Front Table Newsletter 9/23

On this week’s Front Table, journey through the past to revisit the making of an iconic mountain, and a controversial defense of the First Amendment. Witness a ghostly reckoning with Congolese history, and a man at a crossroads, too paralyzed to change direction. Analyze the role Silicon Valley has had in tech and business, and visit a fantastical, and horrific imagined Argentina. Finally, revisit a controversial thought experiment that changed the way we think about poverty. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com

Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America
(New Press)
Aryeh Neier

With a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by Nadine Strossen. A new edition of the most important free speech book of the past half-century, with a new chapter by the author on some of the top First Amendment controversies of today.
 

Grace Period
(Two Lines Press)
Maria Judite De Carvalho, Margaret Jull Costa, trans.

Mateo Silva is at a crossroads, but too paralyzed to change direction in a life that he no longer seems to control. After 25 years away, he sells his childhood home to his wealthy neighbor whose wife, Graça, enchanted Mateo as a young man and broke up his family. But the woman he sees now bears little resemblance to the one he remembers, and you can't move forward by revisiting the past.

Fuji: A Mountain in the Making
(Princeton University Press)
Andrew W Bernstein

A panoramic biography of Japan's iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the present. Beautifully illustrated, Fuji presents a rich portrait of one of the world's most celebrated sites, revealing a mountain forever in the making and offering a meditation on the ability of landscape both to challenge and inspire.
 

Dealing With the Dead
(New Press)
Alain Nabanckou

One day in the Congolese town of Pointe-Noire, Liwa Ekimakingaï wakes to find himself in a cemetery where he had been buried. Bewildered by his predicament, he makes his way back home to see his grandmother one last time. As he does, disturbing rumors swirl together with Liwa's jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leading him to try and solve the mystery of his own untimely demise.


Tech: When Silicon Valley Remakes the World
(University of California Press)
Olivier Alexandre

Sometimes only an outsider can show how an industry works--and how that industry works upon the world. In Tech, sociologist Olivier Alexandre takes us on a revealing tour of Silicon Valley's prominent personalities and vibrant networks to capture the way its denizens live, think, relate, and innovate, and how they shape the very code and conduct of business itself.


A Sunny Place for Shady People
(Hogarth Press)
Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell, trans.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. 


Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need
(Princeton University Press)
David Edmonds

David Edmonds tells the remarkable story of Singer and his controversial "drowning child" thought experiment, tracing how it radically changed the way many think about poverty--but also how it has provoked scathing criticisms.