Six (Other) Books to Pre-Order Now

As the institutions devoted to literacy seem to collapse around us, there is growing pressure on authors to engage in continuous “buy my book” posting, especially during the key pre-order period. I am not exempt from those rules (as these months of shilling have made clear…). However, I also have the privilege of reading a lot of books by other people before they come out, and there is no rule saying I can’t flog those too.

This summer has been a busy one, with many gatherings–some joyful, others mournful–and also plenty of work prepping for my September/October book tour (we announced the cities today). Even so, I managed more times than usual to park the phone somewhere far away and read deeply, both for pleasure and in order to provide short quotes for book jackets. (Incidentally, no one has done a more hilarious job of sending up this particular literary genre than the notoriously promiscuous blurber Gary Shteyngart, as explored in the surreal 2013 short film Shteyngart Blurbs, happily still available here).

Because I was on such a tight book deadline of my own, I wasn’t able to review as many manuscripts this year as I usually do. But I read as much as I could, especially when the subject matter related to themes I was exploring with Astra Taylor in End Times Fascism. Below are six of the titles I am most excited about, all coming out the same month or within a year of our book, and all also available for pre-order. I see them, in many ways, as companions to our book and would be honoured to share shelf space with any of these titles.

This book changed me more than anything I have read in a long time. Here is what I wrote for Baconi’s jacket:

“At once searing, loving and rousing, this is an acrobatic feat of political leadership from a generational talent. Baconi conjures dazzling levels of intellectual courage and ethical clarity to imagine true freedom in the grips of a genocide, a freedom that flatly refuses to replicate or mirror the oppressor. The result is a propulsive read of unparalleled import.”

Coming in November 2026, available for pre-order

Fascism surges in moments of capitalist crisis, offering the pleasures of sadism and dominance to humiliated and insecure populations. But what would it look like to respond to those same crises in ways that brought us together, while directing public rage at the system itself? Weber, a political economist focused on the soaring costs of daily life, offers bold answers to those urgent questions. It’s a wonderful coincidence that our books come out at the same time, as we see them as being in deep conversation with one another.

Coming October 20, available for pre-order

This is another critical attempt to grapple with the ways the far right is radicalizing in our time of systemic collapse, using Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro as its starting point. Here’s my jacket quote:

“A sharp, incisive analysis of the material and affective conditions that underpin the global rise of the far right. Compelling, provocative and deeply insightful, this is essential reading for understanding the contemporary far right–and the transformative political possibilities that we must pursue instead.”

Coming October 20, available for pre-order

Paris Marx’s podcast, Tech Won’t Save Us, has become more than a show. It’s one of the key spaces where the resistance movement against tech fascism has found both its analysis and its base. With this book, the show’s host puts on his reporter’s hat, and the results are indispensable. From my blurb:

“Combining historical research with investigative reporting and lucid analysis, Paris Marx cuts through the industry hype to expose the immeasurable costs of Big Tech’s AI arms race on human and planetary systems. By focusing on scale, he expertly shows that the current crisis is not born of technology but of an insatiable, growth-obsessed mindset bent on consuming the world to benefit the few. A tremendous contribution to a debate that is of existential importance to us all.”

Coming in October to Canada and the United States, and November to the UK. Available for pre-order.

This book comes out the very same day as End Times Fascism, and, in my mind, would make the perfect double feature. Tan & Redwine chronicle their fifteen years of organizing workers in the tech industry, from engineers and programmers protesting the industry's contracts with ICE, the Pentagon, and oil companies, to the campaigns to organize some of the industry's first unions, and the retaliation that followed. As the authors put it, this book aims to flip the tech industry story, which is too often told from the perspective of “founders and executives,” and instead “focuses on the workers who built this industry.”

Coming in September, available for pre-order

Gebru has been warning about the profound dangers of tech fascism from inside the belly of the beast for many years now. Her scholarship and analysis helped inform mine and Astra’s understanding of this threat, especially this essay with Émile P. Torres, and I cannot wait for her text to be out in the world. I’ll be writing a blurb in the coming months, but in the meantime, here’s the publisher’s summary:

“Timnit Gebru has been present at nearly every inflection point in tech’s recent history. She was an engineer at Apple on the cusp of the iPhone’s first release, a PhD student at Stanford’s computer vision lab as her advisor worked on the enormous datasets so crucial to AI’s development, and the most senior Black woman on the Ethical AI team at Google as DeepMind and Open AI took over the field of artificial intelligence—where she was forced out for having raised the alarm about bias in large language models, causing global shockwaves in the tech industry… Over the course of her life, Gebru has seen up close how the destructive ideologies and outsized egos of the tech world have come to wreak havoc on our environment, our economies, and the lives of billions of people. She has also come to understand how we could have made a different choice every step of the way, and how we still can.”

Not out until 2027, but available for pre-order and will be worth the wait.

Astra has also just put out a reading list in her own newsletter with some of the key texts that have been out for a while and that informed End Times Fascism. It is far from complete, because that would basically involve rehashing the whole book, but it is a great way to get started while you wait for those pre-orders to arrive.

I’m a podcast addict, and I have to share two fabulous recent episodes…

As far as I am concerned, the absolute best literary podcast is Between The Covers, hosted by the incomparable David Naimon. Nobody goes deeper than him, makes more exciting connections, or preps harder. If you don’t know the show, you are lucky: you can dive into the back catalogue and enjoy some of what I promise will be the most profound conversations with your favourite authors that you have ever heard. The most recent episode is an extraordinary interview with the poet Claudia Rankine about her new book Triage (which I am now reading and loving). It’s about, among other things, our duties to the dead, and to each other, in a time of ethical and ecological collapse.

Another favourite pod is Jewish Currents’s On the Nose. The host, Arielle Angel, is one of the most intelligent and fearless political interviewers working today. This week, Angel talks with historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. The conversation touches on a lot, including the ways that AIPAC weaponizes Black voters to protect Israel. I adore Taylor and was particularly struck by what she said about the need for the left to both maintain its revolutionary horizon and engage in the practicalities of electoralism.

She also had some of the wisest observations I have heard about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on “Woke 1” (an unfortunately flippant choice of words) and the at times over-the-top backlash those remarks inspired. Among other things, Taylor makes the point that much of the backlash (which took AOC’s comments out of context and assumed the absolute worst about her intentions) mirrored the punitive, group-think dynamics that alienated so many people during the period the Congresswoman was referring to. We clearly need a more serious conversation about these subjects, and social media is not up to the task. Smart long-form podcasts, on the other hand…

I happen to know that Keeanga is nearing the first draft of a book that explores these very themes, and when that’s done, watch out. Stay tuned for two events we’re doing together in September (one online and one in person) along with those book tour dates. Good thing Substackers like to read!