An open-ended annotated bibliography of publications, on a variety of topics—largely, but not exclusively, political—that I have found to be of particular and enduring interest. Note that interest does not necessarily imply agreement; in some cases, interest can consist in notoriety or even infamy. This bibliography remains very much a work in progress, with new references being added. Each annotated citation is on its own page; all are linked from the topical index below (an author index and a chronological index are also available). The length of a publication’s annotation should not be taken as an indication of the degree of importance I ascribe to it; some publications are easier to summarize concisely than others, regardless of the size of the publications themselves.
The annotations often include my own opinions, and I do not hold myself to any Wikipedia-like standard of neutrality. This decision should not diminish the usefulness of the bibliography to those with different opinions, and may enhance it. As Francis Bacon said, “Truth will sooner emerge from error than from confusion” (Novum Organum, Book II, aphorism 20). Nevertheless, the annotations remain summaries, not reviews or critiques; expressions of opinion, when present, are intended to help the reader understand what the annotated publication is about.
This page presents the annotated bibliography as a topical index with links to the articles. It is preceded by an outline of the topical divisions, linked to allow skipping ahead. An author index and a chronological index are also available.
- Freedom of Expression
- Political Strategy
- Political Theory
- Authoritarian psychology
- Authoritarian sociology
- Corporations and their social pathology
- Corruption and privatization of public goods in particular industries
- Drug prohibition
- Fascism and government by fear
- Imperialism and projection of power
- Legal mechanisms for subversion of popular sovereignty
- Paramilitary policing and government by force
- Plutocracy in practice at societal and world scale
- Surveillance and violation of privacy
- Physical Science
Depressions, recessions, and liquidity traps
Inequality of wealth and income
- (Chait 2011) Inequality and bullshit.
- (Krugman 2011) Graduates versus oligarchs.
- (Krugman 2011) A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
- (Krugman 2011) Millionaire for a day.
- (Krugman 2011) Oligarchy: American style.
Socialism and public provision of goods
- (Baker 2012) The surefire way to end online piracy: end copyright.
- (Konczal 2011) On public funding of colleges and towards a general theory of public options.
- (Newfield 2011) The view from 2020: how universities came back.
- (Mason 2010) Public options: the general case.
- (Baker 2003) The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age alternative to copyrights.
- (Shleifer and Vishny 1992) Pervasive shortages under socialism.
Surplus value, rent, and return on capital
- (Monbiot 2013) I agree with Churchill: let’s get stuck into the real shirkers.
- (Waldman 2013) K is not capital, L is not labor.
- (Žižek 2012) The revolt of the salaried bourgeoisie.
- (Frase 2012) Four futures.
- (Carson 2010) Yes—the rent really is too damn high!
- (Graeber 2006) Turning modes of production inside out; or, why capitalism is a transformation of slavery.
Work, the work ethic, and the swarm economy
- (Harris 2013) We have to talk about why some people agree with benefit cuts.
- (Monbiot 2013) Communism, welfare state—what’s the next big idea?
- (Frase 2012) Category errors.
- (Ackerman 2012) The work of anti-work: a response to Peter Frase.
- (Frase 2012) The scourge of overemployment.
- (Ackerman 2012) Introduction: Europe against the Left.
- (Beggs 2012) Keynes’ jetpack.
- (Falkvinge 2011) Should Pirate Parties include the coming swarm economy as policy?
- (Frase 2011) Hipsters, food stamps, and the politics of resentment.
- (Maisano 2011) Take this job and share it: on loving work and hating freedom.
- (Weeks 2011) The problem with work: feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries.
- (Frase 2010) Do they owe us a living?
- (Schor 1991) The overworked American: the unexpected decline of leisure.
- (Lafargue 1883) The right to be lazy.
Freedom of Expression
Freedom of expression: general
Academic freedom and educational methods
- (McMillan Cottom 2012) Employees ready “out of the box” at what cost?
- (Mirzoeff 2012) Endebt and punish.
- (Nelson 2012) Fighting for the humanities.
- (Williams 2012) Academic freedom and indentured students.
- (Taylor 2012) Unschooling.
- (Goldstein 2012) Liberals, don’t homeschool your kids: why teaching children at home violates progressive values.
- (Taylor 2012) Learning in freedom.
- (Erickson 2012) The case for cinder blocks.
- (Erickson 2012) A nation of little Lebowski urban achievers.
- (Hartman 2012) Teach for America.
- (Cain and Gump 2011) John Ervin Kirkpatrick and the rulers of American colleges.
- (Schrecker 2010) Ward Churchill at the Dalton Trumbo Fountain: academic freedom in the aftermath of 9/11.
