal and fantasy is like a cup of hot tea on a chilly winter afternoon.
This book because it drew me in immediately and took hold. I had a love/hate relationship with reading the ending though. I enjoyed it immensely and although I wanted more and I wanted to know the ending, I was bummed when it was finished because I didn’t want to let go of the characters.
At the time I was struggling with the death of my mom and for a while, it took me away and brought me into another world. This book will always hold a special place in my heart.
My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place. Or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods.or monsters. I still can't decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me.
And then there's Jaxon Vega. A prince. A vampire. An annoyingly kissable boy who hasn't felt a thing in over a hundred years. But there's a darkness to him. A secret craving that threatens to consume him whole.…
As a professor of Environment, Communication, and Native American Studies, Johansen taught, researched, and wrote at the University of Nebraska at Omaha from 1982 to 2019, retiring to emeritus status as Frederick W. Kayser research professor. He has published 55 books in several fields: history, anthropology, law, the Earth sciences, and others. Johansen’s writing has been published, debated, and reviewed in many academic venues, among them the William and Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review, Current History, and Nature, as well as in many popular newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times and The National Geographic.
This title sounds as if it was written by Karl Marx in the 1850s (“Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to but your oil-scarred planet.”) Huber advocates organizing and educating the working class as to who is doing what to whom; that is, who profits from continued use of fossil fuels, and who would benefit from a society that runs on clean energy. Huber argues that the carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted with the worldwide dangers of failing to react so that the atmosphere will be restored to normal. As in classical socialist movements, Huber asserts winning the climate struggle by forming an internationalist based on a planetary working class in solidarity. This is well and good, perhaps, but a scientific basis is required along with class struggle.
The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of 'believing science' or individual 'carbon footprints' - it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As such, it will take a class struggle to solve. In this ground breaking class analysis, Matthew T. Huber argues that the carbon-intensive capitalist class must be confronted for producing climate change. Yet, the narrow and unpopular roots of climate politics in the professional class is not capable of building a movement up to this challenge. For an alternative strategy, he proposes climate politics that appeals to the vast…
I became fascinated with geography as a teenager and spent my life studying it. I always wanted to understand how we transform our planet, for better or worse. Part of this is understanding what happens in particular localities, which I have been able to look at closely by visiting places across all continents (except Antarctica). Part of it is understanding how the complex relations between human society and everything else shape global futures. My long-standing passion, however, has been understanding how what happens in one locality is shaped by its evolving connections with the rest of the world. These books pushed me to see the world differently through these connections.
Amitav Ghosh is my favorite novelist; drawing on rich historical knowledge, he draws you into the lives of South Asians and how these are shaped by global events.
This novel, the second in a trilogy, is highly relevant for this list. Set in the late 1800s, he reconstructs the interconnected lives of Indian merchant entrepreneurs shipping opium from Afghanistan to China for the British and the European merchants in Canton (Guangzhou) using this to access the Chinese economy, also narrating how Hong Kong was transformed into a European-occupied free enterprise island.
It set me thinking about the lives of all those drawn into Britain’s successful attempt to undermine Chinese prosperity by creating extensive opium dependence in China (like US dependence on fentanyl). Known as the ‘Opium Wars,’ this drug dependence undermined China’s economy and autonomy, gave Britain access to China’s valuable tea, and set the table for Europe to advance…
'As hypnotic as an opium dream and pretty unputdownable' Daily Mail
In September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared - two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading towards Canton? And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted brig heading East out of Cornwall? Was it…
I’m a professor of Chinese studies, and I’m especially interested in what the close study of culture can reveal about aspects of contemporary Chinese life that are usually dominated by the perspectives of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. I’m fascinated not so much by how cultural practices reflect social change but by how they sometimes make it happen, particularly in societies where overt political action is blocked. As my book picks show, I’m intrigued by the inventiveness and drive of people who create culture, often new forms of culture, under conditions of oppression, exploitation, and duress.
This path-breaking book was a huge inspiration to me as I began to dig deeper into the relationship between culture and labor in contemporary China.
By the time Sun’s book came out in 2014, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists inside and outside China had already carried out extensive studies of the largest migration in human history and the scorching inequalities that mass movement of people has generated. But Sun shows in compelling detail that this exodus from the Chinese countryside is a deeply cultural movement, too.
Blending ethnography with probing and compassionate analysis of poetry, videos, photography, and activist protest, Sun argues that culture can be the crucible of political consciousness for working people trapped in the grinder of underclass life. I’ve returned to this book again and again.
Behind China's growing economic and political power is a vast underworld of marginalized social groups. In this powerful and timely book, Wanning Sun focuses on the country's hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers, who embody China's most intractable problems of inequality. Drawing on rich and extensive fieldwork, the author argues that despite the critical role their labor has played in enabling and sustaining the country's remarkable economic growth, workers and peasants have become the nation's "subalterns."
Sun focuses especially on the role of media and culture in negotiating the unequal relationships that exist between various social groups. She shows…
My name is Joy Gerken pen name Joy M., Lilley. I live in Kent, England with husband Michael and our three rescue cats. We have four children, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. I began writing in 2013 after retiring from a long nursing career. My list is multi-genre, I like to both read and write books from all genres. It broadens my horizons and helps me focus more clearly on my own writing. I recommend all five books to you as I have enjoyed the reading of them all.
This is a glorious read that supplies verve, love, and heart. Two siblings are still living with their mother in their fifties in poverty and isolation. There is a serious risk of the inability to cope following their mother's demise. Music is a theme running throughout this charming story of resilience, and the survival instinct.
The two find they are living on the fringes of society, however, the ending proves that light can be spun from darkness.
Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, PopSugar, Bustle, Chicago Review of Books, PureWow, a Best Book of Summer by Daily Beast and one of Good Housekeeping's Best Books of 2021
"Full of dramatic twists and turns right up until its moving, beautiful end." —NPR Books
At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world…
I’ve been reading ever since kindergarten, and when I entered high school and discovered YA books, I found my home. Even when I read adult books now, I tend to gravitate towards rough-around-the-edges male leads. There’s just something fun and tempting about an anti-hero, bad boy, or morally gray male lead that always delivers spice and yearning. I’m a sucker for those bad boys who are only good for the girl who has their heart. While not all of my male leads are “bad boys,” naturally, I do tend to find myself writing quite a few of them and enjoying them, especially when you can show they’re multidimensional and have a soft side.
Right away, I really loved the musical connection for the male lead’s side. He and his siblings are named after musicians, and I’m big on character names and I adored that element. Not to mention I’m a huge Swiftie and I peeped the title reference right away. Hendrix or “Drix” is recently released from juvie for a crime he did not commit and is inducted into a program aiming to give young offenders second chances and rehabilitate them, sponsored by the governor. And who does he meet while doing press releases for this program? The governor’s daughter Elle! This forbidden element had me engrossed immediately. I loved the idea of Drix being off-limits for Elle, but him being the only person she could be herself with and open up to!
CONVICTED OF A CRIME HE DIDN’T COMMIT, Drix thought his life was over. But the opportunity to get his life on track came with the Second Chance Program, the governor’s newest initiative to get delinquents off the streets and back into society. Now he’s the program’s poster child.
ELLE, THE GOVERNOR’S DAUGHTER, knows she lives a life of privilege. But the expectations and pressure may be too much to handle. She wants to follow her own path, whatever that means.
THEIR CONNECTION IS IMMEDIATE, and so are their problems. Drix is not the type of boy Elle’s parents have in…
I have been trying to understand revolutionary violence my whole life, in the classroom and through scholarship. I am fundamentally interested in questions of “how” and “so what” because even the best, most heavily evidenced historical reconstructions of collective decisions rely heavily on conjecture, especially when it comes to something as complex and controversial as revolutionary violence. My biography of Alexandre Rousselin, an eyewitness and participant in French politics across the Revolutionary era, brings to life the choices and pressures that influenced his actions without minimizing the price he paid for those choices. Rousselin’s extraordinary life story contextualizes and engages understandings of the Terror in the French Revolution like those reviewed below.
Divided into “The Poetics of Power” and “The Sociology of Politics,” the better known first half explores rhetoric, symbolic forms of political practice, and imagery in novel ways that have influenced both my scholarship and my teaching.
But I was even more struck by the second part where Hunt considered the backgrounds, age, occupations, and experience of Revolutionary political actors in four French cities as a way to understand the political geography of the Revolution, networks, culture brokers, and the emergence of a new political class.
This approach shaped my dissertation and first book, but, more importantly it made me think about the link among and between cultural influences, socio-economic backgrounds, and the lived experience to understand the French Revolution.
When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.
I didn’t enjoy my first degree in Modern History and Political Science and it took twenty-five years and another MA in Women’s History, Gender, and Society, before my enthusiasm was rekindled. I’ve always believed it’s important to know where we come from, as well as the history of our country, and I don’t just mean wars, laws, and politics – but the lives of ordinary people, men, women, and children, because finally, we discover that our hopes, aspirations, and challenges are not so very different to the people who lived 500 years ago. I’m also passionate about the reality of women’s lived experience in all periods of history.
I found this study of gentry culture, with essays on political influence, education, social networks, religious activities, and the display of ‘gentility,’ a useful guide to a social class that was evolving in the period of my research. It also helped me understand why Dame Alice was so successful in running her own household and did not remarry – she was secure in the knowledge that she could exercise power and influence as an independent woman. Many of the other books I read about medieval households focused on the aristocracy, their sumptuous lifestyles, lavish entertainment, ostentatious festivities, opulent recreations, and itinerant households, but were not relevant to the subject of my book about a sedentary fifty-year-old widowed gentlewoman running her estates and giving hospitality to her neighbours and agricultural workers.
Essays in this fascinating and important collection examine the lifestyles and attitudes of the gentry in late medieval England. They consider the emergence of the gentry as a group distinct from the nobility, and explore the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. Studies of the gentry's literacy, creation and use of literature, cultural networks, religious activities and their experiences of music and the visual arts more directly address…
I’ve been reading romance novels since I was way too young to be reading romances and I love the romance genre. I’m a fan of many tropes, but second-chance romance is one of my favorites and it is the main trope in my debut novel, Just a Fling. When I read romance, I want to read stories that make my heart break and then stitch it back together. Second-chance romances do that because they capture the essence of hope and forgiveness. They give readers the opportunity to experience the beauty and power of forgiveness and to believe in the transformative power of love.
Again the Magic, by historical queen Lisa Kleypas, is a gorgeous historical romance that'll transport you to another time and place while tearing your heart out.
Aline Marsden and John McKenna are childhood friends who reconnect after years apart and realize they've been in love all along. There's tons of drama, including societal pressure and family expectations, but their chemistry is off the charts.
It has Kleypas' gorgeous writing, swoon-worthy romance, and plenty of tension.
Lady Aline Marsden was brought up to marry a man of her own class, but from the moment she meets John McKenna, she risks everything to be with him.
He gave her his heart
Although their love is forbidden, McKenna's passion for the beautiful Aline is too compelling to deny.
When their secret is discovered, their world is shattered. McKenna is forced to leave forever, unaware that the only reason Aline has given him up is to save him.
Now McKenna has returned, a powerful man determined to take revenge against the…
