The word "bitch" conjures many images for many people but is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn’t refer to gender at all—it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy, which simply meant “housewife,” or slut, which meant “untidy” and was also used to describe men. These words are just a few among history’s many English slurs hurled at women.  Amanda Montell, feminist linguist and staff features editor at online beauty and health magazine Byrdie.com, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women form gaining equality. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women use the word “like” as a filler? Or why certain gender neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or even how linguists have historically discussed women’s speech patterns? Wordslut is no stuffy academic study; Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound.

Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.

"Adrian Tomine can draw, think, write and feel. He sees everything, he knows everything; he's in your apartment, he's on the subway, he's in your dreams. He knows about ageing baseball fans and delusional horticulturists, he knows useless fathers and awkward nerd-girl stand-ups, he knows the single and the married, the mad and the sane, he knows zines and hardback 'graphic novels,' knows when to use a speech bubble and when silence is enough. He has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime." (Zadie Smith). In his first full-length work since Shortcomings in 2007, and working with colour for the first time, Adrian Tomine has produced a darkly funny and deeply moving collection of stories which showcases his exceptional range of focus and technique. A masterpiece about the anxieties of being alive in the twenty-first century, Killing and Dying is Tomine's most ambitious and empathetic work to date. Born in Sacramento in 1974, Adrian Tomine is the author of the acclaimed comic series Optic Nerve. His books include Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, Sleepwalk, Scenes from an Impending Marriage and, most recently, New York Drawings, all of which are published by Faber in the UK. Since 1999, his comics and illustrations have appeared regularly in The New Yorker, where he has created more than a dozen iconic covers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughters.

A bold, evocative new novel from the Sue Kaufman, Betty Trask and Plimpton Prize Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach at the university, Sonia stayed in London to focus on her acting career and now dissolute marriage. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Sonia is soon rehearsing Gertude’s lines in classical Arabic and spending more time in Ramallah than in Haifa, along with a dedicated group of men from all over historic Palestine who, in spite of competing egos and priorities, each want to bring Shakespeare to that side of the wall. As opening night draws closer it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinian actors. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.

From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will. More estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.

From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will. More estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.

In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.

An urgent, vital manifesto of intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism, from leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are the central histories of feminist organizing—usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color—that continue to cultivate abolition. Also erased is a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures.

In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today’s issues—from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more.   Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.   Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.   Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “freedom is a constant struggle.”   This edition of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle includes a foreword by Dr. Cornel West and an introduction by Frank Barat.

A new edition of the acclaimed debut story collection by two-time Lambda Literary Award winner Casey Plett. By the author of Little Fish and A Dream of a Woman: eleven unique short stories featuring young trans women stumbling through loss, sex, harassment, and love in settings ranging from a rural Mennonite town to a hipster gay bar in Brooklyn. These stories, shiny with whiskey and prairie sunsets, rattling subways and neglected cats, show growing up as a trans girl can be charming, funny, frustrating, or sad, but never will it be predictable. A Safe Girl to Love, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for transgender fiction, was first published in 2014. Now back in print after a long absence, this new edition includes an afterword by the author.

Casey Plett's 2018 novel Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award (Canada). Her latest work, A Dream of a Woman, is her first book of short stories since her seminal 2014 collection A Safe Girl to Love. Centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives, A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, and in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days. In "Hazel and Christopher," two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In "Perfect Places," a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In "Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore," the narrator reflects on past trauma and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman. An ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love, the stories in A Dream of a Woman buzz with quiet intensity and the intimate complexities of being human.

When Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin first appeared in the fall of 2000, it inspired wide acclaim and multiple printings. Anticipating the expanded edition, Feral House placed Voluptuous Panic out of print, and for the past year buyers paid as much as $460 to online sellers for a used copy. This sourcebook of hundreds of rare visual delights from pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring hip clubgoers, filmmakers, gay historians, graphic designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson. Voluptuous Panic’s expanded edition includes the new illustrated chapter, “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.” The deluxe hardcover edition also includes sensational accounts of hypno-erotic cabaret acts, Berlin Fetish prostitution (“The Boot Girl Visit”), gay life (“A Wild-Boy Initiation!”), descriptions and illustrations of Aleister Crowley’s Berlin OTO Secret Society, and sex crime (“the Curious Career and Untimely Death of Fritz Ulbrich”).