Front Table

September 8th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 9/9

On this week’s Front Table, witness the struggles of surviving on a remote Scottish isle and providing affordable housing in the U.S.; take a dive into modern river science and the life of one of modern Europe's most important thinkers; reflect on poetry from Rumi's master; and explore the lasting effects of colonialism and the West's failed experiments to "fix" African economies. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

The Projects: A New History of Public Housing
(New York University Press)
Howard A. Husock

As the US struggles to provide affordable housing...

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September 2nd, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 9/2

On this week’s Front Table, unveil the hidden infrastructure of rocks that keep the planet functioning and reflect on what can be heard when listening across vast distances; go back to the root of England's monarchy and political conflict in France; witness the quiet madness of academia in the modern world and in hell; and explore the intersections of racism, identity, and Catholicism. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

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August 26th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 8/26

On this week’s Front Table, walk the winding relational threads of one of the greatest thinkers of last century; witness the cycles of agency and violence turn with new critical theory and an oral history of the atom bomb; unravel your choice of two tales of a sudden odyssey (the options are unsettling or comic); and go back to the root of humanity with a vast history of Mesopotamia and to our hopes of a cure-all for what ails us.

Baldwin: A Love Story
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Nicholas Boggs

Baldwin: A Love Story tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships....

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August 19th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 8/19

On this week’s Front Table, take an exacting look at gentrification and the lives devastated in the process, and debunk the myth surrounding AI's military potential. Explore how love and betrayal can coexist, and consider the ripple effects of familial legacies over generations. Lastly, enjoy an absurdist romp in search of a stolen snuffbox, and reflect on a journey through time guided by economics, culture, and spirituality. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

How to Kill a City
...

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August 12th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 8/12

On this week’s Front Table, challenge everyday decisions and systemic pressures on both individual and institutional levels to expose the hidden forces of injustice, moral debate, and ideological suppression in the modern age. Then, follow voyages of remembrance that retrace the fading footsteps of both historical and fictional figures as they uncover new worlds–both around and within. Finally, witness the fallout of war, art, and memory as it haunts the fractured families and fading ideals they leave behind. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com....

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August 5th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 8/5

On this week’s Front Table, explore how to build stronger foundations for political life, what we can learn about philosophical problems posed by corporate culture, and how a simple theorem affects every aspect of our lives. Next, learn about the Black Freedom Movement and its impact in transforming racial relations in the US. Read about a woman with a deadly curse or check out a story collection about strange dreamlike worlds. Finally, get lost in a book about an 80-year-old woman's adventures with a magical cane. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.
 


Don't Talk...

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July 29th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 7/29

On this week’s Front Table, reconsider fields in a new light: a multidisciplinary approach to shade reveals its critical part in protecting health and an esteemed Black classicist argues against immortalizing ancient Greek and Roman authors as “classical,” tracing new methods for countering dominant practices. Next, uncover exhaustive accounts of injustice: a new narrative detailing the Houston Incident and an exploration of residential schools. Finally, absorb a romance entangled in radical politics, delve into a riveting portrait of five youths in Rocinha, and witness a wholly original depiction of an undergraduate’s attempt to finish her essay. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

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July 22nd, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 7/22

On this week’s Front Table, examine transnational movements for justice: from young activists in Asia to Argentine grandmothers searching for stolen children, and even the calculated racial engineering of Southern American cities. Next, explore how bodies, gender, and queer desire are expressed in the face of shame, grief, and hope. Finally, live the surreal realities of Brazilian-American immigrant life haunted by ambition, fear, longing, and ghosts of the living. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

The Milk Tea Alliance
(Columbia Global Reports)
...

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July 15th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 7/15
 
On this week’s Front Table, learn about two scientists' efforts to identify and describe all life on Earth, followed by a wondrous insider's account of climate science. Read about the transition from childhood to adulthood through a grounded lens of biology, then the history of neoliberalism and its global decline today. Immerse yourself in a story about family on the edge of collapse, or a novel about man who causes a tragedy that tears his family apart. Also, read about a secret agent who is sent to do dirty work in France. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com
 

Every Living Thing : The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life...

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June 30th, 2025
Front Table Newsletter 6/30
 
On this week’s Front Table, witness migration through unlikely lenses: how plants and humans alike take root across borders, a teenager transformed by boxing before vanishing without a trace, and a Nigerian woman contending with guilt, love, and identity in a new country. Then, navigate the layered histories of race and resistance from the intersecting burdens of Black womanhood to a reframing of Palestine through global racial politics. Finally, critique adverse ideologies with an apocalyptic, satirical plunge into Californian wealth and an exploration of American literature's historically popular anti-state sentiment.
 
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