Anthropology Book Forum: 2025 Year in Review
As 2025 came to a close, we look back on another year of lively discussions and close readings that make the Anthropology Book Forum what it is. This year, we published reviews on everything from the politics of climate migration to new ethnographies of digital life, continuing our ongoing conversation about what anthropology can do in a rapidly changing world.
This year saw the publication of books that address urgent global issues: climate change, migration, labor, and ecological transformation were all central concerns, explored through deeply grounded ethnographies, historical accounts, and critical theory.
We were especially glad to see new contributors join the Forum this year, bringing fresh insights and voices that help keep our discussions expansive and challenging. At the same time, longtime reviewers returned to offer extended reflections on books they had been thinking about for years, showing how the Forum is as much a space for ongoing reflection as it is for immediate engagement.
Our most read book review of the year was Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers (2024) by Hatim Rahman, reviewed by Julia Johnston.
Currently, we have over 100,000 visits to our website each year. Some of our reviews have been viewed thousands of times, and readers continue going back to read reviews published a decade ago,
We also have a thriving community on Facebook, where we announce new books available for review and newly published reviews. Be sure to follow us to stay informed.
We hosted our annual roundtable at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, and it was our most successful roundtable yet. The conversation between esteemed editors and an engaged public of Early Career Anthropologists deciphered many mysteries around the book publishing process. So much that we later learned that many from the audience had dared to move ahead and propose their manuscripts to editors from the panel. Engaging stuff!
Given the success and popularity of this roundtable, we will be hosting it again next year at the AAAs in St. Louis. Please come and join us with your thoughts and questions around how to publish your book.
Looking ahead, 2026 promises more books, more debates, and more opportunities for the Forum to continue connecting readers with newly published work. This year reaffirmed the Forum’s role as a platform where books speak, where ideas circulate, and where readers can engage with anthropological knowledge in all its richness, complexity, and occasional contradictions.
Thank you to everyone who read, shared, and engaged with the reviews published here in 2025; it is your attention and curiosity that keep the Anthropology Book Forum a lively home for discussion around the books that make up the core of anthropological thinking.
Your editors,
Rasmus Rodineliussen and Emilia Groupp