{"title":"Verso Books","description":"\u003cp\u003eVerso emerged as an imprint of The New Left Review in the 1970’s before becoming a publisher in their own right. Always radical and provocative their publishing has focussed on \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/politics-and-government\"\u003epolitics\u003c\/a\u003e and its multiple sub-genres including \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/social-and-political-philosophy\"\u003esocial and political philosophy\u003c\/a\u003e , \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/consumerism\"\u003econsumerism\u003c\/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/feminism-and-feminist-theory\"\u003efeminism\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/artificial-intelligence-ai\"\u003eartificial intelligence\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn abundance of award winning \u0026amp; thought provoking authors are published by Verso. Philosopher and social theorist \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/books-by-slavoj-zizek\"\u003eSlavoj Zizek\u003c\/a\u003e is prolific and definitive with the titles like \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/living-in-the-end-times-9781786630803\"\u003eLiving In The End Times\u003c\/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/search?q=tag%3A%22Author%20Cory%20Doctorow%22\"\u003eCory Doctorow\u003c\/a\u003e’s FT Business Book of the Year longlisted \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/enshittification-9781836743750\"\u003eEnshittification\u003c\/a\u003e and fiction from \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/search?q=tag%3A%22Author%20Ghassan%20Kanafani%22\"\u003eGhassan Kanafani\u003c\/a\u003e with \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/men-in-the-sun-9781804298589\"\u003eMen In The Sun\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVarious series and imprints such as Salvage Editions \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-tragedy-of-the-worker-towards-the-proletarocene-9781839762949\"\u003eTragedy of the Worker\u003c\/a\u003e have become part of the Verso list. Radical Thinkers presented a collection of important works of theory and philosophy including \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/books-by-jacques-derrida\"\u003eJacques Derrida\u003c\/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-politics-of-friendship-9781788738590\"\u003ePolitics of Friendhip\u003c\/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/search?q=tag%3A%22Author%20Jean%20Baudrillard%22\"\u003eJean Baudrillard\u003c\/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-system-of-objects-9781788738545\"\u003eThe System of Objects\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/search?q=tag%3A%22Author%20Bertolt%20Brecht%22\"\u003eBertolt Brecht\u003c\/a\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/aesthetics-and-politics-9781788738583\"\u003eAesthetics and Politics\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"whos-afraid-of-margaret-thatcher-in-praise-of-socialism-9780860918028","title":"Whos Afraid of Margaret Thatcher In Praise Of","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKen Livingstone is a product of the political changes that have already taken place in the Labour Party. As Leader of the Greater London Council he has provided a voice and a vision for tens of thousands of party activists and Labour supporters, in the process implementing a set of measures that indicate the possibilities of a real alternative to Thatcherism. His determined opposition on the Falklands War, subsidised public transport, Ireland, the 1984 miners strike, sexual liberation and racism has made him a far more effective spokesperson for Labour than the shadow luminaries who occupy the front benches in the House of Commons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these fascinating conversations with Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and activist debarred from the Labour Party by Kinnock\/Hattersley, the two men discuss the future of Labour and socialist politics in Britain. What emerges is a picture of Livingstone as a formidable socialist politician and an adroit tactician, who displays a refreshing ability to","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48737766932823,"sku":"9780860918028","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780860918028.jpg?v=1723811442"},{"product_id":"night-of-the-golden-butterfly-a-novel-9781781680063","title":"Night of the Golden Butterfly: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNight of the Golden Butterfly\u003c\/i\u003e concludes the Islam Quintet-Tariq  Ali's much lauded series of historical novels, over twenty years in the  writing, which has been translated into a dozen languages\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish  Spain, the concluding novel moves between the cities of the twenty-first  century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing. The narrator is  rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt of honour. The  creditor is Mohammed Aflatun-known as Plato-an irascible but gifted  painter living in a Pakistan where \"human dignity has become a  wreckage.\" Plato, who once specialized in stepping back from the  limelight, now wants his life story written.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the tale unravels  we meet Plato's London friend Alice Stepford, now a leading music  critic in New York; Mrs. \"Naughty\" Latif, the Islamabad housewife whose  fondness for generals forces her to flee to the salons of intellectually  fashionable Paris, where she becomes an overnight celebrity, hailed as  the Diderot of the Islamic world; and there's Jindie, the Golden  Butterfly of the title, the narrator's first love. The daughter of a  Chinese family long settled in Lahore, Jindie is now married to his best  friend, a Republican heart surgeon in DC, whose children cannot forgive  him for saving the life of a much-despised politician.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInterwoven  with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of  Jindie's family. Her great forebear, Dù Wénxiù, led a Muslim rebellion  in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region from his  capital Dali for almost a decade as Sultan Suleiman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNight of the Golden Butterfly\u003c\/i\u003e shows Ali in full flight, at once imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWonderfully exuberant and mischievous... [a] jewel box of a novel. * Independent *\u003cbr\u003eIf Pakistan is a land of untold stories, whispered conspiracy theories and closed-door mutinies, then thank heavens for Tariq Ali, whose access to its innermost secret chambers has made him the country's finest historian and critic. -- Fatima Bhutto * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003eA humdinger of a book, full of energy, intelligence and bite. -- Hilary Spurling * Daily Mail *\u003cbr\u003eBold, clever, full of multilingual jokes, and replete with socio-historical detail. * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eAudacious... Islamic politics and faith, the mille-feuille of layers that constitute belief, and the salty real world behind closed doors, are all caught starkly by Ali's uneffusive prose. For once 'unputdownable' is the case. -- Tom Adair * Scotsman *\u003cbr\u003eA novelist of distinction ... Ali offers a persuasive account of the corruption of contemporary Pakistan, especially the brutal sexual politics, and his wry, ruminative account of lifelong friendship rings with truth. -- Michael Arditti * Daily Mail *\u003cbr\u003eOffers great insight into the history and culture of the Muslim world. * Booklist *\u003cbr\u003eAli pays perfect attention to detail, reminding the reader of the merits of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy. Whether describing the bonds of friendship, the sights and sounds of Lahore or the state of Fatherland in the throes of a military dictatorship, the writer's grip on detail never slackens. * Karachi Herald *\u003cbr\u003eAll human frailty and nobility is here-an imaginative tour de force. * Sunday Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003eA very beautiful novel, sensuous, funny and intelligent. -- Florence Noiville * Le Monde *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074338135,"sku":"9781781680063","price":12.77,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"the-stone-woman-a-novel-9781781680049","title":"The Stone Woman: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIstanbul, 1899. The last great Islamic empire is in serious trouble. The family of Iskender Pasha, an Ottoman notable, has retired to its summer palace. Then a former tutor poses a question which the family has been refusing to confront for almost a century: 'Your Ottoman Empire is like a drunken prostitute, neither knowing nor caring who will take her next. Do I exaggerate, Memed?'\u003cbr\u003e This passionate story of jealousies, betrayals and vendettas charts the decay of the Empire and the rise of a new generation which is deeply hostile to the myths of the 'golden days.' The power of the 'Islam Quintet' lies both in the story-telling and its challenge against stereotyped images of life under Islam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAli spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights. * Times *\u003cbr\u003e... an Eastern Magic Mountain. * London Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eThis Chekhov-like scenario of intense emotion within a creaking social structure constructs a rich picture of history and the way we think about history. * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eTales of anguish, longing, lust and love all find their way to The Stone Woman. Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world. * New York Times Book Review *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074469207,"sku":"9781781680049","price":14.75,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"border-vigils-keeping-migrants-out-of-the-rich-world-9781781680636","title":"Border Vigils: Keeping Migrants Out of the Rich","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOurs is an era marked by extraordinary human migrations, with some 200 million people alive today having moved from their country of origin. The political reaction in Europe and the United States has been to raise the drawbridge: immigrant workers are needed, but no longer welcome. So migrants die in trucks or drown en route; they are murdered in smuggling operations or ruthlessly exploited in illegal businesses that make it impossible for the abused to seek police help. More than 15,000 people have died in the last twenty years trying to circumvent European entry restrictions.\u003cbr\u003eIn this beautifully written book, Jeremy Harding draws haunting portraits of the migrants - and anti-immigrant zealots - he encountered in his investigations in Europe and on the US-Mexico border. Harding's painstaking research and global perspective identify the common characteristics of immigration policy across the rich world and raise pressing questions about the future of national boundaries and universal values.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[A] tightly-coiled, unpredictable book ... Harding makes his ambitious, continent-crossing arguments in economical, sometimes elegant, usually understated prose. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eBeyond its investigative insight, Border Vigils is also a groundbreaking chronicle of migrant voices rarely heard. Ranging from the southern shores of Italy and the backstreets of England to the embattled US-Mexico front line, Harding's brilliant work could not be more timely-and timeless. -- Jeff Biggers, author of \u003ci\u003eState Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074567511,"sku":"9781781680636","price":12.76,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781680636.jpg?v=1720056482"},{"product_id":"soldier-box-why-i-won-t-return-to-the-war-on-terror-9781781680926","title":"Soldier Box: Why I Won’t Return to the War on","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"I looked around my cell and saw the sheet of paper taped to the door at chest height. It listed everything in the room, chair, bed, soldier box . For a moment I thought it meant the cell itself; a box to put soldiers in.\"\u003c\/i\u003eWhen the War on Terror began, Briton Joe Glenton felt compelled to serve his nation. He passed through basic training and deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. What he saw overseas left him disillusioned, and he returned home increasingly political and manifesting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.\u003cbr\u003eWhen he refused to return for a second tour, he was denied his right to object and called \"a coward and a malingerer.\" He went absent without leave and left the country, returning later to the UK voluntarily to campaign against the wars. The military accused him of desertion and threatened years in prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e Soldier Box\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of Glenton's extraordinary journey from a promising soldier to a rebel against what he came to see as unjustified military action.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt takes as much courage to stand up against the Army as it does to go to war. History is made by people prepared to make that kind of sacrifice. -- Tony Benn, former British Member of Parliament\u003cbr\u003eJoe Glenton is the really brave soldier: the one who refused to fight in an unjust war and suffered imprisonment as a result. Above the sound of gunfire it is his story that deserves to be heard. -- John Rees, cofounder of the Stop the War Coalition","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074665815,"sku":"9781781680926","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781680926.jpg?v=1720056483"},{"product_id":"the-passion-of-bradley-manning-the-story-behind-the-wikileaks-whistleblower-9781781680698","title":"The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBradley Manning was arrested, imprisoned in solitary confinement for nine months, and court-martialed for leaking nearly half a million classified government documents, including the infamous \"Collateral Murder\" gunsight video. He was an intelligence analyst in the US Army's 10th Mountain Division, is twenty-four, and comes from Crescent, Oklahoma.\u003cbr\u003eBut who is Private First Class Bradley Manning? Why did he commit the largest security breach in American history-and why was it so easy? In this book, the astonishing leaks attributed to Bradley Manning are viewed from many angles, from Tunisia to Guantánamo Bay, from Foggy Bottom to Baghdad to small-town Oklahoma. Around the world, the eloquent act of one young man obliges citizens to ask themselves if they have the right to know what their government is doing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs this fine and important study reports, Bradley Manning holds to the principle that 'it's important the public should know what its government is doing.' Release of the Wikileaks documents has been a courageous and important service to this cause. -- Noam Chomsky\u003cbr\u003eTime after time, patriotic whistleblowers like Bradley Manning are fired, shunned, or prosecuted, despite their heroic efforts to protect the public from a secretive government's illegal activities. It's time to do what we can to protect these brave souls, and reading Chase Madar's fine book is an excellent start. -- Former US Senator James Abourezk\u003cbr\u003eChase Madar has written a powerful, compelling and moving defense of Bradley Manning. Bravo! -- Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner\u003cbr\u003eThe mistreatment, trial, and fate of Private Bradley Manning will undoubtedly read like an obituary on the Obama years. His case is a crucial one, and Chase Madar turned his sharp eye on it early. This is the single must-read book on the case. -- Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Passion of Bradley Manning\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us that it was James Madison himself who wrote that a popular government without popular information is but a prelude to tragedy or farce. Author and lawyer Chase Madar tells a great story that raises critical questions about the appropriate balance of government secrecy and national security in a modern democracy. -- Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Passion of Bradley Manning\u003c\/i\u003e ... tells the story of Manning both biographically and regarding Wikileaks and his imprisonment. * Z Magazine *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074895191,"sku":"9781781680698","price":19.04,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781680698.jpg?v=1720056483"},{"product_id":"bohemians-a-graphic-history-9781781682616","title":"Bohemians: A Graphic History","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe countercultures that came to define  bohemia spanned the Atlantic, encompassing Walt Whitman's Brooklyn and  the Folies Bergère of Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein's salons and the  Manhattan clubs where Dizzy Gillespie made his name. Edited by Paul  Buhle and David Berger, \u003ci\u003eBohemians\u003c\/i\u003e is the graphic history of  this movement and its illustrious figures. The stories collected here  revisit the utopian ideas behind millennial communities, the rise of  Greenwich Village and Harlem, the multiracial and radical jazz and dance  worlds, and the West Coast, Southern, and Midwest bohemias of America,  among other radical scenes.\u003cbr\u003eDrawn by an all-star cast of comic artists, \u003ci\u003eBohemians \u003c\/i\u003eis  a broad and entertaining account of the rebel impulse in American  cultural history. Featuring work by Spain Rodriguez, Sharon Rudahl,  Peter Kuper, Sabrina Jones, David Lasky, Afua Richardson, Lance Tooks,  Milton Knight, and more.