New Books Network

What revolutionary disability politics look like today, with lessons for larger liberatory movements. In recent political times, disability identity has been mobilized in ways that paradoxically compound bodily injury and disability. This single-issue approach obscures the oppression of disabled people and prevents solidarity across difference. In Disability, Revolution (U California Press, 2026), Robert McRuer introduces alternatives to "one-dimensional disability," providing an accessible overview of disability justice movements and their relevance to larger emancipatory coalitions. Exploring the most prominent examples from the past several decades, the book focuses on the convergence of queer and crip movements, mad pride, intersectional disability justice work, neurodiversity, and the globalization of disability alliances. Essential for anyone interested in disability politics, this book shows how these multivalent movements help us imagine alternative disabled worlds.
Robert McRuer is a writer and speaker whose work is situated at the intersections of the interdisciplinary fields of disability studies and queer theory. His award-winning 2006 book Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability has been translated into three languages. He is a Professor of English at George Washington University, where he teaches queer theory, disability studies, and critical theory more generally.
Clayton Jarrard is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer working at the nexus of queer and trans studies, disability and mad studies, and religious studies.

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On March 17, 2015, tens of thousands of Mexican farmworkers went on strike in San Quintin, Baja California, to protest horrible working conditions on the farms that produce most of the fresh fruits and vegetables you consume. Calling themselves the "slaves of the twenty-first century," these mostly Indigenous men, women, and children rose up in defiance of the conditions of modern slavery, forced labor, sexual harassment, and "hunger wages." This ethnography provides an in-depth look into how Indigenous farmworkers organize in the fields and their communities to improve wages and working conditions.
Since the strike, the farmworkers have organized a union to fight for justice in the fields. In this work, author James Daria accompanies these farmworkers as they struggle for dignity. Daria also charts the tensions inside the farmworker movement as women struggle to gain greater power in the home as well as at work. In an era of complex global integration, Daria shows us how what we eat is tied to the suffering of those who produce our food.
¡Huelga!: Indigenous Farm Labor Organizing in Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2026) highlights and centers the Indigenous workers who struggle for justice in a global food system that connects us all.
James Daria is an assistant professor of anthropology and co-director of Food Studies at Spelman College. Dr. Daria is an anthropologist of labor, food, and migration.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars.
As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford’s efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world. This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America (NYU Press, 2025) examines Ford’s mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford’s impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.

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Dependency Politics: How Foreign Aid Shapes Electoral Behaviour (Cambridge UP, 2026), by Ryan Jablonski, examines how democracy operates in countries dependent on foreign aid. Drawing on over six years of fieldwork, the book investigates the relationships between international donors and domestic politicians, exploring how aid dependency shapes policymaking and influences voters’ assessments of political performance. Challenging the assumption that voters simply reward politicians for attracting foreign aid, Jablonski demonstrates that electoral choices depend on citizens’ beliefs about how politicians influence the delivery of aid. This produces a ‘visibility-uncertainty’ paradox, whereby foreign aid can either strengthen or undermine democratic accountability. Combining surveys, interviews, focus groups, and field experiments, the book revisits conventional understandings of foreign aid and political behaviour, showing how aid can sometimes lead citizens to vote against their own interests and benefit opposition candidates over incumbents. By examining the political consequences of aid dependency, Jablonski offers important insights into the trade-offs between aid effectiveness, political capture, and state capacity-building. This research makes an important contribution to the study of comparative politics, democratic accountability, and the political economy of foreign aid.

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Most people know Israel through headlines. In Almost True: Stories From Jerusalem, Tal Shalev invites readers to discover it through stories.
Set in Jerusalem and across Israel, these twenty-two stories introduce unforgettable characters navigating friendship, marriage, family, love, loss, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. A wedding guest faces an impossible social dilemma. A husband struggles to save his marriage. Neighbors misunderstand one another, while parents and children search for common ground.
With humor, compassion, and keen observation, Shalev captures the moments that reveal who we are-not only as Israelis, but as human beings. Beyond the headlines are ordinary people confronting extraordinary choices, finding grace in unexpected places, and discovering that life's deepest truths often arrive disguised as its smallest moments.
Warm, witty, and deeply humane, Almost True: Stories from Jerusalem offers a rarely seen portrait of Israel while celebrating the complexity, resilience, and quiet beauty of everyday life.
Host: Renee Garfinkel
Guest: Tal Shalev

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