What We Are Reading Today: Crack-Up Capitalism

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Updated 10 May 2023
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What We Are Reading Today: Crack-Up Capitalism

Author: Quinn Slobodian

Quinn Slobodian’s “Crack-Up Capitalism” follows the most notorious radical libertarians — from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel — around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. 

Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world’s oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy.

 


What We Are Reading Today: The Letter of the Law by Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Updated 07 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: The Letter of the Law by Jeanne-Marie Jackson

The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and British imperial literary and intellectual history.

In this revisionist account, Jeanne-Marie Jackson positions his career as an intriguing case study of anticolonial literature and politics.

Jackson maps the contours of Casely Hayford’s thought through sustained attention to his written work within its Gold Coast and British imperial contexts, demonstrating the far-reaching conceptual resources of his legal background.