\u003cbr\u003eThe ebook edition is expanded from the paperback edition, and includes additional chapters on the swing music scene, \u003ci\u003eLa Boheme \u003c\/i\u003eand midwest  bohemians, as well as expanded material on the Greenwich Village  intellectuals, Walt Whitman and Harlem jazz club Minton's Playhouse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcavates an essential part of American history ... and does so with style, great graphics, and no punches pulled. -- Luc Sante\u003cbr\u003eThe excitement and inspiration of their creative and courageous work is brilliantlycaptured in this wonderful graphic history. -- Noam Chomsky\u003cbr\u003eIngenious in its conception and brilliant in execution. It is urgently necessary for our times: read this book and see how to raise your voice against all the forces that would drown you out. A modern activist's primer! -- Ben Affleck, in praise of A People’s History of the American Empire","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741074960727,"sku":"9781781682616","price":12.01,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781682616.jpg?v=1720056483"},{"product_id":"they-cant-represent-us-reinventing-democracy-from-greece-to-occupy-9781781680971","title":"They Can't Represent Us!: Reinventing Democracy","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is one of the first books to assert that mass protest movements in disparate places such as Greece, Argentina, and the United States share an agenda-to raise the question of what democracy should mean. These horizontalist movements, including Occupy, exercise and claim participatory democracy as the ground of revolutionary social change today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten by two international activist intellectuals and based on extensive interviews with movement participants in Spain, Venezuela, Japan, across the United States, and elsewhere, this book is both one of the most expansive portraits of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, and organizational forms championed by the new movements, and an analytical history of direct and participatory democracy from ancient Athens to Athens today. The new movements put forward the idea that liberal democracy is not democratic, nor was it ever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book is riveting, moving, and profoundly important for those who want to know what revolution in our time might look like. -- Rebecca Solnit, on Marina Sitrin’s \u003ci\u003eHorizontalism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe most substantial and comprehensive work on workers' control and self-management today. -- Gary Younge, on Dario Azzellini’s \u003ci\u003eOurs to Master and to Own\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075157335,"sku":"9781781680971","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781680971.jpg?v=1720056485"},{"product_id":"a-colossal-wreck-a-road-trip-through-political-scandal-corruption-and-american-culture-9781781682951","title":"A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlexander Cockburn was without question one of the most influential journalists of his generation, whose writing stems from the best tradition of Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken and Tom Paine. \u003ci\u003eColossal Wreck\u003c\/i\u003e, his final work, finished shortly before his death in July 2012, exemplifies the prodigious literary brio that made Cockburn's name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhether ruthlessly exposing Beltway hypocrisy, pricking the pomposity of those in power, or tirelessly defending the rights of the oppressed, Cockburn never pulled his punches and always landed a blow where it mattered. In this panoramic work, covering nearly two decades of American culture and politics, he explores subjects as varied as the sex life of Bill Clinton and the best way to cook wild turkey. He stands up for the rights of prisoners on death row and exposes the chicanery of the media and the duplicity of the political elite. As he pursues a serpentine path through the nation, he charts the fortunes of friends, famous relatives, and sworn enemies alike to hilarious effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a thrilling trip through the reefs and shoals of politics and everyday life. Combining a passion for the places, the food and the people he encountered on dozens of cross-country journeys, Cockburn reports back over seventeen years of tumultuous change among what he affectionately called the \"thousand landscapes\" of the United States.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Colossal Wreck\u003c\/i\u003e provides ample evidence for Cockburn's standing as one of the left's most perceptive and entertaining commentators. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eAlexander Cockburn set a high standard of crusading journalism for fifty years ... With his Wildean wit, love of elegant women, penchant for hunting and fondness for P.G. Wodehouse, Cockburn defied the stereotype of the disgruntled left-wing scribe. * Independent *\u003cbr\u003eWhether journeying to Key West, Fla., Humboldt County, Calif., Ireland or Istanbul, Mr. Cockburn is a warrior\/freethinker, armed with courage and gifted prose to cut down the hypocrisies of tyrants. He is a Marxist Mencken-a composite of comic-poet Andrei Condrescu, the erudite Christopher Hitchens and the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. * New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eProbably the most gifted polemicist writing in English today. * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eAn overflowing goodie basket of wit, expert deprecation, intellectual comradeship ... and incisive ramble. -- James Wolcott * Vanity Fair *\u003cbr\u003eAlex struck American journalism like lightning. -- Michael Tomasky * Daily Beast *\u003cbr\u003eAlways surprising, outrageous, brilliant and yet strangely compassionate. He weaves together the public and the private with a sustained comic ingenuity that is matchless. -- Edward Said\u003cbr\u003eHe had the courage to take on anything and anyone, from the most powerful organisations in the world to his closest friends, and the energy and persistence to follow his own path wherever it took him. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eCockburn essentially pioneered the modern persona for which Christopher Hitchens became much better known: the fancily Oxford-educated leftie Brit litte?rateur\/journalist who would say all the outrageous things his bland Yank counterparts lacked the wit, courage, erudition, or e?pater-spirit to utter on their own ... Cockburn was far more committed and purposeful in his outrageousness. -- James Fallows * Atlantic *\u003cbr\u003eCockburn's stylish prose is full of erudition, ribald gossip, and pithy insight... [his] gleefully contrarian punditry makes for an entertaining read. * Publishers Weekly *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075222871,"sku":"9781781682951","price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781682951.jpg?v=1720056484"},{"product_id":"aisthesis-scenes-from-the-aesthetic-regime-of-art-9781781683088","title":"Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe definitive statement on aesthetics and the history of modernism from one of France's most renowned philosophers. Composed of a series of scenes that defined modernism, \u003ci\u003eAisthesis \u003c\/i\u003etakes its reader from Dresden in 1764 to New York in 1941. Along the way, we view the Belvedere Torso with Winckelmann, accompany Hegel to the museum and Mallarmé to the Folies-Bergère, attend a lecture by Emerson, visit exhibitions in Paris and New York, factories in Berlin, and film sets in Moscow and Hollywood. Rancière uses these sites and events to ask what becomes art and what comes from it. This incisive study provides a history of artistic modernity far removed from the conventional postures of modernism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJacques Rancière's \u003ci\u003eAisthesis\u003c\/i\u003e transforms the field of aesthetic philosophy. * Libération *\u003cbr\u003eFrench philosopher Jacques Rancière is a refreshing read for anyone concerned with what art has to do with politics and society. * Art Review *\u003cbr\u003eIn the face of impossible attempts to proceed with progressive ideas within the terms of postmodernist discourse, Rancière shows a way out of the malaise. -- Liam Gillick\u003cbr\u003eIt's clear that Jacques Rancière is relighting the flame that was extinguished for many-that is why he serves as such a signal reference today. -- Thomas Hirschhorn\u003cbr\u003eFar from the grand narratives of modernism that claim the language of art progresses in the search for purity ... modernity breaks down the hierarchy between spheres of culture, disturbing the boundaries between art and life ... [Rancière] analyzes a series of moments from this other history that could only be written in proliferating fragments ... this aesthetic 'regime' conditions the forms of art and democracy in an era of the permanent emergence of new sovereign subjects. * Le Monde *\u003cbr\u003eSince \u003ci\u003eThe Division of the Sensible\u003c\/i\u003e ... Rancière has been reminding those who would separate the wheat from the chaff in contemporary creative practices that art only exists as an unstable boundary that must be continually crossed. In \u003ci\u003eAisthesis\u003c\/i\u003e the philosopher develops his thinking, drawing fifteen scenes of a counter-history of artistic modernity. * Le Magazine Littéraire *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075255639,"sku":"9781781683088","price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781683088.jpg?v=1791476831"},{"product_id":"narcoland-the-mexican-drug-lords-and-their-godfathers-9781781682968","title":"Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe product of five years of investigative reporting, the subject of intense national controversy, and the source of death threats that forced the National Human Rights Commission to assign two full-time bodyguards to Anabel Hernández, \u003ci\u003eThe Lords of el Narco\u003c\/i\u003e has been a publishing and political sensation in Mexico.The definitive history and anatomy of the drug cartels and the \"war on drugs\" that has cost more than 50,000 lives in just five years, the book explains in riveting detail how Mexico became a base for the mega-cartels of Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. Hernández reveals the complicity of Mexico's government and business elite. At every turn, she names names-not just the \u003ci\u003enarcos\u003c\/i\u003e and their immediate accomplices, but also the politicians, policemen, functionaries, judges and entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them.\u003cbr\u003eHernández became a journalist after her father was kidnapped and killed and the police refused to investigate without a bribe. She gained national prominence in 2001 with her exposure of pharaonic spending on housekeeping at the presidential palace. All her previous books have also focused on corruption at the summit of power, under presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNarcoland\u003c\/i\u003e describes a disastrous 'war on drugs' that has led to more than 80,000 deaths in half a dozen years. This is a book that exposes how everything in Mexico is implicated in the 'narco system.' * Roberto Saviano *\u003cbr\u003eAnabel Hernández, journalist and author, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the 'war on drugs' is a sham. She's had headless animals left at her door and her family have been threatened by gunmen.... \u003ci\u003eNarcoland\u003c\/i\u003e became, and remains, a bestseller: more than 100,000 copies sold in Mexico. The success is impossible to overstate, a staggering figure for a non-fiction book in a country with indices of income and literacy incomparable to the American-European book-buying market. -- Ed Vulliamy * Observer *\u003cbr\u003eThe most remarkable feature of Anabel Hernández's brave and invaluable account of Mexico's blood-drenched drug wars is that she survived long enough to write it... We would all be poorer without Hernández's determination to account for a civil conflict that has cost at least 60,000 lives. There could be no greater shame for Mexico should such a fearless and dedicated reporter come to any harm. * Sunday Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNarcoland\u003c\/i\u003e, with its explosive descriptions of decades of corruption permeating the upper echelons of government, leaves an extremely bad taste in the reader's mouth about the state of Mexico's perennially corrupt institutions - and begs the question: how much has changed? For \u003ci\u003eNarcoland\u003c\/i\u003e, Anabel Hernandez spent five years combing police, court and US papers, securing access to informers and sources and pursuing often fruitless requests for official files. The result is a searing indictment of a war on drugs she believes was a sham from the start. -- Jude Webber * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eThe stark truth of a sham 'war'... A product of five years' investigative reporting, Hernández's meticulously researched explanation of the links between the Sinaloa cartel, the world's biggest criminal organisation, and Mexico's leadership makes for jaw-dropping reading. * Independent *\u003cbr\u003eIn this brave work, the author argues that since the presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970), all of Mexico's rulers have maintained close relations with groups that import, export, and sell illegal drugs. * La Jornada *\u003cbr\u003eIndispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the violence ... An extraordinary book for making the necessary journey to our heart of darkness. * Letras Libres *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075288407,"sku":"9781781682968","price":16.98,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781682968.jpg?v=1720056485"},{"product_id":"the-beast-riding-the-rails-and-dodging-narcos-on-the-migrant-trail-9781781682975","title":"The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY \u003ci\u003eThe Economist \u0026amp; The Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne  day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote  desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got  120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the  rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in  Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant  disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two  years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central  America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million  Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year,  and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartínez  writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of  freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and  brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with  stunning full-color photographs, \u003ci\u003eThe Beast\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA heartbreaking book about the world's most invisible people. A revelatory work of love and hair-raising courage. -- Alma Guillermoprieto, Latin America correspondent for the \u003cem\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e, author of \u003cem\u003eDancing with Cuba\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo understand the dramatic realities faced by the migrants who flee northwards to find work in the United States, Óscar Martínez literally jumped trains and dodged killers. He deserves praise not only for his efforts, and for what he writes about, but because he writes so very well. -- Jon Lee Anderson, staff reporter for the \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eÓscar Martínez is a journalist of uncommon bravery and a writer of prodigious talent. \u003ci\u003eThe Beast\u003c\/i\u003e is a powerful, necessary book, one of the finest pieces of journalism to emerge from Latin America in years. -- Daniel Alarcón, author of \u003cem\u003eAt Night We Walk in Circles\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForget the rhetoric, the politics, and the propaganda. The Beast is the real story of the drug war. * Lithub *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075321175,"sku":"9781781682975","price":16.96,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781682975.jpg?v=1791476828"},{"product_id":"the-break-up-of-britain-crisis-and-neo-nationalism-9781781683200","title":"The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this classic text, first published in 1977, Tom Nairn memorably depicts the 'slow foundering' of the United Kingdom on the rocks of imperial decline, constitutional anachronism and the gathering force of civic nationalism. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRich in comparisons between the nationalisms of the British Isles and those of the wider world, thoughtful in its treatment of the interaction between nationality and social class, \u003ci\u003eThe Break-Up of Britain\u003c\/i\u003e concludes with a bravura essay on the Janus-faced nature of national identity. Postscripts from the Thatcher and Blair years trace the political strategies whose upshot accelerated the demise of a British state they were intended to serve.   \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a second Scottish independence referendum beckons, a new Introduction by Anthony Barnett underlines the book's enduring relevance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe most forceful and original mind to confront, demask and anatomise the British state. The perception that Great Britain was a multinational state and not a united nation had never quite been lost over the centuries, but it was Tom Nairn who almost single-handedly hammered this truth into the skull of British intellectuals and campaigners until it became - as it is today - practically uncontested by the political class -- Neal Ascherson\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Break-Up of Britain\u003c\/i\u003e is Tom Nairn's greatest book. A potent and long-lasting challenge * Scotsman *\u003cbr\u003eTom Nairn pioneered critical retrospect of the United Kingdom, and scandalised people by looking forward calmly to its disintegration. This in a style of extraordinary vigour and beauty - and not least humour: writing as democratic as his own unswerving politics -- Perry Anderson\u003cbr\u003eTom Nairn's fundamental insight was to recognise that the United Kingdom was an imperial construct, and that the ties that once bound the people of these islands were fraying * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003eMore than anyone else, Tom Nairn has shaped how we think about the United Kingdom and its creaking constitutional architecture. The national conversation he started, the national journey he so profoundly shaped in his work, is far from over * Herald *\u003cbr\u003ePowerful and prophetic. Nairn is perhaps Britain's most perceptive and ambitious national storyteller, an audaciously creative stylist. -- New Statesman * Rory Scothorne *\u003cbr\u003eCombines often stunning writing with immense knowledge of literature, history, and political philosophy ... Nairn has made a priceless contribution towards a desperately needed new discourse. * The Hindu *\u003cbr\u003eThe most significant book on British politics of the past half-century -- Anthony Barnett * openDemocracy *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075452247,"sku":"9781781683200","price":16.14,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781683200.jpg?v=1720056486"},{"product_id":"auschwitz-report-9781781688045","title":"Auschwitz Report","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile in a Russian-administered holding camp in Katowice, Poland, in 1945, Primo Levi was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz. Published the following year, it was subsequently forgotten and remained unknown to a wider public.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDating from the weeks and months immediately after the war, \u003ci\u003eAuschwitz Report\u003c\/i\u003e details the authors' harrowing deportation to Auschwitz, and how those who disembarked from the train were selected for work or extermination. As well as being a searing narrative of everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers, it constitutes Levi's first lucid attempts to come to terms with the raw horror of events that would drive him to create some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature and testimony. \u003ci\u003eAuschwitz Report\u003c\/i\u003e is a major literary and historical discovery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the most important and gifted writers of our time. -- Italo Calvino\u003cbr\u003eAn important corrective to the accepted view of Auschwitz. