What We Are Reading Today: The Last Peasant War

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Updated 31 January 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Last Peasant War

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Author: Jakub S. Benes

As the First World War ended, villages across central and eastern Europe rose in revolt. Led in many places by a shadowy movement of army deserters, peasants attacked those whom they blamed for wartime abuses and long years of exploitation—large estate owners, officials, and merchants, who were often Jewish. At the same time, peasants tried to realize their rural visions of a reborn society, establishing local self-government or attempting to influence the new states that were being built atop the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. In “The Last Peasant War,” Jakub Beneš presents the first comprehensive history of this dramatic and largely forgotten revolution and traces its impact on interwar politics and the course of the Second World War.

Sweeping large portions of the countryside between the Alps and the Urals from 1917 to 1921, this peasant revolution had momentous aftereffects, especially among Slavic peoples in the former lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It enabled an unprecedented expansion of agrarian politics in the interwar period and provided a script for rural resistance that was later revived to resist Nazi occupation and to challenge Communist rule in east central Europe.

 


What We Are Reading Today: John and Paul by Ian Leslie

What We Are Reading Today: John and Paul by Ian Leslie
Updated 20 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: John and Paul by Ian Leslie

What We Are Reading Today: John and Paul by Ian Leslie

Ian Leslie’s “John and Paul” traces the shared journey of John Lennon and Paul McCartney before, during and after The Beatles, offering us both a new look at two of the greatest icons in music history, and rich insights into the nature of creativity, collaboration, and human intimacy.

The two shared a private language, rooted in the stories, comedy and songs they both loved as teenagers, and later, in the lyrics of Beatles songs.


What We Are Reading Today: The Revolution to Come

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Updated 19 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Revolution to Come

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  • “The Revolution to Come” traces how evolving conceptions of history ushered in a faith in the power of revolution to create more just and reasonable societies

Author: Dan Edelstein

Political thinkers from Plato to John Adams saw revolutions as a grave threat to society and advocated for a constitution that prevented them by balancing social interests and forms of government.
“The Revolution to Come” traces how evolving conceptions of history ushered in a faith in the power of revolution to create more just and reasonable societies.
Taking readers from Greek antiquity to Leninist Russia, Dan Edelstein describes how classical philosophers viewed history as chaotic and directionless, and sought to keep historical change, especially revolutions, at bay.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Pronoun Trouble

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Updated 18 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Pronoun Trouble

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  • A prolific author of books on language, McWhorter continues to captivate readers with his trademark humour and flair

Author: John McWhorter

This concise overview of English pronouns covers various linguistic topics in an accessible manner. Author John McWhorter maintains a straightforward approach but incorporates engaging elements to keep the book captivating.

McWhorter’s writing style is consistently enjoyable.

He possesses a talent for simplifying complex concepts through humour and relatable examples from popular culture.

A prolific author of books on language, McWhorter continues to captivate readers with his trademark humour and flair. In this book, the renowned linguist and professor debunks myths and illuminates the history of the most contentious language topic: pronouns. McWhorter‚ presentation of linguistics and language evolution is clear, entertaining, and persuasive.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Europe and the Wolf’ by Sara Nadal-Mesio

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Europe and the Wolf’ by Sara Nadal-Mesio
Updated 17 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Europe and the Wolf’ by Sara Nadal-Mesio

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Europe and the Wolf’ by Sara Nadal-Mesio

In this stunningly original book, Sara Nadal-Melsio explores how the work of several contemporary artists illuminates the current crisis of European universalist values amid the brutal realities of exclusion and policing of borders.  

The “wolf” is the name Baroque musicians gave to the dissonant sound produced in any attempt to temper and harmonize an instrument.

Europe and the Wolf brings this musical figure to bear on contemporary aesthetic practices that respond to Europe’s ongoing social and political contradictions.

Throughout, Nadal-Melsio understands Europe as a conceptual problem that often relies on harmonization as an organizing category.

The “wolf” as an emblem of disharmony, incarnated in the stranger, the immigrant, or the refugee, originates in the Latin proverb “man is a wolf to man.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Economics of Over-the-Counter Markets’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Economics of Over-the-Counter Markets’
Updated 16 April 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Economics of Over-the-Counter Markets’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Economics of Over-the-Counter Markets’

Authors: Julien Hugonnier, Benjamin Lester, And Pierre-Olivier Weill

Many of the largest financial markets in the world do not organize trade through an exchange but rather operate within a decentralized or over-the-counter structure.

Understanding how these markets work has become increasingly important in recent years, as illiquidity in certain OTC markets has appeared as the first signs of trouble—if not the cause itself—of the past two financial crises.