It's about 25 minutes before the official readathon start, and I'm doing this challenge from Dewey's 24 hour readathon. Since this blog is mostly for academic books, I will include a fair number of these, but they'll be things that I think might interest the readathon crew.
1. 2007: Ruthie Wilison Gilmore, The Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in mass incarceration. Gilmore has been involved in prison abolition activism for decades, and this book is the culmination of years of scholarship and activism. If you're not already convinced, here's a video:
2. 2008: Janice Peck, The Age of Oprah: Icon for theNeoliberal Era This is a book I've taught in the past, and it is always very, very popular with students. One of my former students even went to study with Peck for her PhD as a result of reading it. While this book is definitely about Oprah Winfrey, it is also a very clear explanation of neoliberalism that connects Oprah's particular version of self-help ideology to a history of pop psychology going back to the 19th century.
3. 2009: Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. I believe that this book won both the American History and American Studies first book prizes when it came out. It's another book about economics that is highly readable. It's an informative analysis of how this superstore developed through an ideological fusion of Christian evangelical religion and free market ideology.
4. 2010: Regina Kunzel, Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality. I'm teaching this book in a few weeks and it's one that is usually popular with my students. Kunzel's book is both historically informative and theoretically sophisticated, while also being readable. If you're interested in the history of sexuality, prisons, and social movements, this is a really valuable book.
5. 2011: What is a better way to remember 2011 than with N+1 collection, Occupy: Scenes from Occupied America ? This book is a collection of short pieces produced during the Wall Street occupation and gives you the feeling of being there.
1. 2007: Ruthie Wilison Gilmore, The Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in mass incarceration. Gilmore has been involved in prison abolition activism for decades, and this book is the culmination of years of scholarship and activism. If you're not already convinced, here's a video:
2. 2008: Janice Peck, The Age of Oprah: Icon for theNeoliberal Era This is a book I've taught in the past, and it is always very, very popular with students. One of my former students even went to study with Peck for her PhD as a result of reading it. While this book is definitely about Oprah Winfrey, it is also a very clear explanation of neoliberalism that connects Oprah's particular version of self-help ideology to a history of pop psychology going back to the 19th century.
3. 2009: Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. I believe that this book won both the American History and American Studies first book prizes when it came out. It's another book about economics that is highly readable. It's an informative analysis of how this superstore developed through an ideological fusion of Christian evangelical religion and free market ideology.
4. 2010: Regina Kunzel, Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality. I'm teaching this book in a few weeks and it's one that is usually popular with my students. Kunzel's book is both historically informative and theoretically sophisticated, while also being readable. If you're interested in the history of sexuality, prisons, and social movements, this is a really valuable book.
5. 2011: What is a better way to remember 2011 than with N+1 collection, Occupy: Scenes from Occupied America ? This book is a collection of short pieces produced during the Wall Street occupation and gives you the feeling of being there.
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