Outstanding contributors include Pierre Macherey, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos and Judith Revel

John Holloway et al explore solutions to postmodern political paralysis in the 'negative dialectics' of Theodor Adorno

"The most important book at the borderland of psychology and politics that I have ever read."—Martin E. P. Seligman, Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at that University of Pennsylvania and author of Learned Optimism Why are we devastated by a word of criticism even when it’s mixed with lavish praise? Because our brains are wired to focus on the bad. This negativity effect explains things great and small: why countries blunder into disastrous wars, why couples divorce, why people flub job interviews, how schools fail students, why football coaches stupidly punt on fourth down. All day long, the power of bad governs people’s moods, drives marketing campaigns, and dominates news and politics. Eminent social scientist Roy F. Baumeister stumbled unexpectedly upon this fundamental aspect of human nature. To find out why financial losses mattered more to people than financial gains, Baumeister looked for situations in which good events made a bigger impact than bad ones. But his team couldn’t find any. Their research showed that bad is relentlessly stronger than good, and their paper has become one of the most-cited in the scientific literature. Our brain’s negativity bias makes evolutionary sense because it kept our ancestors alert to fatal dangers, but it distorts our perspective in today’s media environment. The steady barrage of bad news and crisismongering makes us feel helpless and leaves us needlessly fearful and angry. We ignore our many blessings, preferring to heed—and vote for—the voices telling us the world is going to hell. But once we recognize our negativity bias, the rational brain can overcome the power of bad when it’s harmful and employ that power when it’s beneficial. In fact, bad breaks and bad feelings create the most powerful incentives to become smarter and stronger. Properly understood, bad can be put to perfectly good use. As noted science journalist John Tierney and Baumeister show in this wide-ranging book, we can adopt proven strategies to avoid the pitfalls that doom relationships, careers, businesses, and nations. Instead of despairing at what’s wrong in your life and in the world, you can see how much is going right—and how to make it still better.

This thought-provoking work analyzes concrete political events and reinterprets key concepts in modern political science. Building on the works of Kant, Badiou, Adorno, Hegel, and more, it posits that the dynamics of revolution can be encapsulated in the concept of negation, since a revolution essentially negates "what is" by rejecting the power in place. The work argues that revolution is the true ground of Western democracy and that the proof of a true democracy is the activity of protest movements. It discusses how modern philosophy conceives political truth as revolutionary or eventful, and that one aspect of revolution is negativity, which fluctuates between inertia and melancholia. It examines the problem of revolution in the context of modern philosophy, providing a diagnosis of the historical developments since the fall of the Soviet Union to the Arab Spring, setting forth an original theory of revolution while shedding light on the notion of negativity in contemporary thought. This innovative work will appeal to anyone interested in political theory and political philosophy.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize • One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 • A Kirkus Best World History Book of 2022 One of Smithsonian's 10 Best History Books of 2022 • Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History prize • Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize “Rebel historian” Kelly Lytle Hernández reframes our understanding of U.S. history in this groundbreaking narrative of revolution in the borderlands. Bad Mexicans tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U. S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The U.S. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magón was one of the FBI’s first cases. But the magonistas persevered. They lived in hiding, wrote in secret code, and launched armed raids into Mexico until they ignited the world’s first social revolution of the twentieth century. Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.

Raya Dunayevskaya is hailed as the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States. In this new collection of her essays co-editors Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson have crafted a work in which the true power and originality of Dunayevskaya's ideas are displayed. This extensive collection of writings on Hegel, Marx, and dialectics captures Dunayevskaya's central dictum that, contrary to the established views of Hegelians and Marxists, Hegel was of signal importance to the theory and practice of Marxism. The Power of Negativity sheds light not only on Marxist-Humanism and the rooting of Dunayevskaya's Marxist-Humanist theories in Hegel, but also on the life of one of America's most penetrating and provocative critical thinkers.

The 10th anniversary edition, now with a new preface by the author "A wonderfully smart, lively, and culturally astute survey." - The New York Times Book Review "Grand entertainment...fascinating for anyone curious about the perplexing miracles of how great television comes to be." - The Wall Street Journal "I love this book...It's the kind of thing I wish I'd been able to read in film school, back before such books existed." - Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows on cable channels dramatically stretched television’s narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and creative ambition. Combining deep reportage with critical analysis and historical context, Brett Martin recounts the rise and inner workings of this artistic watershed - a golden age of TV that continues to transform America's cultural landscape. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players - including David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) - and reveals how television became a truly significant and influential part of our culture.