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Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too. Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view.

Connaissez-vous Massassoit, le vieux sage de la nation wampanoag, Jean-Baptiste Faribault et Jean Baptiste Eugène Laframboise, ces aventuriers canadiens-français qui ont bâti l’Ouest américain, ou l’oncle Yvan, revenu de la guerre alors que plus personne ne l’attendait, ou la tante Monique de Santa Monica ? Saviez-vous qu’une vieille Honda était douée de la parole, qu’une grande tortue sacrée vivait sur le boulevard Pie-IX, qu’un camion des années 1950 avait des yeux, et que ces yeux pouvaient parfois être tristes ?

Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

A belief in individual self-determination powered the development of universal human rights and inspired social movements from anti-slavery to socialism and feminism. At the same time, every attempt to embed individualism in systems of education and employment has eventually led to increased social inequality. Across the globe individualism has been transformed from a revolutionary force into an explanation for increasingly unequal societies where dissent is largely silent. This book explores the possibility of rediscovering the original, transformative potential of individualism.

Through interviews and eyewitness accounts, declassified security documents and underground pamphlets, Kurzman documents the overwhelming sense of confusion that gripped pre-revolutionary Iran, and that characterizes major protest movements. His book provides a striking picture of the chaotic conditions under which Iranians acted, participating in protest only when they expected others to do so. Indeed, only when large numbers of Iranians began to think the unthinkable, in the words of the U.S. ambassador, did revolutionary expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Noam Chomsky and George W. Bush seldom agree, but they both argued that 9/11 stood alone in American history. Although the use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction was new, Mark Anderson maintains that the response to the attack was not: it was, in fact, as old as the Republic itself.

Before she became a psychiatric nurse at "The Mental" in the 1950s, Kay Parley was a patient there, as were the father she barely remembered and the grandfather she'd never met. Part memoir, part history, and beautifully written, Inside The Mental offers an episodic journey into the stigma, horror, and redemption that she found within the institution's walls. Now in her nineties, Parley looks back at the emerging use of group therapy, the advent of patients' rights, evolving ethics in psychiatry, and the amazing cast of characters she met there.

In a passionate call to action, Harold Johnson, Cree trapper and Crown Prosecutor, examines alcohol--its history, its myths, and its devastating impact on his community. Confronting what he calls a crime against humanity--one in every two will die an alcohol-related death in northern communities--Johnson refuses to be silent any longer. Asserting that the "lazy, drunken Indian" story is a root cause of the alcohol problems, Johnson sets out to recast the narrative of his people, urging them to reject this racist description of who they are.

Our destructive obsession with money and economic growth has driven us to the brink of disaster. This book exposes the flaws in conventional economic theory and shows how through public policy initiatives and personal choices the economy can be restructured at an appropriate scale with a focus on the natural world.

At the heart of Waiting for First Light is a no-holds-barred self-portrait of a top political and military figure whose nights are invaded by despair, but who at first light faces the day with the renewed desire to make a difference in the world. Roméo Dallaire, traumatized by witnessing genocide on an imponderable scale in Rwanda, reflects in these pages on the nature of PTSD and the impact of that deep wound on his life since 1994, and on how he motivates himself and others to humanitarian work despite his constant struggle.