How my book is doing - an update

reading Nietzsche for today's class struggle

Since its release in early January, my book How to Read Like a Parasite has managed to start conversations on various podcasts, from The Nietzsche Podcast, Repeater Books, Give Them An Argument with Ben Burgis, Midwestern Marx with Carlos Garrido, 1Dime Radio, Converging Dialogues, Samsara Diagnostics, the New Books Network to the Re/al/ign show with Rhyd Wildermuth along with others. The French Marxist philosopher Aymeric Monville has recently mentioned and discussed my book in a recent talk entitled Misère du Nietzschéisme de gauche. Each conversation is enjoyable in its own way because the host has in nearly every case read my book carefully and they thus bring out singular concerns from their perspective. Check out all the interviews on my playlist New Directions in Nietzschean Studies.

Jacobin, the leading socialist magazine in the U.S. has recently published an interview on the book, entitled Why Nietzsche Hated Socialism. This gave me a chance to really qualify the historical perspective that I am bringing out in my book and it was a chance to get at the heart of my core arguments. I’m very happy to go on most any show and talk about my book and the new reading of Nietzsche it aims to open, so feel free to reach out to me should you be interested in discussing the book.

The book has been reviewed by the Chartist Magazine, Cosmonaut Magazine, the Tribune Express and various Substacks and blogs. The Cosmonaut review by Conrad Hamilton is to date the most thorough and in-depth as he documents the controversy that the book has sparked and proceeds to offer a number of valuable points of disagreement as well as support for my ideas. It was a very enjoyable experience to present the book at the University of Virginia and at various bookstores. As a friend recently noted, my book is very much written for a general audience, he said it felt like an airport book in its readability. I tried my best to make the book very accessible to non-academic readers, while also keeping a foot within academic rigor. I had three Nietzsche specialists read the book and numerous philosophers. The specialists were not reading for citational accuracy in terms of page numbers or dates on books that I cite, they read for overall accuracy of my core arguments. And in that regard, I really benefited from the input of Nietzsche specialists (you can see their names in the testimonials and blurbs within the book).

My very talented copyeditor at Repeater Books helped enhance the writing quality and prose style, but there were footnoting errors that appear in the book, mainly a couple misattributed citations, and errors of dates and page numbers. This was due to my errors first and foremost and to the fact that my publisher did not make these simple corrections, a common miscommunication for a relatively small publisher. Of course I take full responsibility for these errors and I have already corrected them. I have also confirmed with Repeater Books that these citational errors will be corrected for a new version of the book in a short time. Thankfully, these errors have no bearing on the argument of the book, and I am excited to iron them out so that the book can continue to reach people.

Here is a playlist of my interviews and Discussions.