It is summertime once again, which means that many of us will find ourselves with new opportunities to dive into books. The following titles represent a selection of offerings published in the past year from MIT faculty and staff. Links are provided to each book from its publisher, and the MIT Libraries has compiled a helpful list of the titles held in its collections.
Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy the book lists from 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.
“Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp” (MIT Press, 2021)
Edited by Azra Akšamija, associate professor of architecture, director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab, and director of the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology; Melina Philippou, program director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab; and Raafat Majzoub (SMACT ’17)
“Design to Live” shows how refugees use art and design to transform their living environments, restoring humanity within circumstances that seem aimed at depriving them of it. Featuring more than 20 projects created by Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, this bilingual book in English and Arabic offers a new way of understanding design as a subversive worldmaking practice and as a tool for reclaiming agency in conditions of forced displacement.
