Category: General and Theory
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Gupta, Suman and Peter H. Tu, The Practical Philosophy of AI-Assistants: An Engineering-Humanities Conversation
Suman Gupta and Peter H. Tu, The Practical Philosophy of AI-Assistants: An Engineering-Humanities Conversation (World Scientific, 2024) 280 pp. $30. Pb. ISBN 978-1-80061-421-5. The Practical Philosophy of AI-Assistants is an insightful and oft-playful exploration of the various conundrums that arise when envisioning the ultimate AI assistant. The apparent intention of the text is not to…
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Keisman, Eleanor, New Animal
Eleanor Keisman, New Animal (Broken Tribe Press, 2025) 115 pp. $12.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781965412312. Eleanor Keisman’s debut novella, New Animal (2025), is an evocative climate science fiction tale of survival that is less about escaping climate distress and more about remembering the importance of relying on one another despite it all. What makes Keisman’s cli-fi…
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De Kruif, Paul, Microbe Hunters
Paul De Kruif, Microbe Hunters (India: Grapevine, 2023) 257 pp. ₹ 260 Pb. ISBN-13: 978-9357894272 2026 marks a hundred years since Paul de Kruif, an American microbiologist-turned-journalist, published Microbe Hunters, a book that quickly became a popular gateway into the dramatic world of microbes and the scientists who pursued them. Characterised by its energetic narrative…
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Cole, Lucinda, The Fifth Plague: Cattle, Contagion, and the Medical Posthumanities
Lucinda Cole, The Fifth Plague: Cattle, Contagion, and the Medical Posthumanities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) xii, 260 pp. £87.50 ebook £109.99 Hb. ISBN: 978-3031927928 Lucinda Cole’s The Fifth Plague: Cattle, Contagion, and the Medical Posthumanities, published as part of the series, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, takes up the vexing and urgent question of how…
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Foster, Kate and Crozier, Molly (eds), The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation
Kate Foster and Molly Crozier (eds), The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation (New York: Routledge, 2026) 216pp. £116.00 Hb. £34.39 e-book. ISBN: 9781032895871 The subtitle of The Human and the Machine in Literature and Culture – Cultures of Automation – is a useful shorthand for what this collection most…
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Joseph-Lester, Jasper, Kahane, Ahuvia, King, Simon and Leslie, Esther (eds), Walking in Cities: Navigating Post-Pandemic Urban Environments
Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Ahuvia Kahane, Simon King and Esther Leslie (eds), Walking in Cities: Navigating Post-Pandemic Urban Environments (New York: Routledge, 2024) 352 pp. $180.00 Hb. $52.99 Pb. $39.74 e-book. ISBN: 978-1-032-41260-3 ‘Walking in Cities’ is perhaps one of the simplest yet most evocative titles one might give to a book about urban life. As a…
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Howick, Jeremy, The Power of Placebos: How the Science of Placebos and Nocebos Can Improve Health Care
Jeremy Howick, The Power of Placebos: How the Science of Placebos and Nocebos Can Improve Health Care (Johns Hopkins University Press: 2023) 320 pp. $32.95 Hb. ISBN: 9781421446387 Can the solution to the opioid crisis—and perhaps even the superbug problem—lie in using less medication, without compromising pain relief or curability? Professor and Director of Empathic…
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Fyfe, Paul, Digital Victorians: From Nineteenth-Century Media to Digital Humanities
Paul Fyfe, Digital Victorians: From Nineteenth-Century Media to Digital Humanities (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024) 294 pp. $60.00 Hb. ISBN: 9781503640948 Paul Fyfe’s Digital Victorians eloquently takes readers on an exploratory journey bringing together the Victorian period’s ‘new media’ moment and our own. Indeed, for Fyfe, contemporary developments in media technologies and communication – and…
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Joseph, May and Varino, Sofia, Aquatopia: Climate Interventions
May Joseph and Sofia Varino, Aquatopia: Climate Interventions (Routledge, 2023) 97pp. £38.39 Hb. ISBN: 9781032326405 In Aquatopia: Climate Interventions, May Joseph and Sofia Varino present a concise yet conceptually ambitious reflection on climate performance, colonial histories and water ecologies. Situated within Routledge’s Critical Climate Studies series, the book documents and theorises the site-specific performances of…
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Durham, Rebecca A., Be Still Mere Molecule
Rebecca A. Durham, Be Still Mere Molecule (Raleigh, NC, USA: Broken Tribe Press, 2025) 120 pp. $14.95 Pb. ISBN: 9781965412107 How does a poet witness the world? How does a scientist? What if a person were to be both at once? Would that experience of the in-betweenness of both worlds aid them in finding, perhaps…
