PS Books

Public Seminar Books is a project of Public Seminar and The New School Publishing Initiative, expanding our digital project to re-imagine and re-constitute the relationship between academic life and the broader public.

Keeping pace with current events—political debates, social movements, and international crises—is difficult enough as it is. But traditional book publishing is, by nature, too slow to provide analysis of events as they are happening. PS Books utilizes the efficiency of the Public Seminar platform, where our authors cultivate critical perspectives on the issues of the day, to produce  accessible books with a public eager for ideas that are longer than a tweet.We prioritize challenging ideas, strong design, ethical standards of accessibility, and responsive, relevant debate.

Our mission? To respond to urgent cultural and political needs with a rapid publication and distribution process, testing the limits of what twenty-first century book publishing can look like. We publish free ebook editions of scholarly work for a general audience, on an accelerated timeline..

You are invited to made a contribution to Public Seminar for each book you download.  (suggested donation is $10).

Our current catalogue is below:

#Charlottesville: Before and Beyond

Edited by Christopher Howard-Woods, Colin Laidley, and Maryam Omidi

When white supremacists descended on the town of Charlottesville, VA in August 2017, the nation felt the disturbing reverberations of a legacy of chattel slavery, systemic oppression, and civil rights activism shaken to their core. Twenty-five authors respond to the absurdity and tragedy of this event, in which one counter-protestor was killed and many injured, with clarity and criticality.

 

#AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One

Jeffrey C. Isaac

Few predicted the unlikely ascendance of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, and fewer still can predict what he may say or do this afternoon or tomorrow. Here, political scientist Jeffrey C. Isaac argues that the dangers posed to liberal democracy by illiberal forces today warrant a democratic solution: getting liberals and leftists alike to find more productive disagreements and a meaningful coalition.

 

 

Support comes from The New School, the provost’s office, and you.