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eThe book is important not just because it is the first published work by Levi; it contains the seeds of his great \u003ci\u003eSurvival in Auschwitz\u003c\/i\u003e. * New Yorker *\u003cbr\u003eOne of the first written by eyewitnesses, it has an important place in Holocaust historiography. * Publishers Weekly *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075485015,"sku":"9781781688045","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781688045.jpg?v=1720056486"},{"product_id":"last-futures-nature-technology-and-the-end-of-architecture-9781781689752","title":"Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil, and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation that hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities, and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present-day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the '60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert, and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one warns you that when you get old eras that you lived through are,  to the next generation, history. And it is salutory to have one of the  wilder fringes of that history recounted with the acuity, sympathy and  fluency Douglas Murphy brings to it. The cast is extraordinary:  oddballs, philosophers, seers-and a few frauds. -- Jonathan Meades\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e, such one-time commonplaces as three day weeks,  the elimination of labour, geodesic domes, walking cities, space  colonies and industrialised housing are removed from dimwitted 'where's  my jetpack' nostalgia and put back into history. In so doing, Douglas  Murphy performs the useful service of making clear when the ideas of the  unrealised futures of the 1960s and 1970s were stupid and wasteful, and  when they were exceptionally smart-serious solutions to problems we  still haven't solved, and problems we seem intent on making considerably  worse. \u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e is the \u003ci\u003eSilent Running\u003c\/i\u003e to contemporary architecture's \u003ci\u003eThe Fountainhead\u003c\/i\u003e. -- Owen Hatherley, author of Landscapes of Communism\u003cbr\u003eA fluent, chronological narrative in which oddities from the recent past form sequences in an unfolding drama . Murphy deploys his storytelling with great effect. * Architecture Today *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy tells the story of this counter-revolution pithily and well . A fresh and haunting way of explaining what happened to the radical '60s and '70s as a whole, in Murphy's view quite possibly the last chance the west had of creating a decent and environmentally sustainable society. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eProvocative and compelling. * Macleans *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy's chief virtue is the faculty with which he connects the dots between various, seemingly unconnected developments in architecture and theory with the ecological, financial, and military crises of an earlier era, holding a mirror onto our own anxious epoch of globalized precarity labor and anthropogenic climate change. -- Anna Khachiyan * Metropolis *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy outlines both some well known and some intriguingly novel suggestions for why the enthusiasm for 'omni-infrastructural' utopian frames went away.[\u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e's] motley quality is in no way a fault of Murphy's approach, but rather a real advantage of his method as a cultural historian. A strength of Murphy's book is that he depicts both the general outlines and some of the juiciest details of these complex historical moments without distilling them into a deceptively linear chronology or a progression of mere styles. -- David Wittenberg * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e is to the end of mid century experimentalism what the Zapruder film is to the death of Kennedy: a weird and gripping replay, full of period grain, each frame posing questions about whether things could have been played our differently. * Times Literary Supplement *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075648855,"sku":"9781781689752","price":19.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"last-futures-nature-technology-and-the-end-of-architecture-9781781689820","title":"Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil, and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation of thinkers, designers and engineers who hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities, and a meaningful connection with nature. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present-day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the '60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert, and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one warns you that when you get old eras that you lived through are,  to the next generation, history. And it is salutory to have one of the  wilder fringes of that history recounted with the acuity, sympathy and  fluency Douglas Murphy brings to it. The cast is extraordinary:  oddballs, philosophers, seers-and a few frauds. -- Jonathan Meades\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e, such one-time commonplaces as three day weeks,  the elimination of labour, geodesic domes, walking cities, space  colonies and industrialised housing are removed from dimwitted 'where's  my jetpack' nostalgia and put back into history. In so doing, Douglas  Murphy performs the useful service of making clear when the ideas of the  unrealised futures of the 1960s and 1970s were stupid and wasteful, and  when they were exceptionally smart-serious solutions to problems we  still haven't solved, and problems we seem intent on making considerably  worse. \u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e is the \u003ci\u003eSilent Running\u003c\/i\u003e to contemporary architecture's \u003ci\u003eThe Fountainhead\u003c\/i\u003e. -- Owen Hatherley, author of Landscapes of Communism\u003cbr\u003eA fluent, chronological narrative in which oddities from the recent past form sequences in an unfolding drama . Murphy deploys his storytelling with great effect. * Architecture Today *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy tells the story of this counter-revolution pithily and well . A fresh and haunting way of explaining what happened to the radical '60s and '70s as a whole, in Murphy's view quite possibly the last chance the west had of creating a decent and environmentally sustainable society. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eProvocative and compelling. * Macleans *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy's chief virtue is the faculty with which he connects the dots between various, seemingly unconnected developments in architecture and theory with the ecological, financial, and military crises of an earlier era, holding a mirror onto our own anxious epoch of globalized precarity labor and anthropogenic climate change. -- Anna Khachiyan * Metropolis *\u003cbr\u003eMurphy outlines both some well known and some intriguingly novel suggestions for why the enthusiasm for 'omni-infrastructural' utopian frames went away.[\u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e's] motley quality is in no way a fault of Murphy's approach, but rather a real advantage of his method as a cultural historian. A strength of Murphy's book is that he depicts both the general outlines and some of the juiciest details of these complex historical moments without distilling them into a deceptively linear chronology or a progression of mere styles. -- David Wittenberg * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLast Futures\u003c\/i\u003e is to the end of mid century experimentalism what the Zapruder film is to the death of Kennedy: a weird and gripping replay, full of period grain, each frame posing questions about whether things could have been played our differently. * Times Literary Supplement *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075681623,"sku":"9781781689820","price":11.39,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781689820.jpg?v=1720056486"},{"product_id":"class-war-conservatism-and-other-essays-9781781687703","title":"Class War Conservatism: And Other Essays","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen, in 2013, the \u003ci\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e labeled Ralph Miliband \"The Man  Who Hated Britain,\" a diverse host rallied to his defense. Those who had  worked with him - from both left and right - praised his work and  character. He was lauded as \"one of the best-known academic Marxists of  his generation\" and a leading figure of the New Left.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eClass War Conservatism\u003c\/i\u003e  collects together his most significant political essays and shows the  scope and brilliance of his thinking. Ranging from the critical anatomy  of capitalism to a clear-eyed analysis of the future of socialism in  Britain, this selection shows Miliband as an independent and prescient  thinker of great insight. Throughout, his writing is a passionate and  forcefully argued demand for social justice and a better future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA veritable giant of a man who had an almost unique capacity to understand-and explain-the world in which we live. -- Tony Benn\u003cbr\u003eAn inspiring teacher of politics and an internationally renowned figure on the British Left. * Daily Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003eA Miliband speech was always a treat; alternately sarcastic and scholarly, witty and vicious. -- Tariq Ali\u003cbr\u003eA beacon on the international Left. He epitomized what it meant to be a creative and independent socialist intellectual, and he provided consistent leadership in defining the issues for critical engagement. -- Leo Panitch\u003cbr\u003eHis whole effort is to render the language of socialism in terms of the needs of the here and now. -- Raphael Samuel","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741075747159,"sku":"9781781687703","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781687703.jpg?v=1720056486"},{"product_id":"hacker-hoaxer-whistleblower-spy-the-many-faces-of-anonymous-9781781689837","title":"Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere is the ultimate book on the worldwide movement of hackers, pranksters, and activists that operates under the non-name Anonymous, by the writer the\u003ci\u003eHuffington Post \u003c\/i\u003esays \"knows all of Anonymous' deepest, darkest secrets.\"\u003cbr\u003eHalf a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption (before Anonymous shot to fame as a key player in the battles over WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street). She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside-outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book.The narrative brims with details unearthed from within a notoriously mysterious subculture, whose semi-legendary tricksters - such as Topiary, tflow, Anachaos, and Sabu - emerge as complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people. Propelled by years of chats and encounters with a multitude of hackers, including imprisoned activist Jeremy Hammond and the double agent who helped put him away, Hector Monsegur, \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy \u003c\/i\u003eis filled with insights into the meaning of digital activism and little understood facets of culture in the Internet age, including the history of \"trolling,\" the ethics and metaphysics of hacking, and the origins and manifold meanings of \"the lulz.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEasily the best book on Anonymous. -- Julian Assange\u003cbr\u003eBrilliantly lucid and informative. -- Alan Moore * New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eThe US government and its allies have spent years castigating, prosecuting, and jailing members of Anonymous, with the director of the NSA going so far as to warn ominously of the potential of an Anonymous-led power blackout. But Gabriella Coleman's fascinating history of Anonymous makes clear that almost all of the hacktivism attributed to this global collective has been devoted to exposing wrongdoing, not wreaking destruction, even as she also carefully shows that Anonymous is not a shadowy organization but a loosely knit collection of activists all over the globe, fighting for government and corporate transparency. The NSA's treatment of Anonymous is disturbing and extreme, and Anonymous's surprising activist turn is heartening. Essential reading. -- Glenn Greenwald\u003cbr\u003eA work of anthropology that sometimes echoes a John le Carré novel. -- Robert McMillan * Wired *\u003cbr\u003eColeman takes us on a thrilling journey into the uncharted landscape of hackers, trolls, and Anonymous activists who live among us. It's both a perfect initiation for all those n00bs out there still wondering what a 'n00b' is, as well as an important discourse on the role of anarchy online. \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy\u003c\/i\u003e shares in the rebellious, even mordant humor of the groups it profiles, but never loses its critical perspective. A hilarious, important piece of hidden history that is very hard to put down. -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of \u003ci\u003ePresent Shock: When Everything Happens Now\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA long-awaited and compelling study of the activist collective . Anyone interested in Anonymous, or the shape of protest in the age of the internet, will find abundant new details and smart insight here. -- Jamie Bartlett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy\u003c\/i\u003e, Coleman reveals the group in all its complexity ... this in-depth account might leave readers in awe of the sheer scope of the group and how much they have achieved while shunning the traditional trappings of leaders, hierarchy and individual fame-seeking. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eWith a perceptive eye and a principled disposition, Coleman dives into the eclectic world of Anonymous to reveal the humor and political significance of this polarizing network. Following her journey through this maze and reveling in her analysis is both insightful and awe-inspiring. This book will shake up assumptions at the core of academia, industry, law enforcement, and the media. It's a must read! -- danah boyd, author of \u003ci\u003eIt’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePenetrates the chaotic, ad hoc, contradictory world of the Anons . What Gabriella Coleman has done, with a fine eye and a storyteller's talent, is to untangle the hairball just enough to get a sense of its topology, its power and its limits-if not its direction. That is anyone's guess. -- Cory Doctorow * The Spectator *\u003cbr\u003eColeman charts her own conceptual course, breaking with the standard narratives, particularly the click-baity cautionary tales about the dangers of Anonymous. Her book offers its share of warnings, but ones more nuanced, compelling, and empathetic than the typical hand-wringing about online mobs and the conundrum of virtual vigilante justice. Coleman is no cheerleader...But she also doesn't wag her finger from some imagined high ground. -- Astra Taylor * Bookforum *\u003cbr\u003eAn engrossing, accessible, and intelligent study illuminating the ambiguities of Anonymous and its implications for the future of online political activism. * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eAnyone hoping to understand this mostly hidden world will find [Coleman's] book crucial and even prescient. * Boston Globe *\u003cbr\u003e[Coleman's] painstaking research takes the reader right into the heart of the group, where she begins explaining the history of the broad movement of hackers known to the outside world as Anonymous . without doubt one of the biggest authorities in the world on the subject of Anonymous. * Independent *\u003cbr\u003eThis is the ultimate piece on Anonymous. It's a notoriously difficult subject to write about, but Gabriella Coleman has succeeded where others have failed, and the result is a masterpiece that is informative, interesting, and funny. A fine example of what an investigative book should be. -- Mustafa Al-Bassam, alias \"tflow,\" former member of LulzSec\u003cbr\u003eExhaustively researched and devilishly readable, \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of Anonymous's rise from 4chan to taking on governments. If there could be a definitive writer on a movement like Anonymous, Coleman would be it. -- Molly Crabapple, artist and author of \u003ci\u003eDrawing Blood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[An] eye-opening ethnography . This all-access pass into the dark and wild corners of the Internet is timely, informative, and also frightening. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eProvides pages of interviews with infamous, incendiary trollers, snitches and hackers, verbatim bickering chat-room dialogue, and leaked documents. For such a frenzied collective defying easy categorization, Coleman's diligent and often sensationalistic spadework does great justice in representing the plight of these 'misfits of activism' and their vigilante mischief. An intensive, potent profile of contemporary digital activism at its most unsettling-and most effective. * Kirkus Reviews (\"Best Books of 2014\") *\u003cbr\u003eA rare look inside the complex, decentralized cabal that is the hacker group Anonymous. Many of Anonymous's exploits are detailed here, including Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on payment processing corporations in the wake of WikiLeaks, the technical attacks that defaced Tunisian government websites, and actions taken against the Church of Scientology. What truly resonates in this book is the process by which a leaderless but effective technical and social group plans, deploys, and then disperses. -- Jim Hahn * Library Journal *\u003cbr\u003eMeticulously researched, eminently readable. * Maclean’s *\u003cbr\u003ePart anthropologist, part journalist, Coleman provides insight and detail into the world of Anonymous in this book, which reads like a saga. A great read for those interested in Anonymous, contemporary anthropology, and Internet subcultures. -- J.M. Keller * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eColeman does a fantastic job of chronicling Anonymous's political turn while explaining her own moral pretzels as a researcher. She illuminates a movement that bucks the cultural trend to self-promote, and examines the 'fractal chaos' of a leaderless collective that is deliberately hard to pin down but looks a little bit like the Internet when it was young. -- Barbara Fister * Inside Higher Ed *\u003cbr\u003eFrom its trollish origins to its hacktivist ethos, anonymity can be at least partly credited for both bringing the group together, and continuing to define its changing mission. -- Joseph Cox * Motherboard, Vice *\u003cbr\u003eWhat began as an academic project became a personal one for Coleman, which dominated her life. The result, for the reader, is a story which is in equal parts informative and enthralling. -- David Gilbert * International Business Times *\u003cbr\u003eIn our increasingly authoritarian age, we are seeing aggressive attempts to demonise and attack what is variously called the 'dark' or 'deep' web. \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy\u003c\/i\u003e reminds us that from those dark depths wonderful things can and do emerge. Cleansing these depths-if it is even possible-could have consequences far beyond what GCHQ and the Metropolitan Police might imagine. * Times Higher Education *\u003cbr\u003eAnonymous seems like a potent adversary. Like ISIS, the group is shadowy and technologically savvy, perhaps making it the perfect weapon against a terrorist group that uses social media as a recruiting and propaganda tool. But for Gabriella Coleman, the author of \u003ci\u003eHacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous\u003c\/i\u003e, the rush to embrace the group could be premature. * CBC News *\u003cbr\u003e\"Gabriella Coleman's detailed ethnographic and historical account of the internet collective Anonymous-ranging from its origin on random 4Chan bulletin boards to its role in the Occupy movement and beyond-will prove to be a watershed book in the study of online activism. -- Bernard Doherty * Nova Religio *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741076107607,"sku":"9781781689837","price":29.