Welcome to the Verso Book Club!
Receive ALL of our new ebooks every month as well as one or more new books in the mail. Now at a discount of 50% to celebrate Verso’s 50th year, all subscribers will also get 50% off ALL of our books.
In our 50th year, we are excited to announce the Verso Book Club! Join now and get every new ebook that we publish, as well as one or more new books in the mail if you choose a print subscription. All Book Club members will also get 50% off everything on our website, for as long as you are a subscriber. To celebrate our 50th year of radical publishing and the launch of our book club, each member tier is 50% off for the first three months.
You can choose between three options: the Verso Reader digital subscription, Verso Subscriber for print and digital, and Verso Comrade to receive even more books in the mail (including one new work of politics or theory every month, as well as the occasional classic from Verso’s backlist). Learn more about the different member options here.
Every month we’ll offer a carefully curated selection of our best new titles, across a wide range of topics and subject areas, to bring you books that everyone at Verso regards as essential reading. In mid-July, we’ll email all members with more details about the August book club selection—including a letter from the editor—so that you can choose which one you want to receive, any time before the end of the month.
JULY Book Club Selection
Verso Subscribers and Verso Comrades will receive these brand new books in the mail:
War In The Age of Trump: The Defeat of ISIS, the Fall of the Kurds, the Conflict with Iran by Patrick Cockburn. In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East. Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey’s attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region. Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis based on a lifetime’s study of the region.
Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern. Through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built into our cities, homes, and neighborhoods. Kern offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out an intersectional feminist approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is also our best hope for shaping a new urban future.
Verso Comrades will also receive:
Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations by Martin Jay. Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its founding members continues in the twenty-first century to unsettle conventional wisdom about culture, society and politics. Exploring unexamined episodes in the school’s history and reading its work in unexpected ways, these essays provide ample evidence of the abiding relevance of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Löwenthal, and Kracauer in our troubled times.
Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno. Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in mid-century America and finds a life deformed by capitalism. This is Adorno's theoretical and literary masterpiece, and a classic of twentieth-century thought. This new Radical Thinkers edition was published in March 2020, with Louis Althusser, On Ideology, Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, and Nancy Fraser, Fortunes of Feminism.
All Book Club members will also receive these new ebooks:
[book-strip index="1" style="display"]AUGUST Book Club Selection
Verso Subscribers and Verso Comrades can choose their Book Club mailing from these two titles:
Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-first Century by McKenzie Wark. McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: media ecologies, post-colonial ethnographies, and the design of technology, and introduces us to the thinking of seventeen major writers who, combined, contribute to the common task of knowing the world. Each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. The book is a vital and timely introduction to the future both as a warning but also as a roadmap for how we might find our way out of the current crisis.
Revolutionary Feminisms: Conversations on Collective Action and Radical Thought edited by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah. Through interviews with key revolutionary scholars, Bhandar and Ziadah present a thorough discussion of how anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminisms are crucial to building effective political coalitions. Collectively, these interviews with leading scholars – including Angela Y. Davis, Silvia Federici, and many others – trace the ways in which black, indigenous, post-colonial and Marxian feminisms have created new ways of seeing, new theoretical frameworks, and new ways of relating to one another.
Verso Comrades will also receive:
Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder by Christian Parenti. In retelling the story of the radical Alexander Hamilton, Parenti rewrites the history of early America and the global economy. In exploring his life and work, Parenti rediscovers this gadfly as a pathbreaking political thinker and institution builder. In this vivid portrait, Hamilton emerges as a singularly important historical figure: a thinker and politico who laid the foundation for America’s ascent to global supremacy and mass industrialization—for better or worse.
Fortunes of Feminism by Nancy Fraser. Fortunes of Feminism charts the history of women’s liberation and calls for a revitalized feminism. Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of neoliberalism. Now, foreseeing a revival in the movement, Fraser argues for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism able to address the global economic crisis. This new Radical Thinkers edition was published in March 2020.
All Book Club members will also receive these new ebooks:
[book-strip index="2" style="display"]Learn more about the Verso Book Club—including more detailed information on all the membership tiers. Confused or have any questions? We hope our FAQs will help, but you can also email us at bookclub@versobooks.com—we would love to get your feedback!
