Rorotoko

In a nutshell

In the simplest terms, this book is about Russia’s first female terrorist. On January 24, 1878, a young woman named Vera Zasulich posed as an ordinary petitioner to gain admission to the office of the governor of St. Petersburg, Fedor Trepov. Then she pulled a gun out of her large grey shawl and shot the governor point blank.

This one act propelled Vera from obscurity into worldwide…

In a nutshell

“Conservative” means different things in different times and places. This book describes and explains the different types of conservatism in American history, from the Constitution to the end of the twentieth century. In writing it I tried to avoid taking sides, so that readers from all points on the political spectrum can read the book and learn from it. The Conservatives does not make the case for or…

In a nutshell

The book is about the experience of the historical moment called “1989,” lasting somewhere between an instant and a few years. More specifically, it’s about a set of feelings, intuitions, sensations, that I think arose in that moment. These are nuanced, elusive and contradictory enough to defy easy description. The book’s suspicion is that the material of culture exists in part to register, capture, and preserve these sensations,…

In a nutshell

Clash of Extremes presents a new interpretation of the causes of the Civil War. If the prevailing explanation can be summarized in one word, “slavery,” the argument in my book comes down to “economics.”

I tackled the Civil War because I felt slavery just didn’t explain why the sections clashed. For example, the Republican Party, which emerged in the 1850s, made clear it would not disturb slavery…

In a nutshell

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, alias Le Corbusier, borrowed, plagiarized and instrumentalised the ideas and symbols of Swiss and French Freemasonry and trade guilds, the compagnonnages.

The ruling elites of La Chaux-de-Fonds (where Jeanneret lived for the first thirty years of his life before moving to Paris), as well as those of the Third Republic in Paris, belonged to Masonic lodges. So this was for him a clever way of getting…

In a nutshell

In Political Affect I address human nature as bio-cultural. Each one of us is a “body politic” that connects the social and the somatic. I avoid the extremes of social constructivism and genetic determinism by claiming we inherit a minimal human nature that gets fine-tuned by culture. In a formula, our human nature has evolved to be so open to our nurture that it becomes second nature.

I…

In a nutshell

One of the most notable developments in international trade after the end of the Cold War has been the explosion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In 1990, there were about two dozen. Today, we are looking at several hundred, with many more under negotiation. PTAs come under various names and guises—free trade agreements, economic partnership agreements, regional integration agreements—but they have in common that they liberalize trade barriers…

In a nutshell

Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission is about the messy, uncertain process of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, and the quasi-judicial ritual that South Africa used to help accomplish such a transition. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was an attempt to draw a line in the sand, to say, “that was then, this is now.” The TRC tried to separate the massive atrocities and gross violations of…

In a nutshell

Mexico emerged as a modern nation in the 1860s, after half a century of civil war, foreign invasion and political instability. In a new nation divided by ethnicity, class, religion and differing views of sovereignty, even the basic rules of political culture had to be sorted out. The right to speak in the name of public opinion was not automatically granted to a selected few, but was the…

In a nutshell

I want a reader to enter a truly bizarre world: America in 1979.

It was a period of disco and disco demolition, cocaine and divorce, an Iranian revolution and oil embargo plus the Three Mile Island nuclear power crisis. It was a time when intellectuals feared America’s power was in decline to the Middle East and we were becoming a nation of narcissists. It was a time…

In a nutshell

Coyote at the Kitchen Door: Living with Wildlife in Suburbia is about what the relatively recent phenomenon of wide-scale urban and suburban development means to the landscape, to wildlife, to people, and to our planet in general. Based on my personal and professional experiences, the book is simultaneously a memoir, a textbook, and a personal philosophy.

As a professional wildlife biologist, I have worked on a variety of…

In a nutshell

Pistols! Treason! Murder! describes the short, disturbing and unprecedented career of a Venetian spy, Gerolamo Vano, who was executed for perjury in 1622.

In the years immediately preceding his death, Vano wrote hundreds of surveillance reports, based on material compiled from a revolving cast of suborned informants. Vano submitted these reports to his nominal employers, the Venetian Inquisitors of State, who were dedicated to protecting state secrets—that is,…