Alyssa Battistoni, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature, Princeton University Press, 2025. Hbk, pbk

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'Capitalism, this book argues, systematically treats nature as a "free gift": something that can be taken without payment or replenishing; something that is materially useful but that tends not to appear in exchange. This is not an accident or an oversight; rather, it is foundational to how capitalism works. ... Rather than cordoning nature off from politics or abolishing the distinction altogether, [it] starts from the premise that "nature" pertains to politics of all kinds - not only those issues we tend to think of as "environmental." Instead of treating "politics" as the organization of human life, to be distinguished from the scientific or technical organization of non-human matter, it holds that to organize human life is always also a material enterprise, and hence a natural one' (3-4, 6).