Matthew W. Slaboch's Blog

Kieran O’Meara of the PoLit podcast interviewed me. We had a good chat, which is available on Apple, Google, and Spotify.

https://anchor.fm/polit/episodes/Epis...

I was interviewed by Marian Tupy of humanprogress.org and the Cato Institute. Marian was a very gracious interlocutor who came prepared with some great questions for me! While we don’t see eye to eye on everything, we were able to find some common ground and have a good discussion: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WUHOqUM...

The University Bookman just published a review of my book: https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/the-he...

“New” is used in relative terms at The New Books Network, where I was recently interviewed about A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics (University of Pennsylvania Press 2018). Thank you to Hope J. Leman for having taken the time to read my book and speak with me. 😊
Link: https://newbooksnetwork.com/matthew-w...

Through June 30, the University of Pennsylvania Press is offering free digital access to books in its catalog: https://pennpress.typepad.com/pennpre.... If you’ve been interested in reading a Road to Nowhere, consider taking a look now.

The International Network for Theory of History published a nice review of A Road to Nowhere: https://www.inth.ugent.be/content/roa...

There is a very generous review of A Road to Nowhere in The European Legacy. It reads, in part:

“this is one of the finest books in modern intellectual history that I happened to read in recent years. Very thoughtful and elegantly written, the study comes from an author who apparently has something important and interesting to say, and what he says is the outcome of a long period of careful reflection. Hence the remarkable economy and precision with which the argument is outlined.”

The full review can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...

There is a nice review of A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics in the latest issue of The Review of Politics. It reads, in part:

“SIaboch has written an elegant and important book on the political, philosophical, and cultural meaning and limits of the idea of progress, as understood by major nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers... He encourages us to rethink with a more discerning eye our own predisposition to embrace progress, by eruditely reminding us of its complexities — and costs.”

For the full review: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa...

From now until June 30, all books published by the University of Pennsylvania Press are on sale for half off! If you’ve been waiting to purchase my book, now is a great time to do it. Or, consider notifying your local or university library of this sale and asking it to purchase a copy. Many thanks for your interest and support!

https://mailchi.mp/upenn/summer-readi...

There are two solid reviews of A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics in the latest issue of Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy.

From the first: “In his recent book, Matthew W. Slaboch provides an original and erudite study of an eclectic and generally neglected group of thinkers... The study not only sheds valuable light on these thinkers and their contributions to political thought, but also offers a promising illustration of the kind of work that might be done in the burgeoning field of comparative political theory.”

From the second: “Slaboch moves comparatively across cultures— three great ones—and along them, from culture, to thinker, then to his heirs (in the case of Schopenhauer, for example, Nietzsche and Buckhardt), allowing the reader to get a sense of different cultural notions of progress and their interrogation by the pessimist or declinist heroes of the book. That these moves—backwards, forwards, and sideways—occur without any jarring effects speaks to the virtuosity of Slaboch’s narrative. He is undoubtedly a storyteller: the narrative flows, easy, self-assured, and even playful (cf. 88, 89), making the reading experience pleasant despite the daunting range of the materials.”

For the full reviews: https://interpretationjournal.com