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781689837.jpg?v=1720056487"},{"product_id":"vertical-the-city-from-satellites-to-bunkers-9781781689974","title":"Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eVertical\u003c\/i\u003e will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional  map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that  reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep  within the ground. In \u003ci\u003eVertical\u003c\/i\u003e, Stephen Graham rewrites the  city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and  identity is determined in terms of above and below.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStarting at the edge of earth's atmosphere and, in a series of riveting  studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of  drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of  sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In this panoramic, at times jaw-dropping book, Stephen Graham describes  how in recent years the built environment around the world, both above  and below ground, has become dramatically more vertical - and more  unequal. sharp and memorable. dizzyingly restless. Cities feel different  once you've read it\" -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eA rigorously researched, pioneering book packed with disturbing and at times astonishing information * Icon *\u003cbr\u003eHe takes the view that we've been looking at cities all  wrong, all laid out like maps, when what we should be doing is taking  vertical slices through them instead. He doesn't just mean from the tip of the skyscrapers to the  metro tunnels below ground: he means from the circling satellites round  the planet right down to bunkers, sewers, mines. * Spectator *\u003cbr\u003eAn enlightening overview of the security state's impact on contemporary cities, from overt authoritarian control in war-torn areas to more subtle forms of behavioral influence in places supposedly at peace. Graham shows how military\/police\/security forces perceive urban places and urban dwellers as subjects to control, and how their inherently undemocratic tactics threaten freedom all over the world -- Nate Berg * Curbed *\u003cbr\u003eSeeing cities as Gordian knots of geopolitics, he gathers an impressive  range of case studies to bolster his analysis. These compel and  convince, from Saudi Arabia's high-rise vanity projects to Rio de  Janeiro's \u003ci\u003efavelas.\u003c\/i\u003e * Nature *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741076500823,"sku":"9781781689974","price":16.74,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781689974.jpg?v=1791476829"},{"product_id":"extreme-cities-the-peril-and-promise-of-urban-life-in-the-age-of-climate-change-9781784780364","title":"Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities,\u003c\/i\u003e Ashley Dawson argues that cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion's share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Today, the majority of the world's megacities are located in coastal zones, yet few of them are adequately prepared for the floods that will increasingly menace their shores. Instead, most continue to develop luxury waterfront condos for the elite and industrial facilities for corporations. These not only intensify carbon emissions, but also place coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e, Dawson offers an alarming portrait of the future of our cities, describing the efforts of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmareff, Alaska residents to relocate; Holland's models for defending against the seas; and the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our best hope lies not with fortified sea walls, he argues. Rather, it lies with urban movements already fighting to remake our cities in a more just and equitable way. As much a harrowing study as a call to arms \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e is a ground-breaking investigation of the vulnerability of our cities in an age of climate chaos. We feel safe and protected in the middle of our great urban areas, but as Sandy and Katrina made clear, and as this fine book reveals anew, the massive shifts on our earth increasingly lay bare the social inequalities that fracture our civilization. -- Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of \u003ci\u003eEaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMany books have elucidated the ever-increasing dangers of climate change, particularly the disastrous impact that rising sea levels will have on coastal regions, but Dawson goes further as he outlines some potential solutions to this crisis. Massive technological projects may not be what's needed, he finds; instead, the solution may already exist in radical movements to forge a more just and equitable society. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eThe way we design and live in cities will determine humanity's ability to avoid an anthropogenic mass extinction event in the coming century. Dawson makes this vividly clear in \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e, laying out in detail the nature of the problem and some possible positive actions we can take. Crucial to his argument is the fact that technological solutions will not be enough, so that we need to drastically reform the capitalist economic system to properly price and value the biosphere and human lives. His point that social justice is now a necessary survival strategy makes this not just a meticulous history and analysis of our situation, but also an exciting call to action. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Red Mars Trilogy and \u003ci\u003eNew York 2140\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCities both in the North and the South are already suffering the effects of climate change. Government and business fitfully recognize and respond, but in ways that reinforce existing injustices and as often as not make things worse. Dawson shows how social movements have combined action on disaster relief with forms of equitable common life to produce models for radical adaptation from which we can all learn. This is a brilliant summation of what we know and what we can do build a new kind of city in the ruins of the old. -- McKenzie Wark, author of \u003ci\u003eMolecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA powerful argument in a dire situation: that we revise our cities to the new game changer, or climate change will revise urban existences as we know it. -- Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, director-general of Bengal Institute of Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements\u003cbr\u003eA sophisticated and provocative exploration of the unfolding impact of climate change on urban environments. -- Christoph Lindner, Professor of Urban Theory and Visual Culture, University of Oregon\u003cbr\u003eA revelatory confrontation between two forms of 'surplus liquidity': the rent-seeking excess of circulating global capital and the more literal liquidity of the rising tides of climate change. The setting is the city and this meticulously researched and argued book probes the nexus of myopia, greed, environmental disaster-and hope-that has placed the urban habitat of billions of us in extremis. -- Michael Sorkin, author of \u003ci\u003eAll Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA must-read for everyone who wants to understand the politics of climate change in an increasingly urban planet, and to explore the possibilities for radical change beyond all technological fixes and governmental adjustments that only reproduce the system as it is. -- Marco Armiero, director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden\u003cbr\u003eA superb essay of political ecology, \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates that there is nothing more depending on nature than the city, offering both a diagnosis and a possible therapy for one of the greatest challenges of our time. -- Serenella Iovino, editor of \u003ci\u003eMaterial Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities \u003c\/i\u003etakes the critical long view to challenge city decision-makers to deal seriously with the clash of business-as-usual development, threats from climate change, and persistent social inequality to develop real transformations to drive cities toward sustainability and resilience. -- Timon McPhearson, Director, Urban Systems Lab at The New School, New York City\u003cbr\u003eWith the majority of humanity located in cities, it behooves us to consider urban ecologies as recent and future sites of non-natural disasters as well as inspiring places of collective resilience and struggles for justice. Dawson's book is a guiding light. -- T.J. Demos, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz, Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies\u003cbr\u003eThe definitive study of an urban-and planetary-system pushed to the breaking point. \u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e paints a terrifying, but also hopeful, picture, weaving together accounts of iron-fisted states, greedy real estate developers, and the communities that challenge their rule. -- Jason W. Moore, author of \u003ci\u003eCapitalism in the Web of Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA profoundly sobering picture of climate change's uneven urban toll, both across global expanses and within particular neighborhoods, while also spotlighting instances of radical, on-the-ground resistance to such trends. -- Emily Scott, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zuric and co-editor of \u003ci\u003eCritical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA substantive contribution to the growing dialogue about our response-or lack thereof-to climate change. * Kirkus Reviews *\u003cbr\u003eDawson makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim. * Publishers Weekly (? Starred Review) *\u003cbr\u003e[Dawson] is well attuned to the ways that upheavals and disasters disproportionately affect the socioeconomically disadvantaged. As Donald Trump continues to roll back protection measures and disavow the U.S.'s role in global cooperation to mitigate the effects of climate change, [Extreme Cities] is a clear-eyed reminder of who, and what, will be left most vulnerable as a result. * Fast Company *\u003cbr\u003eBooks on climate change are a dime a dozen now, but few, if any, truly reckon with the potential scale of the disasters that await. Dawson reveals the inadequacies of current plans to deal with the problems that cities around the world will face. Forget such buzzwords as 'green cities,' 'resilience,' and 'sustainable development' - the age of 'disaster communism' is here. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eNamed one of the top 10 books of the year by Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003e[\u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities\u003c\/i\u003e] is a sobering account of how planetary urbanization has put us on a collision course with the natural world. -- Jonathan Hahn * Sierra Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eExtreme Cities is an angry book-as it should be ... Ashley Dawson outlines the existential dilemma facing coastal cities, and the refusal of various powerbrokers to acknowledge that reality, in bold and frequently horrifying terms. -- Chris Barsanti * Rain Taxi *\u003cbr\u003eInvoking terms such as \"climate apartheid,\" he greatly expands what people traditionally think of as relevant climate policy language. Recognizing that climate change mitigation and adaptation are interwoven with-and exacerbated by-social inequities and other problems plaguing modern cities is sobering, but this realization provides hope that humanity can move toward greater resilience to environmental problems by addressing non-climatic factors that will improve cities in the presence or absence of climate change. * Choice *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eExtreme Cities \u003c\/i\u003etakes on the needed work of slowing down to chronicle and consider this meantime, without shying away from its messiness.More than simply lay out the existence of disparities, it illuminates the relationship between them. -- Liz Koslov * Public Books *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741285921111,"sku":"9781784780364","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784780364.jpg?v=1720057131"},{"product_id":"tear-gas-from-the-battlefields-of-world-war-i-to-the-streets-of-today-9781784780265","title":"Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne hundred years ago, French troops fired tear gas grenades into German trenches. Designed to force people out from behind barricades and trenches, tear gas causes burning of the eyes and skin, tearing, and gagging. Chemical weapons are now banned from war zones. But today, tear gas has become the most commonly used form of \"less-lethal\" police force. In 2011, the year that protests exploded from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, tear gas sales tripled. Most tear gas is produced in the United States, and many images of protestors in Tahrir Square showed tear gas canisters with \"Made in USA\" printed on them, while Britain continues to sell tear gas to countries on its own human-rights blacklist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn engrossing century-spanning narrative, \u003ci\u003eTear Gas\u003c\/i\u003e is the first history of this weapon, and takes us from military labs and chemical weapons expos to union assemblies and protest camps, drawing on declassified reports and witness testimonies to show how policing with poison came to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is this violence that comes through most clearly in Tear Gas - the psychological factors, the sheer unfairness and dismissiveness that accompany the use of chemicals against demonstrators and ordinary citizens, all come through brilliantly. Tear gas not only affects protesters and bystanders indiscriminately; it relegates the status of a dissenting citizen to that of a mere irritant. -- Yiannis Baboulias * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eA vivid history of the time and also-as good radical accounts should be-a source of encouragement to those fighting all too similar battles today -- Hilary Rose\u003cbr\u003eThere is something epic about Anna Feigenbaum's \u003ci\u003eTear Gas\u003c\/i\u003e, its scope and intensity, the way that chemistry - the orienting science of the industrial revolution - provides the material to manage that revolution's epic collapse ... There is crucial knowledge to be found here. -- Joshua Clover, author of\u003ci\u003e Riot.Strike.Riot\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA passionately argued history of the development and gradual spread of tear gas around the world ... a clarion call for reassessment of the widespread availability and misuse of tear gas. -- Patrick Wicklen, Researcher on Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International\u003cbr\u003eFascinating, deeply researched and lucid ... We have become so accustomed to the use of tear gas during protests that it comes as a shock when we realize, in reading this book, how little we know about the longer-term effects of what is in some ways a chemical weapon. -- Laleh Khalili, author of\u003ci\u003e Time in the Shadows\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRead Feigenbaum's book. It's timely, well-written, and very important. -- Evaggelos Vallianatos * Independent Science News *\u003cbr\u003eFeigenbaum integrates science and history with a compelling discussion of tear gas's history and its present role in the civilian arena. * Choice *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741285953879,"sku":"9781784780265","price":17.28,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784780265.jpg?v=1720057131"},{"product_id":"power-games-a-political-history-of-the-olympics-9781784780722","title":"Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Olympics have a checkered, sometimes scandalous, political history. Jules Boykoff, a former US Olympic team member, takes readers from the event's nineteenth-century origins, through the Games' flirtation with Fascism, and into the contemporary era of corporate control. Along the way he recounts vibrant alt-Olympic movements, such as the Workers' Games and Women's Games of the 1920s and 1930s as well as athlete-activists and political movements that stood up to challenge the Olympic machine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn Olympic history that simply hasn't been told. -- Olympic medalist John Carlos, author of \u003ci\u003eThe John Carlos Story\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShould be on every Olympian's bookshelf. -- Laurence Halsted, fencer and \"Team GB\" Olympian at Rio 2016\u003cbr\u003e[Boykoff's] jaunty polemic \u003ci\u003ePower\u003c\/i\u003e Games is billed as a political history of the Olympics. It is actually more of a call-to-arms to people faced with this giant intrusion. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eAs much a tool for activists as a work of scholarship, [\u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e] relentlessly attacks the hypocrisy of the Olympic myth. * Washington Post *\u003cbr\u003eA great irony is that the modern Olympics, first envisioned as an alternative to war, have themselves become a form of low-intensity warfare. As Jules Boykoff chronicles in this pathbreaking history, host cities have used the Games to leverage urban renewal, neighborhood demolition, and mass population displacement. The preparations for the Rio Olympics have gone one step further and become a literal urban counterinsurgency, as elite police units occupy and 'cleanse' one favela after another. -- Mike Davis, author of \u003ci\u003ePlanet of Slums\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJules Boykoff takes us deep into the heart to of the Olympic industry to look at the experiences of the people who are affected most by these Games-you and me. This powerful book explores how individuals and groups-from Indigenous people, to athletes to the homeless-have opened our eyes to the possibility of a more humane world through the Olympics. Boykoff also makes it clear that the Olympics have amends to make with Indigenous people worldwide, whether in Canada, the United States, or Australia. Indigenous people have struggled to defend their lands and rights against the Olympic juggernaut, linking their struggles with those of the broader public, showing us how the Games could and should leave better legacies for all, not just the well-to-do. \u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e is an insightful chronicle of Indigenous activism in and against the Games, as well as an intellectual roadmap for how all of our interests are intertwined. In elevating Indigenous voices, Boykoff also exposes the problematic representations of Indigenous people that are frequently proffered by Olympic-controlled media. \u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e is an important and approachable work that should be on every bookshelf, a must read for anyone interested in the future of the Games. -- Janice Forsyth, former Director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western University in Ontario, member of the Fisher River Cree First Nation\u003cbr\u003eEven since Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the International Olympic Committee has sought to deny the inherently political nature of the modern Olympic games. In\u003ci\u003e Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics\u003c\/i\u003e, Jules Boykoff, arguably the world's leading authority on the Olympic movement, exposes the IOC's claims of apoliticism as a sham. Through a carefully researched history of the Olympic Games, Boykoff skillfully details how the Olympics benefit political elites and corporate interests at the expense of local host cities and even democracy itself. But this is no pessimistic account. Boykoff ends by outlining how a more democratic and transparent Olympics is still possible, making\u003ci\u003e Power Games \u003c\/i\u003eessential reading for anyone wanting to understanding the power and importance of the modern Olympics. -- Ben Carrington, University of Texas at Austin, author of \u003ci\u003eRace, Sport and Politics\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEnjoyable and informative, \u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e is an even more relevant read in the build-up to this summer's . Olympics. -- Jamie Johnson * Morning Star *\u003cbr\u003eAn important read for those who will be watching this summer's contests in Rio. Even more importantly, though, it is a necessary text for those who live in cities the International Olympic Committee is eyeing for its next overpriced neoliberal capitalist extravaganza. The people of Boston sent the IOC packing in 2015 for many of the reasons elucidated in this history. Other cities would do well to do the same. This book explains why. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *\u003cbr\u003eThis explosive book leaves us asking whether the IOC's insistence that sport is above such concerns as justice, liberty and human rights has not in fact been a fundamentally corrosive stance from the start. * Sunday Herald *\u003cbr\u003e[\u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e is] really two books in one: a historical overview of the Games' checkered history and a searing indictment of the IOC's hypocrisy and hubris...unrelentingly critical [and also] constructive. -- Houman Barekat * Jacobin *\u003cbr\u003eA truly inside-track critique of the fanfare, Boykoff addresses the games as a site of scandal and rebellion. -- Bailey Flynn * MobyLives! *\u003cbr\u003eA timely and depressing reminder of the grisly underbelly of the Olympic Games. -- Diarmaid Ferriter * Irish Times *\u003cbr\u003eBy examining Olympic history from the revival of the Games in 1896 to the imminent Rio Olympics, Boykoff traces how the Olympics have developed into the behemoth that has transformed Rio over the past seven years. Beyond this, he also provides fantastic detail on many of the egregious abuses in the name of Rio 2016. -- Adam Talbot * RioOnWatch *\u003cbr\u003eTo anyone who believes that the excesses of the Games over the past 50 years or so have betrayed a purer original legacy, [\u003ci\u003ePower Games\u003c\/i\u003e] by Jules Boykoff provides a bracing corrective. * Spectator *\u003cbr\u003eJules Boykoff debunks any remaining myths associated with the 'spirit' and 'goodwill' of the Olympic 'movement' by attending closely to the machinations of this monopolistic, non-sovereign, and largely unaccountable organization and its beneficiaries. * Public Books *\u003cbr\u003eAs sporting mega-events become the focus of a growing number of activists, Power Games provides the basis for those campaigns to be better informed and more effective. -- Malcolm Maclean * Red Pepper *\u003cbr\u003eJules Boykoff's \u003ci\u003ePower Games: A Political History of the Olympics\u003c\/i\u003e is a smart, sharp, and critically balanced outline of the modern Olympic revival. -- Robert L. Kehoe III * Boston Review *\u003cbr\u003eExhuastively researched and clearly written. -- Jon Day * Times Literary Supplement *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286183255,"sku":"9781784780722","price":11.39,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784780722.jpg?v=1720057131"},{"product_id":"capitalism-a-ghost-story-9781784780944","title":"Capitalism: A Ghost Story","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eCapitalism: A Ghost Story\u003c\/i\u003e, best-selling writer Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of Indian democracy - a nation of 1.2 billion, where the country' s 100 richest people own assets worth one quarter of India's gross domestic product.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFerocious and clear-sighted, this is a searing portrait of a nation haunted by ghosts: the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt; the hundreds of millions who live on less than two dollars a day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is the story of how the largest democracy in the world, with over 800 million voting in the last election, answers to the demands of globalized capitalism, subjecting millions of people to inequality and exploitation. Roy shows how the mega-corporations, modern robber barons plundering India's natural resources, use brute force, as well as a wide range of NGOs and foundations, to sway government and policy making in India.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart. -- Alice Walker\u003cbr\u003eResists and denounces all tyrannies, pleads for their victims, and unflinchingly questions the tragedy. -- John Berger\u003cbr\u003eAn unflinching emotional as well as political intelligence. Her lucid and probing essays offer sharp insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism. -- Pankaj Mishra * Time Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eIn her searing account, Roy asks whether our shriveled forms of democracy will be 'the endgame of the human race'-and shows vividly why this is a prospect not to be lightly dismissed. -- Noam Chomsky\u003cbr\u003eThe scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating. * The New York Times Book Review *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286216023,"sku":"9781784780944","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784780944.jpg?v=1720057130"},{"product_id":"capital-new-york-capital-of-the-20th-century-9781784781591","title":"Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century","description":"Here is a kaleidoscopic assemblage and poetic history of New York: an unparalleled and original homage to the city, composed entirely of quotations. Drawn from a huge array of sources-histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, novels, government documents, emails-and organized into interpretive categories that reveal the philosophical architecture of the city, \u003ci\u003eCapital\u003c\/i\u003e is the ne plus ultra of books on the ultimate megalopolis.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is also a book of experimental literature that transposes Walter Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus of literary montage on the modern city, \u003ci\u003eThe Arcades Project\u003c\/i\u003e, from 19th-century Paris to 20th-century New York, bringing the streets to life in categories such as \"Sex,\" \"Commodity,\" \"Downtown,\" \"Subway,\" and \"Mapplethorpe.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCapital\u003c\/i\u003e is a book designed to fascinate and to fail-for can a megalopolis truly be written? Can a history, no matter how extensive, ever be comprehensive? Each reading of this book, and of New York, is a unique and impossible passage.","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286314327,"sku":"9781784781590","price":23.75,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784781590.jpg?v=1720057133"},{"product_id":"bad-new-days-art-criticism-emergency-9781784781484","title":"Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBad New Days\u003c\/i\u003e examines the evolution of art and criticism in Western Europe and North America over the last twenty-five years, exploring their dynamic relation to the general condition of emergency instilled by neoliberalism and the war on terror.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConsidering the work of artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tacita Dean, and Isa Genzken, and the writing of thinkers like Jacques Rancière, Bruno Latour, and Giorgio Agamben, Hal Foster shows the ways in which art has anticipated this condition, at times resisting the collapse of the social contract or gesturing toward its repair; at other times burlesquing it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAgainst the claim that art making has become so heterogeneous as to defy historical analysis, Foster argues that the critic must still articulate a clear account of the contemporary in all its complexity. To that end, he offers several paradigms for the art of recent years, which he terms \"abject,\" \"archival,\" \"mimetic,\" and \"precarious.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeft, opinionated, Foster is one of those rare art theorists whose measured prose can engage a wider readership, cutting through the philosophical inflationism that afflicts much of the higher gossip among art critics. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eFoster's latest book, Bad New Days, attempts to recover the idea of an avant-garde after a hard half-century of infighting, obfuscation, rivalry, and successive failures to engage with the real world of politics. * Harper's *\u003cbr\u003eFoster's strength lies in his erudite attention to those artists that have emerged as definitive of their particular moment. -- Mostafa Heddaya * Artinfo *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286347095,"sku":"9781784781484","price":16.4,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784781484.jpg?v=1720057131"},{"product_id":"figures-of-catastrophe-the-condition-of-culture-novel-9781784781910","title":"Figures of Catastrophe: The Condition of Culture","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of received patterns of literary association, tracing a line from Hardy and Forster, through Woolf, Waugh and Bowen, to Barstow, Fowles, Rendell, Naipaul, Amis, Kureishi and Smith, he elucidates the recurring topics and narrative logics of the genre, showing how culture emerges as a special ground of social conflict, above all between classes. The narrative evaluations of culture's ends-the aspirations and the destinies of those whose lives are the subject of these novels-grow steadily darker over time, and the writing itself grows more introverted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn extraordinary, thoughtful and thought-provoking study, \u003ci\u003eFigures of Catastrophe\u003c\/i\u003e is very highly recommended for community and academic library Literary Studies reference collections and supplemental curriculums. * Midwest Book Review *\u003cbr\u003eFew critics could match the subtlety of Mulhern's interpretations or the eloquent precision of his prose. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it sends the reader back to the novels to test out its hypotheses, thus providing an education in the condition of culture novel and its polymorphic figures of catastrophe. -- Maud Ellman * Critical Inquiry *\u003cbr\u003eVery welcome and important ... the book is at once indispensable. * Guardian (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *\u003cbr\u003eExtraordinarily thorough and responsive ... austerely elegant ... a distinguished essay in\u003cbr\u003e cultural history and critical theory. * Times Literary Supplement (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *\u003cbr\u003eThis is a book to be grateful for. * Criticism *\u003cbr\u003eA richly informing and provocative work of intellectual history ... Mulhern marshals his\u003cbr\u003e evidence with a rare power of argument and a scrupulous fairness of coverage. * British Book News (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *\u003cbr\u003eAn important and valuable book ... written with intensity and intelligence. * Nation (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *\u003cbr\u003eThis is a valuable book for anyone interested in literary criticism and the history and\u003cbr\u003e philosophy of culture. * Choice (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *\u003cbr\u003eA cogent and incisive study of culture and politics. * Antioch Review (Praise for \u003ci\u003eThe Moment of Scrutiny\u003c\/i\u003e) *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286412631,"sku":"9781784781910","price":16.14,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784781910.jpg?v=1791477143"},{"product_id":"the-lamentations-of-zeno-a-novel-9781784782191","title":"The Lamentations of Zeno: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eZeno Hintermeier is a scientist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. It is a troubling turn in the life of an idealistic glaciologist. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he starts to plan a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Lamentations of Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer. Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense of place or the pace of its narrative. It is a portrait of a man in extremis, a haunting and at times irreverent tale that approaches the greatest challenge of our age-perhaps of our entire history as a species-from an impassioned human angle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe best thing one could say of an author: he enriches us. -- Günter Grass\u003cbr\u003eThrilling, nuanced, and chillingly meditative . Ilija Trojanow has written a modern fable tinged with absurd humor, dramatizing the high stakes of our current climate gamble. -- Colum McCann, author of \u003ci\u003eLet the Great World Spin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is like the stream of consciousness of our planet's unraveling lifeworld, as channeled through its melting ice and a cruise ship naturalist in love with his doomed subject. Quick, dense, jagged, beautiful. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the \u003ci\u003eMars Trilogy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Lamentations of Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e is electric, irresistible, well written and movingly topical. Ilija Trojanow, with several masterpieces to his name, never puts a foot wrong. He is as important a writer in this day and age as Günter Grass was for his-a joy to read. -- Nuruddin Farah, author of \u003ci\u003eHiding in Plain Sight\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerfectly paced, keenly insightful and wickedly funny, \u003ci\u003eThe Lamentations of Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e is at once a much-needed indictment of the global climate crisis and a brilliant portrait of middle life. The Antarctic antics of \u003ci\u003eWhere'd You Go, Bernadette?\u003c\/i\u003e meet the wit and wisdom of \u003ci\u003eHerzog\u003c\/i\u003e, with the politics of\u003ci\u003eFlight Behavior\u003c\/i\u003e sprinkled on top: a treat! -- Taiye Selasi, author of \u003ci\u003eGhana Must Go\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is little that a novelist can tell us on the subject that we do not already know, but Trojanow gives the statistics and prognoses a human dimension . one of Europe's most original contemporary writers. * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eTrojanow harnesses his lyrical skill and wows the reader when he focuses on describing Zeno's exploration of the seemingly monochromatic yet thrilling landscape. The book is a sophisticated drama about a scientist's love for a continent that eludes his slippery hold. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eA topical polemic about global warming and climate change... \u003ci\u003eThe Lamentations of Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e is half the length and twice as good [as Ian McEwan]. Trojanow has set out on a particular expedition: to unsettle. This wise, cunning book, which does indeed possess the complex depths of an iceberg, achieves exactly that. * Irish Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Lamentations of Zeno\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel of existential dread... in contemplating the already accomplished destruction of habitats, the consumerism that marks nearly every human activity and the digital onslaught that has colonised our minds, the reader may discover that Zeno's soul-sickness speaks to some disquiet in his or her own battered soul. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eShort, sharp, bitter, and very funny. -- Nicola Twilley * New Yorker *\u003cbr\u003eWith a sharp ear for pop song lyrics and a love of glaciers, our antihero seems to be fighting a losing battle against climate change and the clueless humans who foster it. -- Jay Trachtenberg * Austin Chronicle *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286740311,"sku":"9781784782191","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784782191.jpg?v=1720057134"},{"product_id":"october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution-9781784782789","title":"October: The Story of the Russian Revolution","description":"In February of 1917 Russia was a backward, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world's first workers' state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a panoramic sweep, stretching from St Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness. Intervening in long-standing historical debates, but told with the reader new to the topic especially in mind, here is a breathtaking story of humanity at its greatest and most desperate; of a turning point for civilisation that still resonates loudly today. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChina Miéville tells the extraordinary story of this pivotal moment in history.","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286805847,"sku":"9781784782788","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784782788.jpg?v=1720057133"},{"product_id":"policing-the-planet-why-the-policing-crisis-led-to-black-lives-matter-9781784783167","title":"Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCombining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton. It's a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over-to deadly effect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith contributions from #BlackLivesMatter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, Ferguson activist and Law Professor Justin Hansford, Director of New York-based Communities United for Police Reform Joo-Hyun Kang, poet Martín Espada, and journalist Anjali Kamat, as well as articles from leading scholars Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D. G. Kelley, Naomi Murakawa, Vijay Prashad, and more, Policing the Planet describes ongoing struggles from New York to Baltimore to Los Angeles, London, San Juan, San Salvador, and beyond.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book is the best analytical and political response we have to the historic rebellions in Ferguson! Don't miss it. -- Cornel West, author of \u003ci\u003eBlack Prophetic Fire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe owe Jordan Camp and Christina Heatherton a great expression of gratitude for this brilliant and provocative collection of voices that compels us to see the Black Lives Matter Movement in the larger context of twenty-first-century racial capitalism and the growing carceral state. -- Barbara Ransby, author of \u003ci\u003eElla Baker and the Black Freedom Movement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA major work . As someone who certainly admires the work of these scholars, I couldn't think of a more compelling and timely work such as this. I am pleased to not only be in community with these amazing people but to listen and learn from them . \u003ci\u003ePolicing the Planet\u003c\/i\u003e comes at an incredibly important time. -- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture\u003cbr\u003eWhen this series of essays addressing contemporary activism's biggest movement hits stands in May, we'll be ready. A variety of contributors, including anti-police brutality and militarization activists from around the country and world, promise to make \u003ci\u003ePolicing the Planet\u003c\/i\u003e a definitive work for anybody confused about exactly what structural law enforcement powers lead to our current racial justice climate. * Colorlines *\u003cbr\u003eThis broad collection of sharp commentary from activists, academics, and artists situates recent struggles right where they belong-in opposition to an increasingly global regime of police abuse. * Flavorwire *\u003cbr\u003eA probing collection of essays and interviews. * Philadelphia Tribune *\u003cbr\u003eThrough compiling so many critical voices in one place, Camp and Heatherton have created a much-needed guidebook of resistance to our planet's police state and the structures of urban governance that feed it. -- Aaron Cantú * Washington Spectator *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePolicing the Planet\u003c\/i\u003e is an important intervention to a key issue at a crucial time. -- Ramor Ryan * TeleSur *\u003cbr\u003eAn incredible anthology tracing the bloody history of broken-windows policing and its implications for city life in general. -- James Tracy * Rooflines *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286838615,"sku":"9781784783167","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784783167.jpg?v=1720057133"},{"product_id":"annihilation-of-caste-the-annotated-critical-edition-9781784783525","title":"Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eB.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. It offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition in \"The Doctor and the Saint,\" examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar's anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnnihilation of Caste\u003c\/i\u003e has to be read ... No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment. -- M.K. Gandhi\u003cbr\u003eMarvellous writing with conceptual clarity and political understanding - something the world should know about.  . .  Roy's essay has the sharp political thrust one has come to expect from her * Uma Chakravarti, author of Everyday Lives, Everyday Historie *\u003cbr\u003eArundhati Roy's 'The Doctor and the Saint' works both at an emotive and an argumentative level. She manages to convey an intimate and deeply felt sensitivity to the history that produced \u003ci\u003eAnnihilation of Caste\u003c\/i\u003e... A robust edition of an under-appreciated classic. * Satish Deshpande, Professor of Sociology, Delhi University *\u003cbr\u003eThis edition is truly a remarkable achievement. * Christophe Jaffrelot, author of Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: *\u003cbr\u003eWhat the \u003ci\u003eCommunist Manifesto \u003c\/i\u003eis to the capitalist world, \u003ci\u003eAnnihilation of Caste\u003c\/i\u003e is to India. -- Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286871383,"sku":"9781784783525","price":20.3,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784783525.jpg?v=1720057133"},{"product_id":"against-the-troika-crisis-and-austerity-in-the-eurozone-9781784783136","title":"Against the Troika: Crisis and Austerity in the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the 25th January 2015 the Greek people voted in an election of  historic importance-not just for Greece but potentially all of Europe.  The radical party Syriza was elected and austerity and the neoliberal  agenda is being challenged. Suddenly it seems as if there is an  alternative. But what?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Eurozone is in a deep and prolonged  crisis. It is now clear that monetary union is a historic failure,  beyond repair-and certainly not in the interests of Europe's working  people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Building on the economic analysis of two of Europe's  leading thinkers, Heiner Flassbeck and Costas Lapavitsas (a candidate  standing for election on Syriza's list), \u003ci\u003eAgainst the Troika\u003c\/i\u003e is  the first book to propose a strategic left-wing plan for how peripheral  countries could exit the euro. With a change in government in Greece,  and looming political transformations in countries such as Spain, this  major intervention lays out a radical, anti-capitalist programme at a  critical juncture for Europe. The final three chapters offer a detailed  postmortem of the Greek catastrophe, explain what can be learned from  it-and provide a possible alternative.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e Against the Troika\u003c\/i\u003e is a practical blueprint for real change in a continent wracked by crisis and austerity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLapavitsas is fascinating and thoughtful. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eCostas Lapavitsas is part of the cadre of academics-turned-politicians forging Syriza's economic thinking. * Wall Street Journal *\u003cbr\u003eHighly readable . A fresh and imaginative look at the  crisis, it contributes greatly to the relevant debate, and is especially  useful in detailing the theoretical foundations of economic programmes  advocated by the radical Left parties that have begun to gain strength  across Europe, and in particular Syriza. * Times Higher Education *\u003cbr\u003eThis little book takes up the question of what a left government can do  in the face of powerful elites who have savaged the country's  infrastructure in the failed pursuit of budget surpluses. Crucially it  charts a path for those who want a clearer view of the way out of the  euro. * Socialist Review *\u003cbr\u003eDemonstrate[s] with clarity that the mercantilist and  deflationary policies pursued by Germany since the beginning of EMU must  carry the blame for the great rupture that is currently threatening  Europe. -- Oskar Lafontaine, Former president of the Social Democratic Party and the Die Linke Party in Germany\u003cbr\u003eFor those who . still believe Europe can be reformed  to deliver social justice, growth and high-welfare societies, the  authors do the valuable service of spelling out what that would take:  the defeat not only of the mainstream conservative parties but also of  their right-wing, nationalist challengers, and the total transformation  of European social democracy in the direction of heterodox, fiscally  expansionist economic policy, and the triumph of the as yet untested new  left parties. -- Paul Mason (from the Preface)","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286904151,"sku":"9781784783136","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784783136.jpg?v=1720057133"},{"product_id":"october-the-story-of-the-russian-revolution-9781784782771","title":"October: The Story of the Russian Revolution","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the centenary of the Russian Revolution, China Miéville tells the extraordinary story of this pivotal moment in history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world's first workers' state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a panoramic sweep, stretching from St Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness. Intervening in long-standing historical debates, but told with the reader new to the topic especially in mind, here is a breathtaking story of humanity at its greatest and most desperate; of a turning point for civilisation that still resonates loudly today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMiéville is an ideal guide through this complex historical moment, giving agency to obscure and better-known participants alike, and depicting the revolution as both a tragically lost opportunity and an ongoing source of inspiration. * Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) *\u003cbr\u003eWhen one of the most marvellously original writers in the world takes on one of the most explosive events in history, the result can only be incendiary. -- Barbara Ehrenreich\u003cbr\u003eThis gripping account is a re-enactment of the Russian Revolution ... His writing can be as passionate as that of the poets of the time: Alexander Blok, Mikhail Kuzmin, Marina Tsvetaeva, to mention some of those quoted here. Miéville's own special effects are of a piece with them. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eAn intriguing march to revolution, told here with clarity and insight. * Kirkus *\u003cbr\u003eReaders will be satisfied that \u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e gives them the literary equivalent of bearing witness to world history. * Booklist *\u003cbr\u003eTo give a new generation of readers a fresh account of the great revolution, incorporating all the post-1989 archival discoveries and scholarly research, is a singularly daunting task. To render it in vivid, oracular prose, moving across the pages with the gathering force of a hurricane, is something that only China Miéville could achieve. -- Mike Davis\u003cbr\u003eElegantly constructed and unexpectedly moving -- Sheila Fitzpatrick * London Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eThere are delightful grace notes here over and above a brisk and perceptive narrative. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *\u003cbr\u003eCinematic and vivid * Newsweek *\u003cbr\u003eIt's as if John Reed, author of the classic piece of revolutionary journalism, \u003ci\u003eTen Days That Shook the World\u003c\/i\u003e, woke from a decades-long sleep to tell the story of 1917 once again. * Counterpunch *\u003cbr\u003eBest Summer Books of 2017. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eMiéville sifts through the extraordinary disagreements, debates, and debacles that accompanied the Russian reds on every step of the road to revolution ... He's especially evocative when he chronicles the scenes on the chaotic streets. But much of the value of October comes in his mastery of how the intricacies of human decision-making play out in Petrograd, Moscow, and beyond. * Christian Science Monitor *\u003cbr\u003eAn exciting account of the revolutionary moment... well-argued and elegiac * Spectator *\u003cbr\u003e[An] engaging retelling of the events that rocked the foundations of the twentieth century. * Village Voice *\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e, Miéville provides an introduction to one of the seminal events of the 20th century-the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and the establishment of the world's first communist state 100 years ago this year ... It has all the makings of a novel, and Miéville's narrative builds toward its crescendo as the Bolsheviks prepare to take power. * Boston Globe *\u003cbr\u003eMiéville's understanding of the intricacies and underlying absurdities of party politics is unmatched... A rich and compelling book. * Dallas Morning News *\u003cbr\u003eThis is a very fine book-in some ways, I believe, the best work that China Miéville has produced since the three thick volumes of the \u003ci\u003eBas-Lag\u003c\/i\u003e trilogy. Indeed, \u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e bears, in certain respects, a deeper affinity to those novels than to anything else he has published since; and it thus provides a convenient opportunity to take stock of the Miéville oeuvre to date...That [\u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e] is an excellent work of art there is no doubt whatever. -- Carl Freedman * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eMiéville, known for his extravagantly weird science fiction and fantasy, is a virtuosic storyteller; here he conjures a society convulsing on the verge of total transformation while staying squarely within the lines of the historical record. Reading this blow-by-blow account of revolution now, when political life is stranger than any fiction, is galvanizing. -- Rogert White * Artsy *\u003cbr\u003eThere are workers, there are peasants, there are soldiers, there are parties, there are tsars, there are courtiers. Each of them bears his or her class position, his or her economic and other concerns, but it is the political field itself, how it hurls its protagonists into combat, combat with its own rules and norms, its own criteria for success and failure, that is front and center here. This may be the most textured, most concrete, account of what political contest and political combat, literal and metaphoric, feels like. -- Corey Robin\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e's dramatic narrative makes the case that the effort is still worth it - that we must dare to dream, even if we risk conjuring more nightmares in this darkening world. -- Alci Rengifo * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eAs an outstanding piece of literature, China Miéville's \u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e belongs on the same shelf as John Reed's eyewitness classic Ten Days That Shook the World, but even more it belongs in the hands of activists who will be shaking the world in the twenty-first century. -- Paul Le Blanc * International Socialist Review *\u003cbr\u003eThere is interest in reading the story of 'that violent and incomparable year' told by one who hopes against hope that it could happen again. -- Rob Doyle * Irish Times *\u003cbr\u003eChina Miéville's literary retelling-made to feel like a novel, but scrupulously sourced to real events-captures the vertigo of 1917's encounter between massive historical forces, plunging us back into the heart of a far-reaching social upheaval, in which time flowed backward and forward even as it marched inexorably forward toward a future that was radically unknown. -- David Sessions * The New Republic *\u003cbr\u003eEven though you know the ending, this is a compulsive page-turner that makes the period come alive in rich, colourful detail. Although he is better known for his science fiction, Miéville's eye here fleshes out both the spirit of revolution and the horrors that followed. His feelings are evidently complex, which leads to a narrative that draws out elements often left out of more traditional renderings of the Revolution. -- Caroline Magennis * Times Higher Education *\u003cbr\u003eA century on, the nature of the Russian Revolution remains hotly contested, both within and outside of leftist circles. Miéville, a master storyteller, makes a powerful case in his first nonfiction work that the Bolsheviks' October success should not be disavowed as the onset of disaster but looked to as an inspirational moment in a grand narrative of human liberation. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eNamed One of the Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eThe story is old but Miéville retells it with verve and empathy. He brilliantly captures the tensions of coup and counter-coup and the kaleidoscope of coalitions that formed and then broke. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eAn inspirational account that lends itself to troubled times. * Observer *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e, by the British author China Miéville, is a gripping account of the Russian Revolution that offers the pleasures and rewards of a great novel ... The book has vividly drawn characters, high drama, suspense, and an irresistible narrative momentum that sweeps the reader along from the first page to the tragic - but not inevitable - conclusion ... a masterful work. -- George de Stefano * Pop Matters *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286936919,"sku":"9781784782771","price":18.04,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"the-man-who-closed-the-asylums-franco-basaglia-and-the-revolution-in-mental-health-care-9781784784164","title":"The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1961, when Franco Basaglia arrived outside the grim walls of the  Gorizia asylum, on the Italian border with Yugoslavia, it was a place of  horror, a Bedlam for the mentally sick and excluded, redolent of  Basaglia's own wartime experience inside a fascist gaol. Patients were  frequently restrained for long periods, and therapy was largely a matter  of electric and insulin shocks. The corridors stank, and for many of  the interned the doors were locked for life. This was a concentration  camp, not a hospital.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBasaglia, the new Director, was expected to  practise all the skills of oppression in which he had been schooled,  but he would have none of this. The place had to be closed down by  opening it up from the inside, bringing freedom and democracy to the  patients, the nurses and the psychiatrists working in that 'total  institution'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInspired by the writings of authors such as Primo  Levi, R. D. Laing, Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon, and  the practices of experimental therapeutic communities in the UK,  Basaglia's seminal work as a psychiatrist and campaigner in Gorizia,  Parma and Trieste fed into and substantially contributed to the national  and international movement of 1968. In 1978 a law was passed (the  'Basaglia law') which sanctioned the closure of the entire Italian  asylum system.