- (Engvall 2010) The corporatization of American higher education: merit pay trumps academic freedom.
- (Gregorek 2010) Towards an autonomous Antioch College: the story of the Nonstop Liberal Arts Institute.
- (Menand 2010) The marketplace of ideas: reform and resistance in the American university.
- (Nelson 2010) No university is an island: saving academic freedom.
- (Finkin and Post 2009) For the common good: principles of American academic freedom.
- (Finkin, Post, Nelson et al 2007) Freedom in the classroom.
- (Hollinger 2005) What does it mean to be “balanced” in academia?
- (Slaughter 2001) Professional values and the allure of the market.
- (Aby and Kuhn 2000) Academic freedom: a guide to the literature.
- (Slaughter 1998) Academic capitalism: moving toward market in the sciences, the arts, and professional schools.
- (Menand 1996) The future of academic freedom.
- (Jones 1990) Stars and bras: a report from the trenches.
- (Slaughter 1988) Academic freedom and the state: reflections on the uses of knowledge.
- (Schrecker 1980) Academic freedom and the Cold War.
- (Silva and Slaughter 1980) Prometheus bound: the limits of social science professionalization in the Progressive period.
- (Slaughter 1980) The danger zone: academic freedom and civil liberties.
- (Aptheker 1969) Higher education and the student rebellion in the United States 1960–1969: a bibliography.
- (Frank 1949) Einstein’s philosophy of science.
Civility, political correctness, and speech codes
- (Leiter 2011) The circumstances of civility.
- (Calhoun 2000) The virtue of civility.
- (Kennedy 1998) The case against “civility”.
- (DeMott 1996) Seduced by civility: political manners and the crisis of democratic values.
Conformity and groupthink
- (Janis 1982) Groupthink: psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes. 2nd ed.
- (Kennedy 1969) Thirteen days: a memoir of the Cuban missile crisis.
Intellectual privilege (IP)
- (Hekman 2012) Moving the prestige to open-access publishing.
- (Eisen 2012) Twenty years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing.
- (Taylor 2012) Open, moral, and pragmatic.
- (Falkvinge 2012) The copyright industry: a century of deceit.
- (Masnick 2012. European Parliament official in charge of ACTA quits, and denounces the ‘masquerade’ behind ACTA.
- (Falkvinge 2012) It’s time to go on the offensive for freedom of speech.
- (Cadwalladr 2012) Rick Falkvinge: the Swedish radical leading the fight over web freedoms.
- (United States Pirate Party 2012) No safe harbor: essays about pirate politics.
- (Carson 2011) Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.
- (Slaughter and Rhoades 2010) The social construction of copyright ethics and values.
- (Policy Perspectives 1998) To publish and perish.
- (Falkvinge 2011) Do we really have to prepare for the fourth box?
- (Sharp 2011) Choices for defecting Syrian soldiers.
Black bloc tactics and interaction with police
- (Hedges 2012) The cancer in Occupy.
- (Cagle 2012) Activists and anarchists speak for themselves at Occupy Oakland.
- (Graeber 2012) Concerning the violent peace-police: an open letter to Chris Hedges.
- (Carson 2012) Should Occupy use violence? I dunno, should the cops?
- (Yassin 2012) What lies beneath the “violence” discourse.
- (Frase 2012) No police order.
- (Rockstroh 2012) Recovering from Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS): “Because the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same”.
- (Kilkenny 2011) Occupy and the importance of not asking for permission.
- (Comrades from Cairo 2011) Solidarity statement from Cairo.
Cyberwar, hacktivism, and large-scale online information leaks
- (Walker 2011) Amnesty International hails WikiLeaks and Guardian as Arab Spring ‘catalysts’.
- (Ryan 2011) Tunisia’s bitter cyberwar: Anonymous has joined Tunisian activists to call for end to the government’s stifling of online dissent.
- (Gibson 1984) Neuromancer.
- (Shoch and Hupp 1982) The “worm” programs—early experience with a distributed computation.
- (Brunner 1975) The shockwave rider.
Revolutionary agency and identity politics
- (Myerson 2012) Occupy’s heiress: Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the granddaughter of an oil and gas billionaire, is determined to radicalize America’s wealthy.
- (Forbes 2012) The black Jacobin.
- (Frase 2011) An imagined community: regional identities and the Left.
- (Goodman 2011) “We’ve had our eyes opened …”: veterans joining the 99% movement.
- (Tate 2011) Top 10 reasons why so few black folk appear down to Occupy Wall Street.
- (Bayoumi 2011) Can Egyptians revolt? Inspired by the Tunisian example, Egyptians take to the streets in their own protest. But can it last?
