Since 2012, Public Books has championed a new kind of community for intellectual engagement, discussion, and action. An online magazine that unites the best of the university with the openness of the internet, Public Books is where new ideas are debuted, old facts revived, and dangerous illusions dismantled. Here, young scholars present fresh thinking to audiences outside the academy, accomplished authors weigh in on timely issues, and a wide range of readers encounter the most vital academic insights and explore what they mean for the world at large. Think in Public: A Public Books Reader presents a selection of inspiring essays that exemplify the magazine's distinctive approach to public scholarship. Gathered here are Public Books contributions from today's leading thinkers, including Jill Lepore, Imani Perry, Kim Phillips-Fein, Salamishah Tillet, Jeremy Adelman, N. D. B. Connolly, Namwali Serpell, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The result is a guide to the most exciting contemporary ideas about literature, politics, economics, history, race, capitalism, gender, technology, and climate change by writers and researchers pushing public debate about these topics in new directions. Think in Public is a lodestone for a rising generation of public scholars and a testament to the power of knowledge.

Some years-1789, 1929, 1989-change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world-like many patients-met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn't the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnosis. In The Long Year, some of the world's most incisive thinkers excavate 2020's buried crises, revealing how they must be confronted in order to achieve a more equal future. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls for the defunding of police and the refunding of communities; Keisha Blain demonstrates why the battle against racism must be global; and Adam Tooze reveals that COVID-19 hit hardest where inequality was already greatest and welfare states weakest. Yarimar Bonilla, Xiaowei Wang, Simon Balto, Marcia Chatelain, Gautam Bhan, Ananya Roy, and others offer insights from the factory farms of China to the elite resorts of France, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest to the overcrowded hospitals of India. The definitive guide to these ongoing catastrophes, The Long Year shows that only by exposing the roots and ramifications of 2020 can another such breakdown be prevented. It is made possible through institutional partnerships with Public Books and the Social Science Research Council.

Some years-1789, 1929, 1989-change the world suddenly. Or do they? In 2020, a pandemic converged with an economic collapse, inequalities exploded, and institutions weakened. Yet these crises sprang not from new risks but from known dangers. The world-like many patients-met 2020 with a host of preexisting conditions, which together tilted the odds toward disaster. Perhaps 2020 wasn't the year the world changed; perhaps it was simply the moment the world finally understood its deadly diagnosis. In The Long Year, some of the world's most incisive thinkers excavate 2020's buried crises, revealing how they must be confronted in order to achieve a more equal future. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls for the defunding of police and the refunding of communities; Keisha Blain demonstrates why the battle against racism must be global; and Adam Tooze reveals that COVID-19 hit hardest where inequality was already greatest and welfare states weakest. Yarimar Bonilla, Xiaowei Wang, Simon Balto, Marcia Chatelain, Gautam Bhan, Ananya Roy, and others offer insights from the factory farms of China to the elite resorts of France, the meatpacking plants of the Midwest to the overcrowded hospitals of India. The definitive guide to these ongoing catastrophes, The Long Year shows that only by exposing the roots and ramifications of 2020 can another such breakdown be prevented. It is made possible through institutional partnerships with Public Books and the Social Science Research Council.

On Election Day in 2016, it seemed unthinkable to many Americans that Donald Trump could become president of the United States. But the victories of the Obama administration hid from view fundamental problems deeply rooted in American social institutions and history. The election's consequences drastically changed how Americans experience their country, especially for those threatened by the public outburst of bigotry and repression. Amid the deluge of tweets and breaking news stories that turn each day into a political soap opera, it can be difficult to take a step back and see the big picture. To confront the threats we face, we must recognize that the Trump presidency is a symptom, not the malady. Antidemocracy in America is a collective effort to understand how we got to this point and what can be done about it. Assembled by the sociologist Eric Klinenberg as well as the editors of the online magazine Public Books, Caitlin Zaloom and Sharon Marcus, it offers essays from many of the nation's leading scholars, experts on topics including race, religion, gender, civil liberties, protest, inequality, immigration, climate change, national security, and the role of the media. Antidemocracy in America places our present in international and historical context, considering the worldwide turn toward authoritarianism and its varied precursors. Each essay seeks to inform our understanding of the fragility of American democracy and suggests how to protect it from the buried contradictions that Trump's victory brought into public view.

On Election Day in 2016, it seemed unthinkable to many Americans that Donald Trump could become president of the United States. But the victories of the Obama administration hid from view fundamental problems deeply rooted in American social institutions and history. The election's consequences drastically changed how Americans experience their country, especially for those threatened by the public outburst of bigotry and repression. Amid the deluge of tweets and breaking news stories that turn each day into a political soap opera, it can be difficult to take a step back and see the big picture. To confront the threats we face, we must recognize that the Trump presidency is a symptom, not the malady. Antidemocracy in America is a collective effort to understand how we got to this point and what can be done about it. Assembled by the sociologist Eric Klinenberg as well as the editors of the online magazine Public Books, Caitlin Zaloom and Sharon Marcus, it offers essays from many of the nation's leading scholars, experts on topics including race, religion, gender, civil liberties, protest, inequality, immigration, climate change, national security, and the role of the media. Antidemocracy in America places our present in international and historical context, considering the worldwide turn toward authoritarianism and its varied precursors. Each essay seeks to inform our understanding of the fragility of American democracy and suggests how to protect it from the buried contradictions that Trump's victory brought into public view.

How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families The struggle to pay for college is a defining feature of middle-class life in America. Caitlin Zaloom takes readers into homes of families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed our most sacred relationships. She describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty-providing their children with opportunity-and shows how parents and students alike are forced to gamble on an investment that might not pay off. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, exposing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.