What We Are Reading Today: Republics of Knowledge

Photo/Supplied
Short Url
Updated 21 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Republics of Knowledge

  • Miller identifies how public exchange of ideas affected policymaking, the emergence of a collective identity, and more

Author: Nicola Miller

The rise of nation-states is a hallmark of the modern age, yet we are still untangling how the phenomenon unfolded across the globe.

Here, Nicola Miller offers new insights into the process of nation-making through an account of 19th-century Latin America, where, she argues, the identity of nascent republics was molded through previously underappreciated means: the creation and sharing of knowledge.

Drawing evidence from Argentina, Chile, and Peru, Republics of Knowledge traces the histories of these countries from the early 1800s, as they gained independence, to their centennial celebrations in the 20th century. Miller identifies how public exchange of ideas affected policymaking, the emergence of a collective identity, and more.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

Updated 19 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations.

In The book tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Updated 18 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Drawing on 15 years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the “machine zone,” in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away.

Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion.

“Addiction by Design” is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life.


What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

Updated 17 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In “The Aesthetic Cold War,” Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers.

In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean — such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka — carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work.


What We Are Reading Today: American Mirror by Roberto Saba

Updated 17 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Ocean

Updated 15 May 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Ocean

Authors: David Attenborough, Colin Butfield

Drawing a course across David Attenborough’s own lifetime, Ocean takes readers through eight unique ocean habitats, through countless intriguing species, and through the most astounding discoveries of the last 100 years, to a future vision of a fully restored marine world, even richer and more spectacular than we could possibly hope.
Ocean reveals the past, present and potential future of our blue planet.