When med student Hale is called home by his ailing mother on Halloween night, he and a group of friends are trapped in an inescapable cycle of violence.

'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.

Since the middle of the eighteenth century, political thinkers of all kinds — radical and reactionary, professional and amateur — have been complaining about “bureaucracy.” But what, exactly, is all this complaining about? The Demon of Writing is a critical history and theory of one of the most ubiquitous, least understood forms of media: paperwork. States rely on records to tax and spend, protect and serve, discipline and punish. But time and again this paperwork proves to be unreliable. Examining episodes from the story of a clerk who lost his job and then his mind in the French Revolution to Roland Barthes’s brief stint as a university administrator, the book reveals the powers, failures, and even pleasures of paperwork. Many of its complexities, the book argues, have been obscured by the comic-paranoid style that characterizes so many of our criticisms of bureaucracy. At the same time, the book outlines a new theory of what Marx called the “bureaucratic medium.” Returning first to Marx, then to Freud, The Demon of Writing argues that this theory of paperwork must be attentive to both praxis and parapraxis.

“This strange, subtle story of father-son disaffection and disjointed love is told with [Jones’s] signature narrative inventiveness and dark humor.” —Kris Saknussemm, author of Private Midnight If drinking mercury from a thermometer didn’t kill him, maybe spray painting in an unventilated garage would. Or so Nolan’s father thought. One inspired yet failed suicide attempt after another, each with a note to his son—with only a hint of accusation. But as Nolan sits in an empty office building, the last customer service employee for a nearly obsolete video game, those many suicide notes come back to haunt him. As do the levels of the game that no one plays anymore. And now a homicide detective is on the phone. Maybe his father was right when he wrote that he was teaching Nolan not to give up, that the only way to understand what happened was to make it to the end of the game. But there’s no cheatcode that’s going to get Nolan through this . . . “Two unreliable narrators, a bunch of suicide letters, and a plot that collapses on itself just like the characters do—Stephen Graham Jones is our contemporary Jorge Luis Borges.” —Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray “Like Lethem and Murakami before him, Jones mines his genre fiction past to bring us a work of startling literary merit. Mystery, horror, sci-fi: the ingredients are all in there.” —David Goodwillie, author of Kings County “[A] stark exploration of guilt, grief, and fear. . . . And did I mention that it’s funny? Unplug your consoles, kids, and play this book.” —Zack Wentz, author of The Garbageman and the Prostitute

A philosophical perspective to statistical mechanics for graduate students and researchers in the foundations and philosophy of physics.

“Adam Kotsko’s premise—that the devil and the neoliberal subject can only ever choose their own damnation—is as original as it is breathtaking.” —James Martel, author of Anarchist Prophets By both its supporters and detractors, neoliberalism is usually considered an economic policy agenda. Neoliberalism’s Demons argues that it is much more than that: a complete worldview, neoliberalism presents the competitive marketplace as the model for true human flourishing. And it has enjoyed great success: from the struggle for “global competitiveness” on the world stage down to our individual practices of self-branding and social networking, neoliberalism has transformed every aspect of our shared social life. The book explores the sources of neoliberalism’s remarkable success and the roots of its current decline. Neoliberalism’s appeal is its promise of freedom in the form of unfettered free choice. But that freedom is a trap: we have just enough freedom to be accountable for our failings, but not enough to create genuine change. If we choose rightly, we ratify our own exploitation. And if we choose wrongly, we are consigned to the outer darkness—and then demonized as the cause of social ills. By tracing the political and theological roots of the neoliberal concept of freedom, Adam Kotsko offers a fresh perspective, one that emphasizes the dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality. More than that, he accounts for the rise of right-wing populism, arguing that, far from breaking with the neoliberal model, it actually doubles down on neoliberalism’s most destructive features. “One of the most compelling critical analyses of neoliberalism I’ve yet encountered, understood holistically as an economic agenda, a moral vision, and a state mission.” —Peter Hallward, author of Badiou

Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature. In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutality. Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.