Listen in: Free Agents November 27, 2023 Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. Read More
Listen in: Deaths of Despair November 12, 2023 Deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism are rising dramatically in the United States, claiming hundreds of thousands of American lives. Anne Case and Angus Deaton explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. Read More
Listen in: Economics in America October 17, 2023 Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Angus Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country’s policy accomplishments and failures. Read More
Listen in: The Darkened Light of Faith September 20, 2023 Listen to a sample chapter from The Darkened Light of Faith – a powerful new account of what a group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American activists, intellectuals, and artists can teach us about democracy. . Read More
Listen in: To Build a Black Future September 14, 2023 Listen to a sample chapter from To Build a Black Future – an incisive portrait of how the new Black politics can forge a future centered on collective action, community, and care. Read More
Listen in: The Owl and the Nightingale April 15, 2023 The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest literary works in Middle English, is a lively, anonymous comic poem about two birds who embark on a war of words in a wood, with a nearby poet reporting their argument in rhyming couplets, line by line and blow by blow. Read More
Listen in: Three Roads Back April 11, 2023 In Three Roads Back, Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, tells the connected stories of how these foundational American writers and thinkers dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. Read More
Listen in: The Forest March 25, 2023 Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Read More
Listen in: Algorithms for the People March 15, 2023 Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping our world. Police forces use them to decide where to send police officers, judges to decide whom to release on bail, welfare agencies to decide which children are at risk of abuse, and Facebook and Google to rank content and distribute ads. Read More
Listen in: How the Universe Got Its Spots January 20, 2023 Is the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, cosmologist Janna Levin announces the central theme of this book, which established her as one of the most direct, unorthodox, and creative voices in contemporary science. Read More
Listen in: Queer Career January 13, 2023 Workplaces have traditionally been viewed as “straight spaces” in which queer people passed. As a result, historians have directed limited attention to the experiences of queer people on the job. Read More
Listen in: What Do You Want Out of Life? January 06, 2023 What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money—or work for justice? To run marathons—or sing in a choir? To have children—or travel the world? The things we care about in life—family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals—often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Read More
Celebrating 100 audiobooks November 14, 2022 In 2018, the Princeton University Press team launched the first university press audiobook program, Princeton Audio. Four years and almost a thousand hours of published audiobooks later, we are thrilled to be publishing our hundredth audiobook. Read More
Listen in: Viral Justice November 04, 2022 Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Read More
Listen in: The Sounds of Life October 12, 2022 The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life. Read More
