THE TIMES BEST IDEAS BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2024 'A splendid book: economical, invigorating and surprising' The Times 'He has that gift, both as a podcaster and as a writer, to illuminate abstruse and abstract ideas with human charm' Observer In this bold new follow-up to Confronting Leviathan, David Runciman unmasks modern politics and reveals the great men and women of ideas behind it. What can Samuel Butler's ideas teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies? How did Frederick Douglass not only expose the horrors of slavery, but champion a new approach to abolishing it? Why should we tolerate snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy, as Judith Shklar suggested? And what does Friedrich Nietzsche predict for our future? From Rousseau to Rawls, fascism to feminism and pleasure to anarchy, this is a mind-bending tour through the history of ideas which will forever change your view of politics today.

The Paradox of Intellectual Property in Capitalism is an innovative book that comprehensively discusses and analyses intellectual property under capitalistic social conditions and relations. It not only addresses some historical developments of intellectual property but also brings to the fore the very notion of what knowledge is, knowledge creation, and knowledge production and appropriation within a Marxist framework. Nonetheless, the adopted approach pays heed to multiple fields of knowledge, providing rich discussions that facilitate the understanding of actual social totality in which capitalism, knowledge production and appropriation, and the struggles of appropriation mutually reinforce each other, although not devoid of antagonisms and contradictions.

In light of contemporary capitalism, the transformations that social property relations are undergoing must be scrutinised - such as those brought about by the development of digitalisation and the convergence between big pharma and tech giants. What are the conditions of intellectual property creation today? What theoretical assumptions does it make? Under what social relations is intellectual property produced?

Throughout, the emphasis is not on individual cases or symptoms but on the overarching logic: the logic of capitalism as revealed in intellectual property.

This book uses economic theory to explain how consumers and producers have responded to major changes in the music industry. Byun examines the important role of technology in changing its structure, particularly as new methods of creating and accessing music prove to be a double-edged sword for creators and producers. This second edition includes new information about concert attendance and live performance in the COVID era and what followed, as well as the resultant economic impacts on the industry.

Throughout the book, Byun questions how the business of music affects creativity and the extent to which this impacts the creative output of the individual artist. Chapters also address copyright enforcement and online piracy. This is an approachable resource for economists interested in the music industry as well as business and music majors studying the ways in which technology can impact a creative process.

Bilingual education is usually framed as a tool of antiracism. In Becoming the System, author Nelson Flores challenges that framework by examining the ways that institutionalizing bilingual education in the post-Civil Rights Era in the United States has served to maintain rather than challenge racial hierarchies. He adopts a methodology that he terms raciolinguistic genealogy as a point of entry for arguing that the institutionalization of bilingual education was part of a broader reconfiguration of race in the postcolonial era. This reconfiguration located the root of racial inequities within a psychologically damaged racialized subject who, after having experienced multiple generations of racial oppression, had either from a liberal perspective developed a culture of poverty or a radical perspective developed colonized mindset that prevented racial progress. After examining the ways that this psychologically damaged racialized subject provided the ideological foundation for the Bilingual Education Act (BEA), Flores then examines how institutionalizing the BEA produced a cadre of Latinx professionals who were afforded contingent proximity to whiteness in exchange for their acceptance of deficit framings of Latinx communities. He goes on to examine the ways that this institutionalization helped pave the way for neoliberal educational reforms that serve to maintain the racial status quo. This has culminated in the exponential growth of dual language education as a commodity for affluent monolingual white families even as the bilingualism of Latinx communities continue to be pathologized and policed. Flores concludes by implicating himself as a Latinx professional working in bilingual education in this political incorporation and posits the present volume as resistance to the commodification and weaponization of Latinx bilingualism.

International migration and the social diversity it creates constitute one of the key global challenges of the early 21st century. Language and communication barriers can compromise equitable access in diverse societies, and where socioeconomic disadvantage becomes entrenched, it poses risks to security, productivity and quality of life. Clearly this is an important issue, and migrants and their language choices are heavily politicized; though political and media debates often rely on anecdotal conjecture or are ill-informed. Life in a New Language examines the language learning and settlement experiences of 130 migrants to Australia from 34 different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America over a period of 20 years. Reusing data shared from six separate sociolinguistic ethnographies, the book illuminates participants' lived experience of learning and communicating in a new language, finding work, and doing family. Additionally, participants' experiences with racism and identity making in a new context are explored. The research uncovers significant hardship but also migrants' courage and resilience. The book has implications for language service provision, migration policy, open science, and social justice movements.

During the Enlightenment, people from the middling sort organised themselves into 56 patriotic societies in Denmark, Norway, and the German duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The number of members totalled several thousand. They undertook educational and industrial reforms and participated in public debates on the need for social and political modernisation.

The founding of patriotic societies was a widespread European phenomenon and they played a key role in the Nordic Enlightenment. Yet, they have not been the subject of European or national studies before. Their emergence reflected that modern bureaucratic states were in the making, and that public administrative infrastructures and welfare institutions were expanding. These developments created a need to integrate citizens and imbue them with a spirit of community.

