{"id":36167,"date":"2020-05-22T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=36167"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:18:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:18:05","slug":"public-picks-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Picks 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year around this time we send our readers into summer with a thoughtfully curated list of the titles appearing over the past 12 months that dazzled, moved, and challenged us most. This year we might add: that helped us reflect on a global public-health crisis, comforted us in our grief and anxiety, or simply served to pleasurably while away a lot of extra time indoors. For the 2020 edition of Public Picks, then, we\u2019ve asked our editors for Technology<\/a>, Literature in Translation<\/a>, the B-Sides<\/a> series, Videogames<\/a>, TV<\/a>, Global Black History<\/a>, Higher Education<\/a>, Literary Fiction<\/a>, and the Public Thinker<\/a> series to tell us what\u2019s kept them going. We hope you\u2019ll find some sources of solace, welcome distraction, and inspiration here as well.<\/p>\n

\n

Mona Sloane<\/a><\/h4>\n
Technology<\/h5>\n

Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code<\/em><\/strong>, by Ruha Benjamin (Polity). Technology has always been deeply entangled with realities and fantasies of production. Emerging technologies, whether we call them AI or not, are no exception. Examining the tech-industry hype with a critical gaze, Benjamin takes that cue and argues that race itself is a technology, a productive force that architects social and racial hierarchies into the technological infrastructures of everyday life. Her engaging and fascinating analysis is a sociological tour de force that introduces the concept of the \u201cNew Jim Code\u201d to show how technology is never neutral. One of the strongest features of this book is that it is not pessimistic, but channels an energy that is as hopeful as it is powerful.<\/p>\n

digitalSTS: A Field Guide for Science and Technology Studies<\/em><\/strong>, edited by Janet Vertesi and David Ribes, coedited by Carl DiSalvo, Laura Forlano, Steven J. Jackson, Yanni Loukissas, Daniela K. Rosner, and Hanna Rose Shell (Princeton University Press). Science and Technology Studies (STS) has become a vital tool for understanding the link between technology and society\u2014and as such has become ever more important in our increasingly computerized world. digitalSTS<\/em> is a vivid collection that assembles new thinking not only on digital scholarship but also on how digital technologies can be used for research and critique. Covering a wide range of sites and cases, as well as methodological approaches, the essays are essential reading for technology scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts alike.<\/p>\n

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need<\/em><\/strong>, by Sasha Costanza-Chock (MIT Press). Long awaited after the bombshell 2018 essay \u201cDesign Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice<\/a>,\u201d Costanza-Chock\u2019s first monograph complicates the narrative of design\u2019s good intentions and unpacks how universalist design principles can reinforce harm against particular communities. Although fundamentally problematizing design\u2019s complicity with the matrix of domination (white-supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism), this book does not condemn design per se, but argues that it can be a tool for liberation and ecological justice when it is community led.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Expanse<\/i> (2015\u2013)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

B\u00e9cquer Segu\u00edn<\/a><\/h4>\n
Literature in Translation<\/h5>\n