Public Books

25/09/2025

“Almodóvar’s movies are so ravishing and hilarious that we find ourselves helpless to patrol our boundaries, and we just give in to their transgressive spell.”

New at PB: Cassandra Neyenesch looks at the work of Pedro Almodóvar. His recent films, she writes, demonstrate an important shift: as an older man, Almodóvar is reckoning with things he himself would have disdained in the past.

“In recent years, Almodóvar’s films have become more serious, moving away from the campy melodrama and drugged gazpacho we knew and loved him for, toward a mature reckoning with the bigger questions of existence.”

24/09/2025

“Are you a banker or a manufacturer or an industrialist? If so, Stendhal doesn’t want you to read “Love” (De L’amour, 1822); you wouldn’t understand it."

New at PB: Naomi Levine revisits Stendhal's overlooked and wonderfully eccentric "Love" (1822), a book that uses a grand metaphor of crystallization to explain the pathology of the mind in love.

Are you a banker or a manufacturer or an industrialist? If so, Stendhal doesn’t want you to read “Love” («De L’amour,» 1822); you wouldn’t understand.

23/09/2025

“‘Dahomey’ narrates the Danxomèan treasures’ epic journey home. And yet, the film remains haunted by the visible and invisible human labor that made this homecoming—and its cinematic telling—possible.”

In "Dahomey," Mati Diop puts African art and labor on display. But who gets to speak within Diop’s economy of return? Read Doyle D. Calhoun's review, new at PB.

“Dahomey” narrates the Danxomèan treasures’ epic journey home. And yet, the film remains haunted by the visible and invisible human labor that made this homecoming—and its cinematic telling—possible.

18/09/2025

“Proportion is really important when we think about energy politics. How much do we need to dig? How much for each person? How much for each community? And what are the implications of that?”

New at PB: Warren Cariou can only be described as a “multihyphenate”: He’s a writer, artist, activist, storyteller, educator, community builder. He spoke with José Vergara's class at Bryn Mawr about how his artistic work with a dangerous material–bitumen–has made him see energy in different ways.

“I had seen a lot of bitumen in the devastated landscapes of the bitumen mines. But seeing it here, in such a mundane and tranquil setting, surprised me. That was when I first understood that this material is natural.”

17/09/2025

“Reframed as a ‘bewitched middlebrow,’ Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry across geographical borders.”

Dino Buzzati was middle class. He rejected revolutionary politics. His work was called a “bourgeois shudder” by Paolo Milano. “And yet,” argues , “his fiction still captures the spectral logic of a system where even time is taken for granted.

Reframed as a “bewitched middlebrow,” Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry.

16/09/2025

“Our understanding of the translated international bestseller and its history in the US is enormously incomplete.”

New at PB: A translation renaissance in US publishing just ended. And you probably missed it. Jed Kudrick & Sean DiLeonardi ask how such a renaissance went unnoticed?

A translation renaissance in US publishing just ended. And you probably missed it.

11/09/2025

“I often use the past to address a really difficult issue of the present. So, I see myself as part of a tradition of public intellectuals who are critical of the place that they are in. We work from the belly of the beast.”

New at PB: Jennifer A. González interviews Pedro Lasch, whose works assert that “art” acquires meaning through its interactions with its audience.

“From the very beginning, I knew I was part of a social movement for undocumented immigrants’ rights.”

10/09/2025

“The organizers of Berkeley women’s studies saw consensus as a feminist goal. Yet this dream of consensus is belied by the archival record of continuous disagreement.”

New at PB: In an era of appropriation of feminist language to erase feminist ideas, Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, & Anna Park visit the Berkeley Women’s Studies Movement Archive at the Bancroft Library to uncover ways to inherit feminist legacies in a shifting present.

Women’s studies programs in the United States are threatened by authoritarian pressure. For example, the Ohio legislature restricts how marriage and abortion can be presented in the college ...

09/09/2025

“One can see an arc running from Spain’s conquest of the Americas to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

Greg Grandin’s newest book, “America, América” (Penguin) offers three things that are notable about Spanish American independence: 1) independence brought into existence an already socialized community of nations. 2) Independence leaders understood their freedom movement as an atonement for conquest and 3) Spanish America broke free from one empire, only to have to confront a new one.
https://www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enlightenment-greg-grandin-on-latin-america-the-united-states-and-the-creation-of-social-democratic-modernity/

04/09/2025

“R. F. Kuang uses the confluence of these elements—romantasy, academic satire, and dark academia—to pose a more interesting set of questions. To wit: What is the magic that scholars find in the academy?”

R. F. Kuang’s highly anticipated new novel is a roman à clef for academics. New at PB: Elyse Graham takes the bait.

R. F. Kuang uses the confluence of romantasy, academic satire, and dark academia to pose a more interesting set of questions. To wit: What is the magic that scholars find in the academy?

03/09/2025

“Popular understandings of 'the border' routinely fixate on a bewildering array of emblems—walls, fenced rivers, lengthy checkpoint queues, and spaces, like the US-Mexico borderlands or a sanctuary city that has been 'invaded'—all of which hardly constitute a single line on the ground.”

New at PB: Jenna M. Loyd reviews 4 recent books that show how technologies that claim to "solve" the border crisis have only expanded and legitimized carceral and bordering practices.

Given that the border is already mystified as a technology, new forms of computerized border technologies doubly fetishize the configurations of people, materials, force, and law that compose bordering practices.

02/09/2025

“The Austen biography space is fairly saturated and covered. But there’s still a lot more we can learn by seeing her in context: that is, by seeing Austen in relation to her society, her family, her friends.”

With Jane Austen's 250th birthday coming up in December, it's the perfect time for a new biography. And Devoney Looser delivers with "Wild For Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane") out today from St. Martin's Press. Read Looser's interview with Carolyn Dever, new at PB.

“The Austen biography space is fairly saturated and covered. But there’s still a lot more we can learn by seeing her in context: that is, by seeing Austen in relation to her society, her family, her friends.”