This monograph presents the first coherent investigation of the patriotic societies in a large, European multinational and multilingual realm. Its comparative outlook situates the intellectual and cultural developments in the Nordic countries as an integral part of the European Enlightenment. Furthermore, it offers new perspectives on tensions between patriotism, nationalism and universal values as they developed during the Enlightenment, as well as how freedom, the buzzword of the Enlightenment, implied new forms of discipline.

In this major new study, Tyler Huismann connects Aristotle's natural philosophy to modern theories of causation and provides fresh interpretations of classic issues. He links two of the most important notions in Aristotle's philosophy, accidents and causes, and using the concept of accidental causation as a guide, argues for ground-breaking proposals on some of the most foundational areas of Aristotle's thought: the relation between substances and accidents, the nature of efficient causation, the workings of 'qua,' the possibility of uncaused events, and the role of accidental causation in the natural world. Structured around close readings of Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics and informed by contemporary theories of causation, Huismann's book offers students an accessible treatment of some of Aristotle's core texts, and provides specialists with a series of provocative interpretations.

Life / Afterlife traces the development, evolution, and uses of underworld scenes in ancient Greek literature and society. Underworld scenes are a unique form of embedded storytelling, appearing across time and genres. These scenes employ a special register of language that acts as a narrative space outside of chronological time and everyday reality. Suzanne Lye shows how writers such as Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Plato, and Lucian, among others, used afterlife depictions as commentaries to communicate a call to action for their audiences in response to cultural, religious, and political changes to their worlds. Using networks of underworld scenes which often featured mythic and historical figures, authors could reinforce or challenge traditional religious and cultural beliefs and practices by presenting the long-term, cosmic effects of actions in life on an individual's post-death experience. From ancient to modern times, underworld scenes have helped authors and audiences define the essential qualities of a "good life" for different social, political, and religious groups and their societies. This book offers an approach to reading underworld scenes that explains how they function and why they have persisted in various forms, both literary and artistic, from the eighth-century B.C.E. to the present day.

Evaluationen, Monitoring und Formen der Qualitaetssicherung spielen heute eine zentrale Rolle im Wissenschaftssystem. Der Koelner Wissenschaftsrat verlieh dem Instrument der Forschungsbewertung nachhaltige Durchschlagskraft, indem er die Evaluation mit der deutsch-deutschen Vereinigung 1990 besonders stark machte. Die Vereinigung ging auf wissenschaftlicher Ebene mit einer umfassenden Bestandsaufnahme ostdeutscher Forschungseinrichtungen einher, was zu Institutsschliessungen, Abwicklungen sowie Neu- und Umgruendungen fuehrte. Dieser Prozess wird in den Fachdisziplinen bis heute ambivalent diskutiert. Marie-Christin Schoenstaedt zeigt mit ihrer Studie wissenschaftsgeschichtlich auf, dass die Transformation des ostdeutschen Wissenschaftssystems eigentlich dem Westen galt. Der Wissenschaftsrat richtete sein Handeln konsequent an westdeutschen Problemlagen aus, ohne ostdeutsche Spezifika zu beruecksichtigen. Gleichzeitig setzte die Evaluation der frueheren DDR-Akademieinstitute Impulse fuer die vereinte Wissenschaftslandschaft und wirkte als Katalysator einer doppelten Ko-Transformation, an deren Ende die Systemevaluation in den beginnenden 2000er Jahren stand.

Buergerbriefe an Politikerinnen und Politiker sind im 20. Jahrhundert eine weitverbreitete Partizipationsform. Buergerinnen und Buerger wandten sich mit Huldigungen, Bitten, Stellungnahmen oder Kritik an ihr politisches Personal. Zwischen Privatheit und Oeffentlichkeit umgingen Buergerbriefe staatliche Hierarchieebenen und beanspruchten, mit ?Volkes Stimme" zu sprechen. Sie dienten der politischen Einflussnahme jenseits von Wahlen, Parteien oder Demonstrationen. Die Politik nahm diese Schreiben als Stimmungsbarometer erstaunlich ernst und wendete viel Zeit und Muehen fuer die Antworten auf. Die Autorinnen und Autoren des Bandes untersuchen den Wandel dieser politischen Kommunikationsform vom Kaiserreich bis zur Deutschen Einheit 1990. Sie fragen nach den Motiven, Strukturen und Inhalten der Schreiben sowie nach der Sozialstruktur der Schreibenden. Welchen Stellenwert haben Emotionen und Autoritaetsbekundungen? Welches Verstaendnis von Staat und Demokratie, welche Erwartungen an die Politik drueckt die Korrespondenz aus? Die Buergerbriefe in Diktatur und Demokratie erweisen sich als ambivalent: ein Medium der politischen Partizipation, das aber nicht unbedingt die Demokratie foerdert.

A prizewinning historian uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America-ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not former slaves

"A spectacular achievement of historical research. Forret shows for the first time just how far the American government went to secure reparations."
-Robert Elder' author of Calhoun: American Heretic

In 1831, the American ship Comet, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ship's owners, set the rescued captives free. American slave owners and the companies who insured the liberated human cargo would spend years lobbying for reparations from Great Britain, not for the emancipated slaves, of course, but for the masters deprived of their human property.

