Browse books by title with CW new books archive feature.

Weary Gargoyles

The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood and Contemporary British and Irish Fiction: an Introduction Through Interviews by Sharon Monteith, Jenny Newman and Pat Wheeler

The hysterical realists may be gifted writers, but they are not able to translate their understanding of the world in a truly literary way, without debasing the form in the name of, for example, macro-microeconomics.

Reclaiming our Universities

Steven Schwartz

This pamphlet is basically an advert for New Labour’s proposed changes to funding higher education, in particular its case for universities charging students fees for courses.

The Modernization Imperative

Bruce Charlton and Peter Andras

Charlton’s and Andras’ thesis is itself a prescriptive method of analysis which provides instructions not on whether to ‘modernise’, but how.

The Abolition of Liberty

Peter Hitchens

Had your house broken into? Been hustled by some cheeky teenagers? Been harassed by a new law that has made your job twice as hard? Tried to get the police or the courts to come to your rescue and fallen on your face?

Civil Society

Michael Edwards

Despite alluding to the vacuity of public debate, Edwards fails to address the problem head on.

Who’s in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service

Tim Coates

Unfortunately, what the report does not make clear is what makes a collection of books important, and this is a salient omission.

From dystopia to myopia: Metropolis to Blade Runner

Future Vision: Future Cities, London, 6 December 2003

From the late nineties on, there has been a marked retreat into the inner world, into childhood and away from dirty, complicated reality.

You’re so vain, you probably think this book is about you

Therapy Culture and the Therapistas

Frank Furedi’s Therapy Culture is neither an attack on the counselling profession nor on what they dismiss as ‘self-help’ culture, but a critique of our diminished view of humanity.

Why is life so unfair?

Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, by Susan Neiman

Some thinkers have always had ethical doubts about the pursuit of knowledge. Today these often take the form of concern about the consequences of technology, for example cloning. But Neiman pares things down to a single, more profound fear. If we understand the world and all its faults, are we then stuck with it? By explaining evil, do we justify it?

Judaism and Enlightenment

Adam Sutcliffe

Adam Sutcliffe’s basic argument, that Enlightenment thinkers had a confused attitude to Judaism, is made abundantly (and repeatedly) clear over the course of this scholarly and highly readable book.

Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age

Frank Furedi

Sociologist Frank Furedi’s book exposes the often-bizarre thinking behind the growing practice of counselling.

Experiment: Conversations in art and science

Edited by Bergit Arends and Davina Thackara

There has always been a relationship between art and science, but recently it has become fashionable to try combining the two in a single project. The Wellcome Trust has now published a volume reporting on several such collaborations carried out in the last few years.

Interview: Simon Critchley

Philosopher and author of On Humour

Although I sympathise with your celebration of humanity’s ability to overcome the worst, through laughter, this wormhole of escapism, I am deeply suspicious of any theory that concludes ‘our wretchedness is our greatness’. Can you really defend this statement?

The Identity of England

Robert Colls

Since the 1980s, the word ‘identity’ has come to feature in the titles of an increasing number of academic history books. With its radical connotations of subjectivising history, the word ‘identity’ is very much associated with the vocabulary of the postmodern historian.

Culture at the Crossroads

Charles Landry and Marc Pachter

Following the so-called ‘culture wars’ and the rise of postmodernism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism and various other ‘isms’, it is little wonder that the cultural institutions of Western society are going through something of an identity crisis.