Revolutionary strategy at the movement level
- (Graeber 2012) Occupy’s liberation from liberalism: the real meaning of May Day.
- (Chomsky 2011) Occupy the future.
- (Žižek 2011) The Jacobin spirit: on violence and democracy.
- (Johnson 2011) The power of nonsense: Slavoj Žižek’s left-fascist farce.
- (Freeman 2001) The tyranny of structurelessness.
- (McAdam 1983) Tactical innovation and the pace of insurgency.
- (Trotsky 1931) Against national communism! (Lessons of the “red referendum”).
Political theory: general
- (Hsiao and Lim 2010) The Verso book of dissent: from Spartacus to the shoe-thrower of Baghdad.
- (McCarthy and McMillian 2010) Protest nation: words that inspired a century of American radicalism.
Anarchism and left-libertarianism
- (Carson 2012) One-sided contracts.
- (Graeber 2011) Occupy Wall Street’s anarchist roots.
- (Carson 2008) The iron fist behind the invisible hand: corporate capitalism as a state-guaranteed system of privilege.
- (Carson 2008) The subsidy of history.
- (Carson 2006) Contract feudalism.
- (Graeber 2004) Fragments of an anarchist anthropology.
Conservatism and right-libertarianism
- (Robin 2012) Forced to choose: capitalism as existentialism.
- (Phillips-Fein 2011) Conservatism: a state of the field.
- (Robin 2011) The reactionary mind: conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin.
- (Nash 1976) The conservative intellectual movement in America since 1945.
- (Nussbaum 2011) Perfectionist liberalism and political liberalism.
- (Anderson 2005) How not to complain about taxes (1).
- (Anderson 2005) How not to complain against taxes (II): against natural property rights.
- (Anderson 2005) Adventures in contract feudalism.
Marxism and tisarchism (non-anarchist radicalism)
Corporate public relations
- (White 2012) The philanthropic complex.
- (Redburn 2012) Pink different.
- (Hoggan and Cray 2011) 40th anniversary of the Lewis Powell memo launching corporate propaganda infrastructure.
- (Potter 2010) Deadly spin: an insurance company insider speaks out on how corporate PR is killing health care and deceiving Americans.
- (Powell 1971) Attack on American free enterprise system.
- (Sauer 2012) “Act of Valor” and the myth of an anti-military Hollywood.
- (Bishara 2010) Hollywood and the war machine: Empire examines the symbiotic relationship between the movie industry and the military-industrial complex.
- (Herman and Brodhead 1984) Demonstration elections: U.S.-staged elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador.
The news media
- The mainstream news media
- (Brisbane 2012) Should the Times be a truth vigilante?
- (Greenwald 2012) Arthur Brisbane and selective stenography.
- (Lennard 2011) Why I quit the mainstream media.
- (Bagdikian 2004) The new media monopoly. 7th ed.
- (Aufderheide, Barnouw, Cohen et al 1997) Conglomerates and the media.
- (Herman 1982) The real terror network: terrorism in fact and propaganda.
- The right-wing news media
Scientific fraud and illicit bias in scientific research
- (Sarewitz 2012) Beware the creeping cracks of bias.
- (Klemperer 2010) Drug research: marketing before evidence, sales before safety.
- (Ioannidis 2005) Why most published research findings are false.
Social science popularization as a veil for ideology
- (Ehrenreich 2009) Bright-sided: how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America.
- (Miller 2011) Anarchy.
- (Burger 2009) Replicating Milgram: would people still obey today?
- (Liddy 1980) Will: the autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy.
- (Milgram 1974) Obedience to authority: an experimental view.
- (Aronson and Mills 1959) The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group.
- (Robin 2012) Outsourcing conservatism: Arizona’s new contraception law shows how the private sphere often leads the way for reactionary policies.
- (Anderson 2012) How demonizing contraception destroys the family: a glimpse inside Rick Santorum’s radical Catholic culture.
- (Marcotte 2011) How sex panic almost destroyed the economy.
- (Sharlet 2008) The Family: the secret fundamentalism at the heart of American power.
- (Hoffer 1951) The true believer.
Corporations and their social pathology
Corruption and privatization of public goods in particular industries
- Communications, entertainment, and publishing
- (Reclaim UCSD 2012) Budget cuts, fee hikes, privatization.
- (Patnaik and Bady 2012) On privatization and brutalizing campuses.
- (McMillan Cottom 2012) Insider’s view of for-profit colleges, race, class, and education justice.
- (Weil 2012) Congresswoman accepts money tied to for-profit colleges, then touts schools’ efficiency.
