Saul D. Alinsky: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971/1989)

The father of modern community organization, Saul Alinsky taught a generation of activists and politicians how to effectively construct social change. In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky writes with passion and intelligence, carefully outlining “the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one.” Indispensable since its first publication in 1971, this book continues to inform and inspire all those who believe that political engagement is the key to maintaining America’s democratic tradition.

Originally published by Random House, New York, 1971
Publisher Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York, October 1989
ISBN 0679721134, 9780679721130
224 pages

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Paul N. Edwards: A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (2010)

“Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these doubters: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations–even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument–becomes global in time and space without passing through a series of data models. Everything we know about the world’s climate we know through models. Edwards offers an engaging and innovative history of how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere–to measure it, trace its past, and model its future.

Edwards argues that all our knowledge about climate change comes from three kinds of computer models: simulation models of weather and climate; reanalysis models, which recreate climate history from historical weather data; and data models, used to combine and adjust measurements from many different sources. Meteorology creates knowledge through an infrastructure (weather stations and other data platforms) that covers the whole world, making global data. This infrastructure generates information so vast in quantity and so diverse in quality and form that it can be understood only by computer analysis–making data global. Edwards describes the science behind the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that over the years data and models have converged to create a stable, reliable, and trustworthy basis for the reality of global warming.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2010
Infrastructures Series
ISBN 0262013924, 9780262013925
xxvii+518 pages

Reviews: Noel Castree (American Scientist, 2010), Ronald E. Doel (American Historical Review, 2011), Myles Allen (Nature, 2010), Richard C.J. Somerville (Science, 2011), Gabriele Gramelsberger (Minerva, 2012), McKenzie Wark (White Review, 2014).

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Jacques Rancière: Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2010)

“Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics brings together some of Jacques Rancière’s most recent writings on art and politics to show the critical potential of two of his most important concepts: the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics.

In this fascinating collection, Rancière engages in a radical critique of some of his major contemporaries on questions of art and politics: Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida. The essays show how Rancière’s ideas can be used to analyse contemporary trends in both art and politics, including the events surrounding 9/11, war in the contemporary consensual age, and the ethical turn of aesthetics and politics. Rancière elaborates new directions for the concepts of politics and communism, as well as the notion of what a ‘politics of art’ might be.

This important collection includes several essays that have never previously been published in English, as well as a brand new afterword. Together these essays serve as a superb introduction to the work of one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.”

Edited and Translated by Steven Corcoran
Publisher Continuum, London/New York, Jan 2010
ISBN 1847064450, 9781847064455
240 pages

Reviews: Todd May (NDPR), David W. Hill (Marx & Philosophy).

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