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Muriel writes: This book studies the power of ideology in order to analyze and understand a critical historical moment. Reading it changed completely how I thought about the mechanism of oppression and more generally, of history.

From bookseller Conor:

I've had a ton of people ask what we recommend for this time. One I go back to personally a lot is Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" as a way of stopping to collect my thoughts and recognize the necessity of thinking (and reading) critically, especially when it seems like all recent events appear as "one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage" (Thesis IX). Given the historical circumstances under which this text was written, fleeing fascist governments across Europe in 1940 with a briefcase full of what would be his final notes before taking his own life, Benjamin's essay is remarkably clairvoyant: 

"Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts, but their arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly comes to a stop in a constellation saturated with tensions, it gives that constellation a shock, by which...

“Reading and critical thinking are dangerous, indeed subversive, in an unjust society.” (Carl Sagan, University of Chicago AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PHD’60)

Reading is critical, in both senses of the word. Crucial, of course, insofar as it is a cornerstone of communication, a primary means by which we receive information. But it is also an active form of resistance, a tactic in the struggle against ignorance, misinformation, and manipulation. To read is to become knowledgeable; to become knowledgeable is to become powerful. 

This month, we will share reading lists and recommendations that are, in these senses, “critical.” We invite you to share yours as well. Post on Instagram, Twitter, or...

John Tipton’s first collection, surfaces, was published by Flood Editions in 2004. Two translations of Greek tragedies have followed: Sophocles’ Ajax (2008) and Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes (2015), both published by Flood. He is the publisher of Verge Books, a small literary press he runs with Peter O’Leary. Since 1990 he has called Chicago...