“The greatest political paradox of our time is this: there are more elections than ever before, and yet the world is becoming less democratic” (p. 1). This paradox is explained in How to Rig an Election (2018) by Cheeseman and Klaas (published by Yale). In sum: “How is it possible that the flourishing of elections […]
Tags: #Democracy #elections #fraud #hacking the election #How to rig an election
Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need (2021) is well written. The book seems to aim for an audience that has had minimal engagement with climate change conversations. The first chapter sets the scene for the author’s positionality, followed by a few chapters on climate science 101. […]
Tags: #Bill Gates #Climate #Climate Change #Climate Disaster #How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
What would the world look like is the 2008 financial crisis inspired a radical transformation of society as we know it (rather than bailing out the banks to continue the status quo)? Yanis Varoufakis has ventured some answers in his Another Now (2020). The book is fictional, which the author uses to present a range […]
Tags: #Another Now #Financial Crisis #Futurism #Futurist #Yanis Varoufakis
Harford has written a pile of books on economics and ran a show decoding the world of statistics. I picked up The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (2021) to see if it might be useful for undergraduates in the social sciences. Harford is a good storyteller, hence the pile of […]
For students looking for an introduction to decolonization, or faculty looking to catch up on conversations they have been missing (or conversations they have avoided or actively sought not take part in), Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni has brought it together for you in Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (2018). As the title implies, this book […]
Tags: #Africa #decolonization #Deprovincialization #Epistemic Freedom #Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
The people of Ethiopia defeated European attempts to colonize it. However, Dr Yirga argues that in embracing western education and erasing local history and tradition, the institutions and laws put in place colonizing processes, what he calls ‘native colonialism’. This is one of the most interesting books I have read of recent, highly recommended to anyone interested […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Education #Ethiopia #Native Colonialism #Tradition