I have the least to say about these books. The decline of any assumed consensus has led to an increase in polemicism when it comes to historical and political writing in particular, and it almost takes psychological and sociological (and financial) luxury to write with the kind of anti-presentist detachment required for lasting work. These books below mostly display that quality, to me, though not always consistently. (The Elkins book is frustrating for exactly this reason.) I enjoyed Geuss’s quasi-memoir precisely because he permits himself the sort of doubt and irony that seemingly spell career suicide for junior faculty.

Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions
Yaguello, Marina (Author), Butler, Erik (Translator)
The MIT Press


The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives (Jacobin)
Reed Jr., Adolph L. (Author)
Verso


The Populist Century: History, Theory, Critique
Rosanvallon, Pierre (Author), Porter, Catherine (Translator)
Polity


Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism
Claeys, Gregory (Author)
Princeton University Press


Diagnosing Social Pathology: Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim
Neuhouser, Frederick (Author)
Cambridge University Press


War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices
Heuser, Beatrice (Author)
Oxford University Press


Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance
Levy, Karen (Author)
Princeton University Press


Not Thinking like a Liberal
Geuss, Raymond (Author)
Belknap Press



Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821
Broers, Michael (Author)
Pegasus Books



Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars
Gat, Azar (Author)
Oxford University Press


China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower
Dikötter, Frank (Author)
Bloomsbury Publishing


Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past
Bartov, Omer (Author)
Yale University Press