Society and space

The first “Books of the Decade” forum, organized by founding editor Michael Dear, appeared in 1992. It requires subscription, but those of you with access should have a look at it and then weigh in here on the Open Site: what books do you think have stood the test of time? It’s certainly fun to see which authors appear both in 1992’s essays and here in 2012’s newest forum. (For those of you without access, the answer is Gunnar Olsson and Donna Haraway – though others may have escaped me).

With apologies to the missing decade, the 1990s, this second forum offers short essays from some members of the wonderfully interdisciplinary Editorial Board on their favorite books from our century’s first decade. Some shy away from the traditional book altogether, while others commit to only one title. They illustrate a love of reading and writing; a yearning for the intellectual, political, and personal challenges that new ideas through written words offer us; and even a certain commitment to the hefty format itself.

Please add your own favorite titles. And if you are worried about those neglected books from the 1990s – and there are many to name – why not have a go at your own Lost Decade List? Just post it as a comment here.

See you for the third Decades forum in ten years’ time. That is, if there are still books being published then.

CHRISTIAN ABRAHAMSSON, What I Talk About When I Talk About Books

DEBORAH BIRD ROSE, My Best Books

JUSTIN CLEMENS, Incontrovertible: Alain Badiou’s Logics of Worlds

MARCUS DOEL, A Short List of All-Sorts

STUART ELDEN, Michel Foucault’s Lectures at the Collège de France

JULIET FALL, Toolbox for Thinking Worlds: Philippe Descola and Michel Serres

MAIA GREEN, Jane Guyer’s Marginal Gains

SHILOH KRUPAR, “The Decade That Gave Us Aught But Answers” – A FOB Review Of Books From the Aughts

ELENA TRUBINA, A Radical Search

ANNA TSING, Some Books You Might Not Find

HAIM YACOBI, The Ghetto and the Frontier

KATHRYN YUSOFF, Elizabeth Grosz’s The Nick of Time and Time Travels