- (Reclaim UCSD 2012) Report on the profitability of education and the exploitability of students.
- (Patnaik 2011) Breaking trust: the past and future of the University of California.
- (Meister 2009) They pledged your tuition to Wall Street: an open letter to UC students.
- Healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry
- (Shaneyfelt and Centor 2009) Reassessment of clinical practice guidelines: go gently into that good night.
- (Eichacker, Natanson, and Danner 2006) Surviving Sepsis—practice guidelines, marketing campaigns, and Eli Lilly.
- (Angell 2005) The truth about the drug companies: how they deceive us and what to do about it.
- Real estate
- (Geoghegan 2012) Icelandic myths.
- (Stoller 2012) Towards a creditor state: one in seven Americans pursued by debt collectors.
- (Valdimarsson 2012) Icelandic anger brings debt forgiveness in best recovery story.
- (Stryker 2011) Why Iceland should be in the news, but is not.
- (Andersen 2011) A deconstruction of “Iceland’s on-going revolution”.
- (Geoghegan 2011) Rebuilding Iceland.
- (Silver-Greenberg 2011) Welcome to debtors’ prison, 2011 edition.
- (Graeber 2011) Debt: the first 5,000 years.
- (Stiglitz 2010) Justice for some.
- (Greenwald 2009) Drug decriminalization in Portugal: lessons for creating fair and successful drug policies.
- (Davenport-Hines 2002) The pursuit of oblivion: a global history of narcotics.
- (Fingarette 1988) Heavy drinking: the myth of alcoholism as a disease.
- (Melzack and Wall 1988) The challenge of pain. Revised ed.
- (Rorabaugh 1979) The alcoholic republic: an American tradition.
Fascism and government by fear
- (Robin 2011) Fear: American style.
- (Wolf 2007) The end of America: a letter of warning to a young patriot.
- (Robin 2004) Fear: the history of a political idea.
- (Robin 2004) Fragmented state, pluralist society: how liberal institutions promote fear.
- (Council on Foreign Relations 2001) Women’s opinion on defense policies has been transformed since September 11.
- (Lewis 1935) It can’t happen here.
Imperialism and projection of power
- (Lamothe 2012) Marine scout snipers used Nazi SS logo.
- (Boal 2011) The kill team: how U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses—and how their officers failed to stop them.
- (Chomsky 1985) Turning the tide: U.S. intervention in Central America and the struggle for peace.
Legal mechanisms for subversion of popular sovereignty
- (Bady 2012) Il faut défendre la société contre les étudiants: Québec’s Law 78.
- (Mirzoeff 2012) Civilians in the Red Square.
- (Ha and Perreaux 2012) Anti-protest legislation passes in Quebec.
- (Biggs 2012) Is reversing Citizens United or corporate personhood enough?
- (Ackerman 2011) Burn the Constitution.
- (Fresia 1988) Toward an American revolution: exposing the Constitution and other illusions.
Paramilitary policing and government by force
- (Graeber 2012) New police strategy in New York—sexual assault against peaceful protestors.
- (Konczal 2012) Against law, for order.
- (Lee 2012) The Department of Homeland Security is buying 450 million new bullets.
- (Thill 2012) Five months and twenty-eight days.
- (Goodman 2012) Video: Occupier describes injuries (including handprint-shaped bruises), seizures suffered during NYPD raid.
- (Connor 2012) Government “may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters”, scientists fear.
- (Carlson 2011) Battlefield Main Street.
- (Vitale 2011) Rule of law vs. the forces of order.
- (Boghosian 2010) The policing of political speech: constraints on mass dissent in the U.S.
- (Balko 2006) Overkill: the rise of paramilitary police raids in America.
- (Kelling and Wilson 1982) Broken windows: the police and neighborhood safety.
Plutocracy in practice at societal and world scale
- (Krugman 2011) Crats, maybe, but not much techno.
- (Moyers 2011) Our politicians are money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy.
- (Hodge 2010) The mendacity of hope: Barack Obama and the betrayal of American liberalism.
- (Taibbi 2010) Griftopia: bubble machines, vampire squids, and the long con that is breaking America.
Surveillance and violation of privacy
- (Falkvinge 2012) Debunking the dangerous “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
- (Madrigal 2012) I’m being followed: how Google—and 104 other companies—are tracking me on the Web.
- (Horning 2012) Advertising and the health of the Internet.
- (Garfinkel 2000) Database Nation: the death of privacy in the 21st century.
- (Couder, Boudaoud, Protière, and Fort 2010) Walking droplets: a form of wave-particle duality at macroscopic scale?
Shortlink to this page: http://is.gd/6aLduf Last revision: April 30, 2013