What comes after neoliberalism? In these times of health emergency, economic collapse, populist anger and ecological threat, societies are forced to turn inward in search of protection. Neoliberalism, the ideology that presided over decades of market globalisation, is on trial, while state intervention is making a spectacular comeback amid lockdowns, mass vaccination programmes, deficit spending and climate planning. This is the Great Recoil, the era when the neo-statist endopolitics of national sovereignty, economic protection and democratic control overrides the neoliberal exopolitics of free markets, labour flexibility and business opportunity. Looking back to the role of the state in Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Gramsci and Polanyi, and exploring the discourses, electoral programs and class blocs of the nationalist right and socialist left, Paolo Gerbaudo fleshes out the contours of the different statisms and populisms that inform contemporary politics. The central issue in dispute is what mission the post-pandemic state should pursue: whether it should protect native workers from immigration and the rich against redistributive demands, as proposed by the right’s authoritarian protectionism; or reassert social security and popular sovereignty against the rapacity of financial and tech elites, as advocated by the left’s social protectivism. Only by addressing the widespread sense of exposure and vulnerability may socialists turn the present phase of involution into an opportunity for social transformation.

A contemporary philosophical masterwork from “one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals ” (New York Review of Books) Philosophical materialism in all its forms – from scientific naturalism to Deleuzian New Materialism – has failed to meet the key theoretical and political challenges of the modern world. This is the burden of philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s argument in this pathbreaking and eclectic new work. Recent history has seen developments such as quantum physics and Freudian psychoanalysis, not to speak of the failure of twentieth-century communism, shake our understanding of existence. In the process, the dominant tradition in Western philosophy lost its moorings. To bring materialism up to date, Žižek – himself a committed materialist and communist – proposes a radical revision of our intellectual heritage. He argues that dialectical materialism is the only true philosophical inheritor of what Hegel designated the “speculative” approach in thought. Absolute Recoil is a startling reformulation of the basis and possibilities of contemporary philosophy. While focusing on how to overcome the transcendental approach without regressing to naïve, pre-Kantian realism, Žižek offers a series of excursions into today’s political, artistic, and ideological landscape, from Arnold Schoenberg’s music to the films of Ernst Lubitsch.

Recuperating in Switzerland after a job that cost the life of one of his closest friends, ex-special forces soldier Nick Stone has only one thing on his mind: the girl who left his bed this morning without saying goodbye. And when she fails to reappear, Nick knows the honeymoon is over before it has even begun. Her trail leads him to Africa, and the deep end of a very dirty Congo war – where it isn’t long before the past comes knocking at his door, and Stone finds himself catapulted once more into the dark and brutal world he’d tried to leave behind. As one bloody twist leads to another, his apparently simple quest becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy, to which he and his beautiful quarry unwittingly hold the key...

The Expanse meets Altered Carbon in this breakneck science fiction thriller where immortality is theoretically achievable, yet identity, gender and selfhood are very much in jeopardy... Carter Langston is murdered whilst salvaging a derelict vessel--a major inconvenience as he's downloaded into a brand-new body on the space station where he backed up, several weeks' journey away. But events quickly slip out of control when an assassin breaks into the medbay and tries to finish the job. Death no longer holds sway over a humanity that has spread across the solar system: consciousness can be placed in a new body, or coil, straight after death, giving people the potential for immortality. Yet Carter's backups--supposedly secure--have been damaged, his crew are missing, and everything points back to the derelict that should have been a simple salvage mission. With enemies in hot pursuit, Carter tracks down his last crewmate--re-coiled after death into a body she cannot stand--to delve deeper into a mystery that threatens humanity and identity as they have come to know it.

In September 1740, New England experienced a social earthquake. It arrived not in the form of a great natural disaster or an act of violence, but with the figure of a twenty-year-old preacher. People were abuzz with his stunning oratory, his colorful theatrics, and his almost ungodly sense of power and presence.When George Whitfield arrived in the American colonies, his reputation and growing legend had been built on his brilliant speeches and frightening tirades, and his fame exploded. He demanded his listeners repent their sins and follow the true word of God—his. He had knowledge that only he could unlock for the American people. Whitefield's message also carried a threat, and he brooked no dissent. Whitefield's power over his listeners grew, and New England was in the uproar of a social revolution. This period became known as The Great Awakening, and it would weave its way into the very fabric of what American would eventually become. Soon after Whitefield reached his zenith, things began to fall apart. The puritanical utopia that once seemed so certain vanished like a dream. American Demagogue is the story of this rapid rise and equally steep fall, which would be echoed by authoritarian populists in later centuries and American demagogues yet to come.

The practical properties of many materials are dominated by surface and near-surface composition and structure. An understanding of how the surface region affects material properties starts with an understanding of the elemental composition of that region. Since the most common contaminants are light elements (for example, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen), there is a clear need for an analytic probe that simultaneously and quantitatively records elemental profiles of all light elements. Energy recoil detection using high-energy heavy ions is unique in its ability to provide quantitative profiles of light and medium mass elements. As such this method holds great promise for the study of a variety of problems in a wide range of fields. While energy recoil detection is one of the newest and most promising ion beam analytic techniques, it is also the oldest in terms of when it was first described. Before discussing recent developments in this field, perhaps it is worth reviewing the early days of this century when the first energy recoil detection experiments were reported.

The former senator and presidential candidate collects bipartisan presidential humor from famous, and not-so-famous, chief executives, from Washington to Clinton.