Think in Public: A Public Books Reader(Public Books Series)

Since 2012, Public Books has championed a new kind of community for intellectual engagement, discussion, and action. An online magazine that unites the best of the university with the openness of the internet, Public Books is where new ideas are debuted, old facts revived, and dangerous illusions dismantled. Here, young scholars present fresh thinking to audiences outside the academy, accomplished authors weigh in on timely issues, and a wide range of readers encounter the most vital academic insights and explore what they mean for the world at large. Think in Public: A Public Books Reader presents a selection of inspiring essays that exemplify the magazine’s distinctive approach to public scholarship. Gathered here are Public Books contributions from today’s leading thinkers, including Jill Lepore, Imani Perry, Kim Phillips-Fein, Salamishah Tillet, Jeremy Adelman, N. D. B. Connolly, Namwali Serpell, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The result is a guide to the most exciting contemporary ideas about literature, politics, economics, history, race, capitalism, gender, technology, and climate change by writers and researchers pushing public debate about these topics in new directions. Think in Public is a lodestone for a rising generation of public scholars and a testament to the power of knowledge.

Table of Contents:
Introduction, by Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom Part I. Ask in Public On Accelerationism, by Fred Turner Justice for Data Janitors, by Lilly Irani Anthropocene and Empire, by Stacey Balkan Changing Climates of History, by J. R. McNeill The Year of Black Memoir, by Imani Perry Pop Justice, by Frances Negrón-Muntaner A Black Power Method, by N. D. B. Connolly Soft Atheism, by Matthew Engelke Where Do Morals Come From?, by Philip Gorski The Alchemy of Finance, by Kim Phillips-Fein How Gentrifiers Gentrify, by Max Holleran Syria’s Wartime Famine at 100: “Martyrs of the Grass”, by Najwa al-Qattan The Mortal Marx, by Jeremy Adelman Who Segregated America?, by Destin Jenkins The Invention of the “White Working Class”, by Andrew J. Perrin Going Deep: Baseball and Philosophy, by Kieran Setiya The World Silicon Valley Made, by Shannon Mattern Part II. Think in Public Jill Lepore on the Challenge of Explaining Things: An Interview, by B. R. Cohen James Baldwin’s Istanbul, by Suzy Hansen When Stuart Hall Was White, by James Vernon An Interview with Former Black Panther Lynn French , by Salamishah Tillet Black Intellectuals and White Audiences, by Matthew Clair Can There Be a Feminist World?, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak The Story’s Where I Go: An Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, by John Plotz Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking, by Christopher Schaberg If You’re Woke You Dig It: William Melvin Kelley, by Eli Rosenblatt Translating the Untranslatable: An Interview with Barbara Cassin, by Rebecca L. Walkowitz My Neighbor Octavia, by Sheila Liming Stop Defending the Humanities, by Simon During Painting While Shackled to a Floor, by Nicole R. Fleetwood Part III. Read in Public To Translate Is to Betray: On Elena Ferrante, by Rebecca Falkoff What Global English Means for World Literature, by Haruo Shirane The Stranger’s Voice, by Karl Ashoka Britto Can’t Stop Screaming, by Judith Butler The Model-Minority Bubble, by Joseph Jonghyun Jeon Free Is and Free Ain’t, by Salamishah Tillet The Mixed-Up Kids of Mrs. E. L. Konigsburg, by Marah Gubar In the Great Green Room: Margaret Wise Brown and Modernism, by Anne E. Fernald Afrofuturism: Everything and Nothing, by Namwali Serpell Chick Lit Meets the Avant-Garde, by Tess McNulty Feeling Like the Internet, by Mark McGurl The People v. O. J. Simpson as Historical Fiction, by Nicholas Dames Kafka: The Impossible Biography, by Jan Mieszkowski Shirley Jackson’s Two Worlds, by Karen Dunak Reading to Children to Save Ourselves, by Daegan Miller List of Contributors

About the Author :
Sharon Marcus and Caitlin Zaloom are the founders and editors in chief of Public Books. Marcus is Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her books include Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (2007) and The Drama of Celebrity (2019). Zaloom is associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University. She is the author of Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London (2006) and Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (2019).

Review :
This timely, innovative, and important collection represents the best of public scholarship. The stunning essays in this volume demonstrate the significance of Public Books as a crucial online space for anyone committed to engaging ideas that shape the world in which we live. The sheer brilliance and vitality of this digital platform boldly shine through every page of this book. An astonishing collection. Eloquent, expansive, provocative, and essential. This book is a call to arms. We must tear down the ivory tower, discard attachments to credentials and prestige, and share ideas across borders, disciplines, and party lines. Think in Public does just this, engaging readers in conversations between today’s top scholars, the works that inspire them, and the watershed issues of our day. That splendid cover image underlines the fact that this book is meant for everyone, not just residents of ivory towers.