Archives de catégorie : Anthropology/Sociology

FREE LOVE de Michelle Tea

A wildly entertaining, authentic, and profound guide to navigating freedom and commitment, in a society intent on pinning us down.

FREE LOVE: Adventures in Marriage and Polyamory
by Michelle Tea
HarperOne, Fall 2026
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

Polyamory is having a moment. Whether you love it or hate it, the explosion of non-monogamy into the mainstream suggests a widespread frustration and stuck-ness within traditional relationship structures, perhaps especially among women and femmes, whose sexual freedom has long been contained and policed. Why do we have to choose between adventure and security? Why can’t we try, at least, to have them both?

Long before its current it-girl moment, polyamory was foundational to many radical subcultures, who saw in it not only the chance for sexual freedom, but a path towards dismantling patriarchal oppression and the zero-sum game of capitalism – a path towards personal, spiritual, and collective growth, care, and empowerment. Polyamory was also foundational to the life of beloved writer and queer icon Michelle Tea, from the clandestine, ill-fated throuples of her late teens, to the punk lesbian underground of 90s San Francisco, through marriage and divorce, Tinder flings and enduring friendships, heartbreak and motherhood.

In FREE LOVE, she will share these juicy, hilarious, and moving stories with her characteristic wit and charm, while delving into the radical, forgotten history of openness, and interviewing and researching widely, to guide readers through the thorny choices we make in our own relationships – poly or no. A modern-day The Ethical Slut meets Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love, it marries the storytelling of Maggie Smith and Samantha Irby with the practical wisdom and heartwarming appeal of writers like Glennon Doyle, Emily Nagoski, and Vanessa Marin.

Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen widely acclaimed books memoir, fiction, and cultural criticism, and the recipient of awards from PEN/America, the Guggenheim, Lambda Literary, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Her books have been translated into French, Japanese, Slovenian, German, Italian, and Swedish.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM de Lyz Lenz

From the author of the New York Times-bestseller This American Ex-Wife, comes a new book by Lyz Lenz—a fierce, funny, and deeply reported love letter to the Midwest and a cri de coeur for collective care in our crisis-riddled country.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
by Lyz Lenz
Dey Street, Spring 2027
(via Neon Literary)

In the decade since Hillbilly Elegy tried to explain America through the lens of white, rural grievance, Lyz Lenz has been living—and writing—a more radical, generous truth from a few hundred miles to the northwest. A proud lowan and nationally recognized journalist, she now blends memoir, political analysis, and biting cultural critique in her signature style: Barbara Ehrenreich by way of Samantha Irby. Through floods, farm bankruptcies, Kum & Go parking lots, hot dish, and butter cows, THE MIDDLE KINGDOM shows how Midwestern communities are improvising survival—even joy— through mutual aid and stubborn care.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM expands on themes that have made Lenz an essential voice in today’s political discourse: the failures of hyper-individualism, the radical politics of care, and the importance of taking « flyover country » seriously.

Lyz Lenz is a journalist and the author of God Land and Belabored. She has written for Insider, The New York Times, Marie Claire, and The Washington Post. Lenz also writes the newsletter « Men Yell at Me », about the intersection of politics and personhood in red-state America.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLIMATE FOLLY de Tim & Emma Flannery

This book reveals an outrageous history of dreamers and schemers who wanted to bend the climate to their will.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLIMATE FOLLY
by Tim and Emma Flannery
Text Publishing Australia, August 2026

In this entertaining and at times terrifying book, Tim and Emma Flannery tell the story of how human beings have tried to change the weather. It’s a long story that goes back to priests and shamans who prayed to weather gods and sang and danced to make it rain. It’s a story of shysters and charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. And it’s a story of shocking schemes to reshape nature.

Climate shapes species and plays a key role in evolution. But we are the only species that has ever dreamed of making the weather suit ourselves. And now that we are in danger of triggering catastrophic global warming, the history of human climate folly is more alarming than ever. Hitler, for instance, wanted to drain the Mediterranean. In the 1950s Soviet and US governments contemplated nuking the Arctic ice cap in order to create a warmer climate.

These schemes seem ludicrous to us, but are they any stranger than the idea that we can arrest runaway climate change by burying our carbon emissions deep in the earth or by seeding clouds with sulphur to block out the sun?

Tim Flannery is a paleontologist, an explorer, a conservationist and a leading writer on climate change. His books include the award-winning international bestseller The Weather Makers, and Here on Earth, Atmosphere of Hope and Europe: The First 100 Million Years, as well as his previous collaboration with his daughter, Emma Flannery, Big Meg.

Emma Flannery is a scientist and writer. She has explored caves, forests and oceans across most of the globe’s continents in search of elusive fossils, animals and plants. Her research and writing on geology, chemistry and palaeontology has been published in scientific journals, children’s books and a number of museum-based adult education tours.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND de Kelly Sundberg

Sundberg focuses on the longer-lasting effects of trauma and PTSD on survivors, challenging a culture in which violence against women is normalized and illuminating the nonlinear, complex nature of recovery. For readers of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, this is a beautiful, devastating, and nuanced examination into embracing a new reality after trauma and finding power and beauty in it.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND
by Kelly Sundberg
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, August 2025

The trauma of surviving an abusive marriage didn’t make Kelly Sundberg stronger. In fact, it nearly broke her. But leaving the abuse behind was not the end of the story, it was the beginning of a new one. In that journey, Sundberg learned in ways both good and bad, that one doesn’t necessarily get to leave abuse behind. Sometimes, everywhere you go, the memories of the abuse go with you.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND begins with the invocation “May this book be an exorcism.” Learning to coexist with her rage and then to turn that rage into strength, Sundberg’s journey to alchemizing her suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder into post-traumatic stress growth was neither easy nor simple. Far from bleak, her story provides vital insight into the little-known recovery process, and how healing is possible.

A narrative following a process of discovery as Sundberg’s personal story is juxtaposed against established research, The Answer is in the Wound offers a redemptive arc for trauma survivors, arguing for healing through an acceptance of their new state of being. Sundberg uses metaphors like the act of erasure—shown in erasure poetry created from her abusive ex-husband’s apologetic emails—and includes theories from psychiatrists and researchers like Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and Peter A. Levine to construct a balanced meditation on trauma and the imprint it leaves.

Kelly Sundberg is the author of Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival, published by Harper in 2018. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. Her essays have been published or selected as notables in Best American Essays four times. She has a PhD in creative nonfiction. She lives, writes, and edits in Columbus, Ohio.

WEISE FRAUEN de Miriam Stein

The first accessible, non-esoteric book about traditional female knowledge.

WEISE FRAUEN
by Miriam Stein
Goldmann/PRH Germany, October 2024

Healers, shamans, priests, midwives, soothsayers: in antiquity, female communities and networks exchanged valuable, even life-saving, knowledge about nursing, healing, spirituality and sexuality. But in our patriarchal societies with their male-dominated academic discourse, female knowledge was often dismissed as irrelevant or un-serious and esoteric.

In her new book, culture journalist and bestselling author Miriam Stein goes in search of the forgotten heroes of our past, whose work still shapes our lives and thoughts today. It is a very personal journey, on which she talks to the modern heirs of our wise foremothers, including sex workers and shamans. She invites us to rediscover traditional female knowledge, and use it to live a feminist life of modern, empowered sisterhood.

Miriam Yung Min Stein is a journalist and author. She was born in South Korea in 1977 and adopted by a family in Osnabrück, where she grew up. She has performed on stage with Christoph Schlingensief and Rimini Protokoll, and published several books, including the bestselling Die gereizte Frau (‘The Irritated Woman’).