Here is a short tour of some selected readings to Critical Humanism.
Detailed references can be found in the notes.
A detailed annotated guide to reading, websites – and more – can also be found on the website.
I add new references on the site too, usually first on the blog page.
Introducing Humanism
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
(Vintage, 2011): https://www.ynharari.com. See also the
comic book version: Sapiens: A Graphic History (Harvill
Secker, 2020).
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Human: A Portrait of Our World
(Thames and Hudson, 2015). http://www.yannarthusbertrand.
org.
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason,
Science, Humanism and Progress (Allen Lane, 2018).
Recent Humanist Writings
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn (University
of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958]).
Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human
Development Approach (Harvard University Press,
2011).
Christian Smith, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity,
Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up
(University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Marcus Morgan, Pragmatic Humanism: On the Nature and
Value of Sociological Knowledge (Routledge, 2016).
Daniel Chemillo, Debating Humanity: Towards a Philosophical
Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Andrew Copson and A. C. Grayling, eds, The Wiley Blackwell
Handbook of Humanism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
Critical Problems
Anne Phillips, The Politics of the Human (Cambridge
University Press, 2015).
Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Polity, 2013).
Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of
Knowledge in Social Science (Polity, 2007).
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive
Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the
South (Duke University Press, 2018).
Ali Meghji, Decolonizing Sociology: An Introduction (Polity,
2021).
Gurminder K. Bhambra, Connected Sociologies (Bloomsbury,
2014).
The World: A Background circa 2020
Manuel Castells, Rupture: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy,
trans. Rosie Marteau (Polity, 2018).
Peter N. Stearns, World History: The Basics (Routledge,
2010).
Fareed Zakaria, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
(Allen Lane, 2020).
Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection:
How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It
for Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2019).
Heinrich Geiselberger, ed., The Great Regression (Polity,
2017).
Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene:
Reflections on the End of a Civilization (City Lights
Publishers, 2015).
Damaged Humanity
Iain Wilkinson and Arthur Kleinman, A Passion for Society:
How We Think about human Su!ering (University of
California Press, 2016).
David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of
the Future (Allen Lane, 2019).
Jonathan Porritt, Hope in Hell: A Decade to Confront the
Climate Emergency (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Derek Wall, Economics After Capitalism: A Guide to the
Ruins and a Road to the Future (Pluto Press, 2015
[2005]).
Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think
Like a 21st-Century Economist (Random House, 2017).
Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology (Harvard University
Press, 2020).
Shoshana Zubo!, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The
Fight for a New Future at the New Frontier of Power
(Profile Books, 2019).
Saksia Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the
Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth (William Collins,
2018).
John D. Caputo, Truth: The Search for Wisdom in the
Postmodern Age (Penguin, 2013).
Lothar Brock, Hans-Henrik Holm, Georg Sorensen and
Michael Stohl, Fragile States: Violence and the Failure of
Intervention (Polity, 2012).
On a practical level, see Mike Berners-Lee, There Is No Planet
B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years (Cambridge
University Press, 2019), which is very down to earth.
Divided Humanity
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Other (Verso, 2008) is a readable
and short introduction to thinkers and issues.
David Livingstone Smith. On Inhumanity: Dehumanization
and How to Resist It (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge. 2016. Intersectionality,
2nd edn (Polity, 2020).
Kwame Anthony Appiah (2018) The Lies that Bind:
Rethinking Identity (Liveright, 2018).
Traumatised Humanity
Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory: Reflections on the
Twentieth Century (Atlantic Books, 2005).
John K. Roth, The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the
Holocaust, Genocide and Other Mass Atrocities (Oxford
University Press, 2015).
Jean Franco, Cruel Modernity (Duke University Press, 2013).
Robert Gildea, Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the
Politics of the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Je!rey C. Alexander, Trauma: A Social Theory (Polity, 2012).
Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A History of the Present
(Macmillan, 2017).
Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing
History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Beacon Press,
1998).
Catherine Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics
(Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Confronting
Race and the Memory of Evil (Allen Lane, 2019)
Narrative Humanity
Ken Plummer, Narrative Power: The Struggle for Human
Value (Polity, 2019).
Kay Schafer and Sidonie Smith, Human Rights and Narrated
Lives: The Ethics of Recognition (Palgrave Macmillan,
2004).
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology
(University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Emerging ideas of Humanity
David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
(Penguin, 2018). See also the Big History Project website:
https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home.
Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
Siep Stuurman, The Invention of Humanity: Equality and
Cultural Di!erence in World History (Harvard University
Press, 2017).
Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to
Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (Polity, 2010).
Nigel Clark and Bronislaw Szerszynski, Planetary Social
Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social
Sciences (Polity, 2020).
Valuing Humanity
Kenan Milk, The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global
History of Ethics (Atlantic Books, 2014).
Michael Ignatie!, The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a
Divided World (Harvard University Press, 2017).
Michael Sandel and Paul J. d’Ambrosio, eds, Encountering
China: Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy (Harvard
University Press, 2018).
Philip Kitcher, The Ethical Project (Harvard University Press,
2012).
Nira Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional
Contestations (Sage, 2011).
Owen Flanagan, The Geography of Morals: Varieties of
Moral Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Transformative Humanities
John Urry, What is the Future? (Polity, 2016)
Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of
Humanity (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change
and the Unthinkable (University of Chicago Press,
2016).
Rickie Solinger, Madeline Fox and Kayhan Irani, eds, Telling
Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power
of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice
Claims (Routledge, 2008).
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild
Possibilities (Haymarket Books, 2016).
The Politics of Humanity
Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible
(Duke University Press, 2020).
The Care Collective, The Care Manifesto: The Politics of
Interdependence (Verso, 2020).
Steve Crenshaw and John Jackson, eds, Small Acts of
Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can
Change the World (Union Square Press, 2010).
Peter Weibel, ed., Global Activism: Art and Conflict in the
21st Century (MIT Press, 2014).
Paul Mason, Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the
Human Being (Allen Lane, 2019).
Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists – and How We Can Get
There (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Hilary Cottam, Radical Help: How We Can Remake the
Relationships between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare
State (Virago, 2018).
William Martin, The Activist’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient
Advice for a Modern Revolution (New World Library,
2016).
Closing Thoughts
David Attenborough, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness
Statement and a Vision for the Future (Ebury Press,
2020).