In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize-winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the Comet incident-as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade-resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests. Through a story that has never been fully explored, The Price They Paid shows how, unlike their former owners and insurers, neither the survivors of the Comet and other vessels, nor their descendants, have ever received reparations for the price they paid in their lives, labor, and suffering during slavery.

Any accounting of reparations today requires a fuller understanding of how the debts of slavery have been paid, and to whom. The Price They Paid represents a major step forward in that effort.

This book tells the uncommon story of a missionary family in the Midwestern United States, and their interactions with the indigenous Ojibwe. When Leonard and Harriet Wheeler arrived at La Pointe, Wisconsin in July of 1841, hoping to help the Ojibwe understand and accept the value of Christian civility, they did not expect such a profound transformation of their own lives. The Wheelers' empathy for the Ojibwe not only grew during their twenty-five years of mission work in Northern Wisconsin, much of it spent trying to protect the Ojibwe from predatory whites, it also influenced the lives of their children.

The Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862, remains the single bloodiest day in America's history: more than 3,600 men died in twelve hours of savage fighting, and more than 17,000 were wounded. As a turning point in the Civil War, the narrow Union victory is well-known as the key catalyst for Lincoln to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.

Yet Antietam was not only a battle that dramatically changed the fortunes and meaning of the war; it also changed America in ways we feel today. No army in history wrote so many letters or kept as many diaries as the soldiers who fought in the Civil War, and Stephen Budiansky draws on this rich record to re-create the experiences of those whose lives were forever changed, whether on the battlefield or in trying to make sense of its horrors in the years and decades to follow. Antietam would usher in a new beginning in politics, military strategy, gender roles, battlefield medicine, war photography, and the values and worldview of the postwar generation.

A masterful and fine-grained account of the battle, built around the intimate experiences of nine people whose lives intersected there, A Day in September is a story of war but also, at its heart, a human history, one that encompasses Antietam's enduring legacy.

There have been plenty of books on the Edwardians before, but never one as richly enjoyable as this ... nobody has done a better job of capturing what ordinary people thought and cared about more than a century ago' Dominic Sandbrook, Book of the Week, Sunday Times 'In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reveals striking parallels between Britain in decline at the start of the 20th century and our own divisive age ... [a] page turner of a popular history' Andrew Marr, New Statesman 'The very best sort of panoramic portrait' David Kynaston 'The Edwardians have long been the lost decade of British history, yet they are that history at its climax. Alwyn Turner sets the record straight, bringing its characters, strains and stresses brilliantly to life' Simon Jenkins 'Britain's most electrifying contemporary social historian conjures the forgotten country of more than a century ago ... fiercely recommended' Alan Moore When Queen Victoria died in 1901 it was the end of an era. Britain's dominance stretched across seven continents and its ruling classes were wealthier than ever before. Many later remembered the decade or so that followed as the long afternoon of an empire where the sun never set. Yet the Edwardians themselves were acutely aware that the country was in a state of flux; the seismic change that they felt would transform modern Britain forever. In Little Englanders, Alwyn Turner reconsiders the Edwardian era as a time of profound social change, with the rise of women's suffrage and the labour movement, unrest in Ireland and the Boer republics, scandals in parliament and culture wars at home. He tells the story of the Edwardians through music halls and male beauty contests, the real Peaky Blinders and the 1908 Summer Olympics. In this colourful, detailed and hugely entertaining social history, Turner shows that, though the golden Victorian age was in the past, the birth of modern Britain was only just beginning.

Fascinating ... not only a history of graffiti, but also a history of the 18th century through lost voices of the people who lived through it.' The Times What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can - if you know where to look. A brilliant new cultural history of the long eighteenth century, Writing on the Wall is told through the marks its citizens left behind, bringing into focus lost voices from the highest to the lowest in society. From the centre of London to the islands of the Caribbean, Pelling goes in search of graffiti, evidence of how ordinary people experienced the world-changing events that defined their lives - from political prisoners to sex workers, homesick sailors, Romantic poets and the artisans of the industrial revolution. Here are lives, loves, triumphs and failures, scratched into the walls of prisons and latrines, chalked up on doors and etched into windows. The names of their creators may be lost to history, but together they tell the real story of Britain's most rebellious and transformative century.

Stealing Horses presents arguably the finest considerations yet of the origins of the First World War. Breaking with accounts which focus on the actions of a single state or the final countdown to hostilities, Paul W. Schroeder describes the systemic crisis engulfing the Great Powers. They were more interested in colonial plunder overseas ('stealing horses to great applause', in the old Spanish adage) than the traditional statecraft of European peace-making. Preserving the balance of power required preserving all the essential actors in it, including a tottering Austria-Hungary. This the British in particular failed to recognise. The Central Powers may have started the War but that does not mean they in any real sense caused it. In the end Schroeder recalls the verdict of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: 'All are punished'.

Stealing Horses includes appraisals of Niall Ferguson and A. J. P. Taylor, and an extensive unpublished final paper re-thinking the First World War as 'the last 18th-century war'.

With an Introduction by Perry Anderson.