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first comprehensive study of this revolutionary approach to mental health care, \u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Closed the Asylums\u003c\/i\u003e  is a gripping account of one of the most influential movements in  twentiethcentury psychiatry, which helped to transform the way we see  mental illness. Basaglia's work saved countless people from a miserable  existence, and his legacy persists, as an object lesson in the struggle  against the brutality and ignorance that the establishment peddles to  the public as common sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeopled by a cast of extraordinary characters - patients, colleagues, friends and enemies - revolving around the charismatic and now legendary psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, John Foot's sympathetic account de-mythologises the reform by uncovering little-known precedents, distancing Basaglia from anti-psychiatry and situating his work within Italian radical politics of the late 1960s. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in psychiatric reform. -- Howard Caygill, author of On Resistance\u003cbr\u003eThe anti-asylum movement in 1960s and '70s Italy forms one of the most fascinating episodes in western psychiatry. John Foot's richly documented and revealing study of this movement and its pioneer figure, the charismatic radical psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, adds immeasurably to our understanding of the troubled history of mental health care in modern times. -- Barbara Taylor, author of The Last Asylum\u003cbr\u003eA brilliant historical reconstruction of the work and ideas of one of the world's leading exponents of critical psychiatry. -- David Forgacs, author of Italy’s Margins\u003cbr\u003eA portrait of imperfect people who had the passion and pragmatism to put an end to a brutal and broken system. -- Sarah Wise * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eIn Italy, the literature on Basaglia tends towards either idealisation or demonisation-he's considered either a secular saint or a dangerous radical. John Foot gives a much more rounded, and fair, portrait of a complicated, committed man. -- Tobias Jones * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eHowever strong the spirit of 1968, it will not eradicate the institutional impulse from human societies. -- Peter J. Leithart * First Things *\u003cbr\u003eAn excellent book -- Melissa Reynolds * Frugal Creativity *\u003cbr\u003eBrings this diversity, richness and complexity to life in an exemplary fashion, illuminating all its different manifestations and contradictions... A triumph of committed scholarship -- Paul Gordon * TLS *\u003cbr\u003eAn important work by John Foot . should put to rest the badly-informed, lazy narrative that still prevails to the effect that Franco Basaglia was an idealist - an 'anti-psychiatrist' - who, at a stroke, disempowered doctors to certify someone as insane with disastrous results. -- Adrian C. Laing * Amazon *\u003cbr\u003eJohn Foot stresses throughout his exemplary account [that] myth and reality aren't easily separated in Basaglia's story... Foot restores a critical distance that makes it possible to present Basaglia's achievements as part of a wider story. In Italy, it took more than one man to close the asylums. -- Mike Jay * London Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003epart I\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGorizia, 1961-68\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 Gorizia: A Revolution at the Edge of Europe\u003cbr\u003e2 Anti-psychiatry, Critical Psychiatry, Movements and Working Utopias \u003cbr\u003e3 Reading Gorizia: Sources and Narratives\u003cbr\u003e4 Basaglia and the British: A Missing Translation?\u003cbr\u003e5 Building the Team: The First Équipe in Gorizia, 1961-69\u003cbr\u003e6 Manicomio = Lager: History and Politics of an Analogy\u003cbr\u003e7 Gorizia: The Therapeutic Community\u003cbr\u003e8 Il Picchio: The Voice of the Patients and the 'Archive of the Revolution'\u003cbr\u003e9 Anti-psychiatry, Italian Style\u003cbr\u003e10 One of the Wonders of the World: The General Meeting\u003cbr\u003e11 The Genesis of The Negated Institution\u003cbr\u003e12 Th e Negated Institution: The 'Bible' of 1968\u003cbr\u003e13 Gorizia and 1968, Gorizia \u003ci\u003eas\u003c\/i\u003e 1968\u003cbr\u003e14 The Incident\u003cbr\u003e15 I giardini di Abele and Morire di classe:Gorizia on Television and the Role of Photography\u003cbr\u003e16 The End of an Era: Basaglia Leaves Gorizia\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003epart II\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeyond Gorizia: The Long March\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e17 Perugia: The 'Perfect' Example, 1965-78\u003cbr\u003e18 Parma: The Gas-Meter Reader and the Total Institution\u003cbr\u003e19 Reggio Emilia: Out into the Territory, 1969-75\u003cbr\u003e20 Gorizia: The Second Équipe, 1969-72\u003cbr\u003e21 Arezzo: The Gorizian Diaspora\u003cbr\u003e22 Trieste: The End of the Asylum, 1971-79\u003cbr\u003e23 The 180 Law: History, Myth and Reality","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741286969687,"sku":"9781784784164","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784784164.jpg?v=1720057134"},{"product_id":"violent-borders-refugees-and-the-right-to-move-9781784784744","title":"Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForty thousand people died trying to cross international borders in the past decade, with the high-profile deaths along the shores of Europe only accounting for half of the grisly total.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReece Jones argues that these deaths are not exceptional, but rather the result of state attempts to contain populations and control access to resources and opportunities. \"We may live in an era of globalization,\" he writes, \"but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eViolent Borders\u003c\/i\u003e, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and their dire consequences for countless millions. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the aftershocks of decolonization, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFocuses helpfully on an uncomfortable and generally overlooked fact - that in recent years border control regimes have become increasingly and often horrifically militarised in many parts of the world. Physical restraints in the shape of walls and security fences have multiplied; the body count is appallingly high. For Jones, this shows that the institutions of the modern state are essentially violent. -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003eA much-needed counter to a thousand newspaper columns calling on us to secure our borders, Reece Jones' \u003ci\u003eViolent Borders\u003c\/i\u003e goes beyond the headlines to look at the deeper causes of the migration crisis. Borders, Jones convincingly argues, are a means of inflicting violence on poor people. This is an engaging and lucid analysis of a much misunderstood issue. -- Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror\u003cbr\u003eFrom early modern land enclosures through Westphalian state formation to the current fortification of the US-Mexico frontier, Reece Jones explains what a boundary is, and how national sovereignty is being reinforced, in an age of capital mobility, by the crackdown on human movement across borders. -- Jeremy Harding, author of Border Vigils: Keeping Migrants Out of the Rich World\u003cbr\u003eI'd like an endless supply of Reece Jones' \u003ci\u003eViolent Borders\u003c\/i\u003e to hand out to all the people I meet who flirt with an anti-refugee sensibility. This book is the antidote to the world of walls that we live in, an argument for a world of humanity. -- Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South\u003cbr\u003eIn an era of terrorism, global inequality, and rising political tension over migration, Jones argues that tight border controls make the world worse, not better. * Boston Globe *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287100759,"sku":"9781784784744","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784784744.jpg?v=1720057134"},{"product_id":"in-praise-of-disobedience-the-soul-of-man-under-socialism-and-other-writings-9781784784812","title":"In Praise of Disobedience: The Soul of Man Under","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Praise of Disobedience \u003c\/i\u003edraw on works from a single miraculous year in which Oscar Wilde published the larger part of his greatest prose - the year he came into maturity as an artist. Before the end of 1891, he had written the first of his phenomenally successful plays and met the young man who would win his heart, beginning the love affair that would lead to imprisonment and public infamy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In a witty introduction, playwright, novelist and Wilde scholar Neil Bartlett explains what made this point in the writer's life central to his genius and why Wilde remains a provocative and radical figure to this day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncluded here are the entirety of Wilde's foray into political philosophy, \u003ci\u003eThe Soul of Man Under Socialism\u003c\/i\u003e; the complete essay collection \u003ci\u003eIntentions\u003c\/i\u003e; selections from \u003ci\u003eThe Portrait of Dorian Gray\u003c\/i\u003e as well as its paradoxical and scandalous preface; and some of Wilde's greatest fictions for children. Each selection is accompanied by stimulating and enlightening annotations. A delight for fans of Oscar Wilde, \u003ci\u003eIn Praise of Disobedience\u003c\/i\u003e will restore and revitalize an often misunderstood legacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI loved Wilde's \u003ci\u003eThe Soul of Man Under Socialism\u003c\/i\u003e - loved its uncompromising approach to the crushing problem of social and economic inequality . Wilde takes no prisoners from the very outset -- Will Self * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eWilde offers us an important reminder of virtues we as a society may  have for a time lost: the need to strive for utopias; the inevitability  of socialism if our world is to survive; the need to reinvigorate  humanity's spirit of rebelliousness and disobedience, and to challenge,  not accept, the injustices and inequalities we see all around us. The  world needs Oscar Wilde and his daring, beautiful ideas today more than  ever. * PopMatters *\u003cbr\u003eWhen I feel myself becoming gloomy or pessimistic, the book that reminds me that change and optimism are possible is Oscar Wilde's \u003ci\u003eThe Soul of Man Under Socialism\u003c\/i\u003e, a wise and witty essay that recommends both equality and indolence, and appears to believe you can't have one without the other. -- Hanif Kureishi","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287428439,"sku":"9781784784812","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784784812.jpg?v=1720057135"},{"product_id":"cities-of-power-the-urban-the-national-the-popular-the-global-9781784785451","title":"Cities of Power: The Urban, The National, The","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this brilliant, very original survey of the politics and meanings of urban landscapes, leading sociologist Göran Therborn offers a tour of the world's major capital cities, and the forces that have shaped them. Through a global, historical lens, and with a thematic range extending from the mutations of modernist architecture to the contemporary return of urban revolutions, Therborn questions received assumptions about the source, manifestations and reach of urban power, combining perspectives on politics, sociology, urban planning, architecture, and urban iconography. With its unique systematic overview, from Washington DC and revolutionary Paris to the flamboyant twenty-first century capital of Kazakhstan, its wealth of urban observations from all the populated continents, and its sharp and multi-faceted analyses, \u003ci\u003eCities of Power\u003c\/i\u003e forces us to rethink our urban future, as well as our historically shaped present.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGöran Therborn analyses urban life with sweeping historical and global range. As he shows in tremendous detail, urban history is baked into a place by its streets, its institutions and the cultural outlook of its inhabitants -- Max Holleran * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eShould become an early port of call for anyone looking to know more about how urban and national power functions around the world * Irish Times *\u003cbr\u003eOne of the world's most engaging and intriguing sociologists. \u003ci\u003eCities of Power\u003c\/i\u003e helps us understand the current tensions between states and people, capitals and peripheries, populism and elitism, nationalism and globalism -- Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of \u003ci\u003eOur America: A Hispanic History of the United States\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCities of Power\u003c\/i\u003e is explicitly a riposte to the idea of the Global City, and the peculiar \u003ci\u003eMonocle\u003c\/i\u003e-magazine vision of trans-national, interconnected, intangible capitalism that it serves to alternately describe and vindicate. Few thinkers display such a genuinely global range -- Owen Hatherley * New Left Review *\u003cbr\u003eOne more publication in a sparkling list of career accomplishments, \u003ci\u003eCities of Power\u003c\/i\u003e might function as an important resource for many a sociology doctoral student -- Luzia Lodder * PopMatters *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287461207,"sku":"9781784785451","price":12.34,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784785451.jpg?v=1720057135"},{"product_id":"the-shock-of-the-anthropocene-the-earth-history-and-us-9781784785031","title":"The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow did we get to this point? Refuting the convenient view of a \"human species\" that upset the Earth system, unaware of what it was doing, this book proposes the first critical history of the Anthropocene, shaking up many accepted ideas: about our supposedly recent \"environmental awareness,\" about previous challenges to industrialism, about the manufacture of ignorance and consumerism, about so-called energy transitions, as well as about the role of the military in environmental destruction. In a dialogue between science and history, \u003ci\u003eThe Shock of the Anthropocene\u003c\/i\u003e dissects a new theoretical buzzword and explores paths for living and acting politically in this rapidly developing geological epoch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt a time when the word 'Anthropocene' is becoming so fashionable, this well-documented and well-argued book will help readers sort out the various meanings of this most unstable label. The authors show the bewildering varieties of historical actors at work in what is called the 'environmental crisis'. -- Bruno Latour\u003cbr\u003eA very important book. In this historically rich and meticulously detailed work, Bonneuil and Fressoz show us how to keep our head without losing our heart to technocracy. -- Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World\u003cbr\u003eCleverly argued and extremely compelling, this book offers a remarkably timely analysis and critique of the very notion of the Anthropocene. It's widely held that modern industrial societies innocently and ignorantly generated the forces that have wrought such dramatic ecological effects on their world. It's also believed that only very recently, because of the heroic work of a few visionaries, has this ignorance been overcome and the truth of the Anthropocene at last revealed. Using an astonishing range of sources from climate sciences and economics, history and technology, Bonneuil and Fressoz brilliantly show the utter falsity of this story, and why it matters so much. -- Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge\u003cbr\u003eThis revelatory, lucid and daring book rejects the delusions of control implicit in conventional environmentalism, and outlines the enormity of the changes necessary for us to continue to live in the Anthropocene. -- David Edgerton, King’s College London\u003cbr\u003eA timely book which firmly grounds history in the stuff that the sciences now tell us about what commodified life does to the planet. This is an essential volume for the project of historical thought and action. -- McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene\u003cbr\u003eIn questioning the idea of an apolitical Anthropocene and raising the spectre of a new self-selecting scientific geocracy, their book should begin a vital discussion. We do need a new politics of the Anthropocene. -- Fred Pearce * New Scientist *\u003cbr\u003eA wide-ranging essay that combines elements of environmental history, history of science and technology, and economic and intellectual history, while covering an extensive geographic base including British, American, French, and German cases. * Public Books *\u003cbr\u003eThis bold, brilliantly argued history of the Anthropocene epoch is a corrective to cosy thinking about humanity's grave disruptions to Earth systems. Bonneuil and Fressoz call for a \"new environmental humanities\", and a shift away from market-based approaches that feed the beast. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature *\u003cbr\u003eThis is the first book to seriously come to terms-philosophically and psychologically as well as scientifically-with the overwhelming planetary transformation implied by the word 'Anthropocene.' Bonneuil and Fressoz have done humanity a great service by thinking through the startling issues raised by the fact that our species has launched the entire ecosphere onto a new and frightening trajectory. -- Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute\u003cbr\u003eThe Shock of the Anthropocene is a detailed, data-driven, and well-argued critique of conventional thought on enormity of the challenges and changes that lay ahead for humanity on an Earth that is irreparably damaged by our actions. It should be a central addition to readers' climate change libraries. * New York Journal of Books *\u003cbr\u003eThe book is very well written and highly readable. I recommend the book highly. It is currently the most lucid and comprehensive introduction to 'Anthropocene discourse'. -- Noel Castree * Antipode *\u003cbr\u003eThese two historians have undertaken to explain the entry into this new epoch and reveal its major determinants. * Le Monde *\u003cbr\u003eChallenges the certainties of our modernity, our mode of development and our view of the world. * Libération *\u003cbr\u003eThis book attacks such widespread ideas as 'sustainable development,' 'green growth,' or, still worse, 'geo-engineering'-the new manifestation of the blind faith in a technological process supposedly now capable of reducing global warming by various clever tricks. * La Vie *\u003cbr\u003eThis is no climate change doomsday book. It's about the long-term legacy of the planet we are altering. -- Laura Cole * Geographical Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eImpressively researched, intellectually rigorous and elegantly written . it should be assigned reading for all current and aspiring Anthropocenologists. * Environment and History *\u003cbr\u003eOne of the most insightful books on the Anthropocene. * Ecozoïc *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePART ONE WHAT'S IN A WORD? Chapter 1. Welcome to the Anthropocene Chapter 2. Th inking with Gaia: Towards Environmental Humanities PART TWO SPEAKING FOR THE EARTH, GUIDING HUMANITY: Deconstructing the Geocratic Grand Narrative of the Anthropocene Chapter 3. Clio, the Earth and the Anthropocenologists Chapter 4. Who Is the Anthropos? PART THREE WHAT HISTORIES FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE? Chapter 5. Th ermocene: A Political History of CO2 Chapter 6. Thanatocene: Power and Ecocide Chapter 7. Phagocene: Consuming the Planet Chapter 8. Phronocene: Grammars of Environmental Reflexivity Chapter 9. Agnotocene: Externalizing Nature, Economizing the World Chapter 10 . Capitalocene: A Combined History of Earth System and World-Systems Chapter 11 . Polemocene: Resisting the Deterioration of the Earth since 1750 Conclusion: Surviving and Living the Anthropocene","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287493975,"sku":"9781784785031","price":21.68,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784785031.jpg?v=1791378980"},{"product_id":"lessons-on-rousseau-9781784785567","title":"Lessons on Rousseau","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau's \u003ci\u003eDiscourse on the Origins of Inequality\u003c\/i\u003e at the École normale supérieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave rise to a new generation of Rousseau scholars, attentive not just to Rousseau's ideas, but also to those of his concepts that were buried beneath metaphors or fictional situations and characters. Second, we are now discovering that the \"late Althusser's\" theses about aleatory materialism and the need to break with the strict determinism of theories of history in order to devise a new philosophy \"for Marx\" were being worked out well before 1985 in this reading of Rousseau dating from twelve years earlier, which introduces into Rousseau's text the ideas of the void, the accident, the take, and the necessity of contingency.