BARACK OBAMA’S 2026 SUMMER READING PICKAn NPR, New Scientist, Nautilus, and Next Big Idea Club Best Book of the Month“Here is the new history of mankind demanded by our times.” —Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future?“A must-read.”—NPR, “15 Books Our Critics Can’t Wait to Read This Summer”“Essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technolo...

**FEATURED IN BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST 2026A NEW SCIENTIST AND NPR SUMMER READING PICKAS RECOMMENDED BY THE FINANCIAL TIMESData shaped empires. Now it's shaping our future. A groundbreaking 11,000 year global history from clay tablets to the algorithmic state, perfect for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.**'The new history of mankind demanded by our times' Jaron Lanier, autho...

Au fil des vingt et quelques chapitres que compte cet ouvrage, les auteurs explorent le passé, le présent et l’avenir de la recherche, de l’enseignement et de l’expérimentation en sciences humaines numériques au Canada. Ce recueil, qui rassemble les travaux de chercheuses et de chercheurs établis et émergents, présente des initiatives contemporaines dans le domaine des sciences humaines numériques. Celles-ci sont conjuguées à un réexamen de l’héritage légué par ce domaine jusqu’à ce jour e...

Anti-racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices centers anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. It demonstrates both the progress and the work that still needs to be done.The book is organized around a set of Anti-racist Community Engagement Principles developed by the editors as part of their shared work and dialogue with collea...

Exploring the intersections of digital humanities and African diaspora studiesHow can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, ...

AN NPR SUMMER READING PICK“A powerful and thought-provoking deep history of data and power, essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world.” —Jonathan Kennedy, author of PathogenesisFrom clay tablets to the algorithmic state, a groundbreaking new lens on human history arguing that information has always been the seed of power, for readers...

The digital cultural record has a powerful role to play in both new and future strategies of creating new homes within the digital milieu. For example, the development and establishment of new digital archives around South Asian studies not only allows us to create new archives of the past but also to remember and commemorate the past differently. New maps transform how we understand space and place. And new digital comfort zones facilitate connections for those whose family and loved ones...

The next chapter of human history should not be written by algorithms, it should be written by us. It is only by fully understanding how data has shaped our past that we can decide what role it plays in our future.We live in an era when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable – yet from targeted advertising to mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives. How did it gain the power it now holds over us?Long before writing existed, at the ...

From one of cinema’s wisest and most penetrating observers, an arresting new perspective on the sweep of film history.David Thomson has been called “the greatest living writer on the movies.” Here is a career capstone of sorts—a one-volume history of film and screens as illuminating and provocative as his classic Biographical Dictionary of Film. In tracing the progress, from the Lumiere Brothers to the Coens, Thomson glories in the great movies, but admits...

**“A thought-provoking analysis on what exactly we’re doing with all our many hours of screen time.” —Harper’s BazaarAn eye-opening look at how social media shapes the stories we tell and the lives we lead**Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share our lives. We once archived our experiences in photo albums, and now we capture our most significant moments in reels and photo dumps. Whether...

A radical new vision of reality from one of the great minds of our time, mapping a watershed moment in both physics and philosophy.“Carlo Rovelli is the best thinker out there articulating physics, philosophy, and literature. There simply are no scientists of his caliber who also are humanists of the first order. His prose has the enviable ability to expand the realm of the utterable and, with it, the reach of our intellectual experience.” —Hernan Diaz, Pul...

From the renowned paleontologist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, a sweeping evolutionary history of birds, from their dinosaur origins to the 10,000+ extraordinary species alive today.Tens of billions of birds share the planet with us, an astonishingly diverse array of species that are present nearly everywhere humans call home—and many places we do not. With their flamboyant plumage, joyous dawn serenades, extraordinary aeria...