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe discovery of these Lectures on Rousseau is one of the true miracles that occurred in the restitution of Althusser's posthumous legacy. They are beautifully transcribed and edited by Yves Vargas, an auditor to the lectures and himself a great Rousseau scholar. Not only do they add unexpected developments to the already celebrated Rousseau-interpretation by the Marxist philosopher, they fill a gap in the understanding of the sources of his late philosophy of \"aleatory materialism\". Their reading will be a pleasure and an inspiration. -- Etienne Balibar, co-author of Reading Capital","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287526743,"sku":"9781784785567","price":52.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"capitalism-and-the-sea-the-maritime-factor-in-the-making-of-the-modern-world-9781784785239","title":"Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the IPEG 2022 Book Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilization - warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this bold and radical new book, Campling and Colás analyse these and other sea-related phenomena through a historical and geographical lens. In successive chapters dealing with the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea, the authors argue that the earth's geographical separation into land and sea has significant consequences for capitalist development. The distinctive features of this mode of production continuously seek to transcend the land-sea binary in an incessant quest for profit, engendering new alignments of sovereignty, exploitation and appropriation in the capture and coding of maritime spaces and resources.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere at last is a sophisticated and theoretically informed book about the maritime origins and development of capitalism. After this mighty blow against the bias of terracentrism, the history of the modern world will never look quite the same. -- Marcus Rediker, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Slave Ship: A Human History\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis ground-breaking, immensely rich and densely argued book shows how criss-crossing sealanes have connected ports and cities, and brought together different modes of production and social classes. Over the centuries, the sea has circulated values, human subjects, and shifting modes of exploitation; in doing this, global capitalism has established new chains of activities and evolving patterns of extraction, exploitation, circulation and distribution of (surplus) value. This mighty work of scholarship traces these human endeavours; in doing this, it has opened fresh avenues of research. * Alfredo Saad-Filho, King’s College London *\u003cbr\u003eI can think of no other book that has dealt with the pivotal role of the sea in the evolution of capitalism as well as the wider canvas of capitalism's interaction with the sea with as much innovation and more comprehensively than this fascinating and lucidly written work by Campling and Colás. This is also a profoundly timely intervention, given the horrifying ways in which global warming, the scourge of plastic waste , and capital's ever faster depletion of marine life have degraded the oceans irreversibly. -- Jairus Banaji, author, \u003ci\u003eTheory as History; and A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCapitalism and the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e has liberated me from the shackles of my earthbound imaginary. Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás have given us that rare opportunity: to rethink how historical capitalism works, marshalling a breathtaking crystallization of insights from environmental history, political economy, and social history. \u003ci\u003eCapitalism and the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e unsettles our conventional thinking about how power, profit and oceanic webs of life have shaped modernity, from its genocidal origins to today's planetary crisis. Their word for these gruesome and lucrative entanglements - \"terraqueous\" - doesn't roll off the tongue, but it will stick with you for a lifetime after reading this book. I will never think about capitalism the same. -- Jason W Moore, author, \u003ci\u003eCapitalism in the Web of Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe role of the sea in the modern world is hugely unappreciated. Campling and Colas offer an unrivalled analysis of the political and economic forces that shape our relationship to the sea, and the labour of those who work on and around it. -- Jeremy Anderson, Head of Strategic Research, International Transport Workers' Federation\u003cbr\u003eA rich Marxian account of how the maritime made capitalism. Campling and Colas tell the absorbing, deeply researched, and sweeping story of how capitalism was forged through slavery, seaborne trade, naval projection of power, vast maritime empires and modern logistics. \u003ci\u003eCapitalism and the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e shows us that, in the words of the great St Lucian poet Derek Walcott, the sea is history. -- Laleh Khalili\u003cbr\u003eA novel perspective...\u003ci\u003eCapitalism and the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e brings into focus important questions from the history of capitalism. -- Steve Edwards * Marx and Philosophy *\u003cbr\u003eAn important and rewarding read, as well as a valuable addition to the growing body of work studying capital's relationship to ecology and the destruction of the environment on which we all rely. * International Socialism *\u003cbr\u003eAn oceanic journey through the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea. * Morning Star *\u003cbr\u003eA fabulously wide-ranging new history of the last five centuries, covering the slave-trade, ecology, modern container ports and EEZ's, industrial fisheries, territorial disputes and much more. -- Tim Barton * Hastings Independent *\u003cbr\u003eAn ambitious, systematic, and convincing account of the reciprocal impact of capital upon the salt-water world in the past 400 years. -- Nikolas Kosmatopoulos * Antipode *\u003cbr\u003eAn engrossing and meticulously researched book that challenges conventional wisdom about the role of the sea in the modern world. -- Soumik Sarkar * Odisha Economic Journal *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287559511,"sku":"9781784785239","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784785239.jpg?v=1720057136"},{"product_id":"the-bbc-myth-of-a-public-service-9781784784836","title":"The BBC: Myth of a Public Service","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe BBC is one of the most important institutions in Britain; it is also  one of the most misunderstood. Despite its claim to be independent and  impartial, and the constant accusations of a liberal bias, from its Reithian origins to its coverage of the 2019 General Election: the BBC has  always sided with the elite. As Tom Mills demonstrates, we are only  getting the news that the Establishment wants aired in public. And yet in the current age of multi-platform news, this bias is increasingly exposed. Mills asks if the institution is fit for purpose? And can it even be reformed? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe BBC\u003c\/i\u003e is an important and timely examination of a crucial public institution that may threaten the very thing it was meant to uphold: democracy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Impressive ... a direct challenge to the notion of the BBC as a pillar of liberalism and social democracy * Times Higher Education *\u003cbr\u003eA brilliant corrective to mainstream histories of the BBC and a valuable  reminder of the need to build a democratic media that is free from  vested interests -- Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths\u003cbr\u003eRequired reading for those who want to understand Britain, and an  invaluable resource for those who want to change it for the better. -- Daniel Hind, author of The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media Reform\u003cbr\u003eAn excellent critique of the history of the BBC . . an important and readable book. -- David Boyle, author of The Death of Liberal Britain","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287657815,"sku":"9781784784836","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784784836.jpg?v=1720057135"},{"product_id":"in-the-long-run-we-are-all-dead-keynesianism-political-economy-and-revolution-9781784786007","title":"In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism,","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the ruins of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, progressives the world over clamoured to resurrect the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes. The crisis seemed to expose the disaster of small-state, free-market liberalization and deregulation. Keynesian political economy, in contrast, could put the state back at the heart of the economy and arm it with the knowledge needed to rescue us. But what it was supposed to rescue us from was not so clear. Was it the end of capitalism or the end of the world? For Keynesianism, the answer is both. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGeoff Mann's \u003ci\u003eIn the Long Run We're All Dead\u003c\/i\u003e is a thoroughgoing critique of Keynes for our post-crash world, and an accessible and historically grounded introduction to his masterwork \u003ci\u003eThe General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. \u003c\/i\u003eMann argues that Keynesianism is thus modern liberalism's most persuasive internal critique, meeting two centuries of crisis with a proposal for capital without capitalism and revolution without revolutionaries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere have been many biographies of Keynes and many histories of the 'Keynesian revolution in government'. Mann's book belongs to neither category. Brilliant.compelling. -- Adam Tooze * London Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eA detailed, fast-flowing account of how repeatedly guileful Keynesianism crisis management has saved the elite by reengineering tragedy . rewarding reading. -- Danny Dorling, author of \u003ci\u003eInequality and the 1%\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMann's treatment of Keynes is a very interesting effort to situate his work in a longer political and philosophical debate going back to the French revolution. He treats Keynesianism as the alternative to economic collapse and\/or revolution and argues that insofar as leftists have come to embrace it, they have quite explicitly given up hope for an alternative to capitalism. -- Dean Baker, author of \u003ci\u003eThe End of Loser Liberalism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMann makes it clear that Keynes's critique of liberalism can be found already in Hegel; and that now we need to leave behind the caution of the great philosopher and the great economist, thus realizing a radical alternative to capitalism. This is a provocative, original and brilliant book. -- Domenico Losurdo, author of \u003ci\u003eLiberalism: A Counter-History\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUrgent and lucid . A bravura inquiry into the intellectual history of the present and the ambiguous vitality of Keynes's \u003ci\u003eGeneral Theory\u003c\/i\u003e. -- Alberto Toscano, author of \u003ci\u003eFanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA critical rereading of Keynes, who comes across less as the liberal reformist intent on keeping capitalism (and the bourgeois order) intact, than someone attentive to the tensions within the system and, for all of its flaws, fearful of the grave dangers of leaping toward an unknown revolutionary future. \u003ci\u003eIn the Long Run We Are All Dead\u003c\/i\u003e makes for a startling, bracing and important read. -- Michael J. Watts, University of California, Berkeley\u003cbr\u003eThey say that we are all Keynesians in a foxhole, but In the long run we are all dead goes much deeper.  Profound and provocative, the book turns political and intellectual history inside out, offering nothing short of an original critique of the political economy of liberal government and capitalist modernity.  Far from a pedantic discussion of what Keynes really meant, Mann takes us from Hegel to Picketty, and much in between, in search of what Keynes and Keynesianism really mean.  His answers are sometimes surprising, occasionally unsettling, and never less than urgently relevant. -- Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia\u003cbr\u003eGeoff Mann's fascinating, if idiosyncratic, account of Keynesianism is punctuated by long forays into the history of philosophy, the history of the French Revolution and the history of economic thought. The book is broad in scope and imaginative. And the co-existence of poverty and plenty is just one of several overarching tensions animating the account. -- Michal Rozworski * Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives *\u003cbr\u003eGeoff Mann's stimulating book identifies a current of critical thought which stretches at least from the French Revolution, through Hegel and Keynes, to the present. -- Bill Dunn * Antipode *\u003cbr\u003eIn Geoff Mann's account, Keynesianism ultimately helped sever economists from their own rich tradition of heretical political philosophy and reduced them to platitudinous apologists for plutocracy...[this] is more provocative for what it implies, and sometimes outright asserts, about contemporary economics and the precarious civilization it promises to preserve. -- Matt Seybold * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eGeoff Mann is well aware of the distinctions between Keynes the man, his work, and 'Keynesianism.' But his book on Keynesianism,\u003ci\u003e In the Long Run We Are All Dead\u003c\/i\u003e, is quite deliberately more about the 'ism' than the man. -- Mike Beggs * Jacobin *\u003cbr\u003eEnjoyable ... will appeal to general readers as well as those with specialist knowledge ... Readers who want to find the answers to radical critiques of Keynesianism will be inspired by the book's robust discussions of questions around revolution, political economy and liberty. * Financial Times *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287690583,"sku":"9781784786007","price":14.24,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784786007.jpg?v=1720057134"},{"product_id":"the-beautiful-struggle-a-memoir-9781784785345","title":"The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful Struggle\u003c\/i\u003e is an extraordinary memoir from the most important new voice in the US race debate and the author of New York Times bestseller list no. 1 \u003ci\u003eBetween the World and Me\u003c\/i\u003e, hailed by Toni Morrison as \"required reading.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis small and perfectly formed epic follows the lives of boys on the journey to manhood in black America and beyond in 1980s Baltimore, a city on the verge of chaos. These youngsters needed to learn fast, and Ta-Nehisi's father, Paul, was a fine teacher: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian, and an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement. \u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful Struggle\u003c\/i\u003e is a moving father-and-son story about the reality that tests us, and the love that saves us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation. -- Walter Mosley\u003cbr\u003eA kind of hip-hop \u003ci\u003ePortrait of the Artist\u003c\/i\u003e. * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eA moving father-and-son story . an intense portrait of those whom the black revolution left behind, but who never broke faith with its tenets. * New York Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eA beautifully written, loving portrait of a strong father bringing his sons to manhood. * Booklist *\u003cbr\u003eHaunting and healing . a splendid memoir. * Essence *\u003cbr\u003eThe single best writer on the subject of race in the United States. * New York Observer *\u003cbr\u003eA remarkable, blunt portrait of an adolescence filled with danger, chaos, flaws, and tragedy . a love story, dispatched from the frontlines of a family. * Time Out New York *\u003cbr\u003eThe intellectual heir to James Baldwin. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eTold in a dreamy, lyric register redolent of a voiceover in a movie flashback, \u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful Struggle\u003c\/i\u003e is both a touching portrait of filial affection and a paean to the redemptive power of culture. * Prospect *\u003cbr\u003eOne of the most high-profile commentators on race in the United States ...Reading this book is an intoxicating experience -- Bernardine Evaristo * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003eThis book forces us to ask how far American society has really come, and how much further it has to go. * Financial Times *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287723351,"sku":"9781784785345","price":18.16,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784785345.jpg?v=1720057136"},{"product_id":"revolutionary-yiddishland-a-history-of-jewish-radicalism-9781784786076","title":"Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJewish radicals manned the barricades on the avenues of Petrograd and the alleys of the Warsaw ghetto; they were in the vanguard of those resisting Franco and the Nazis. They originated in Yiddishland, a vast expanse of Eastern Europe that, before the Holocaust, ran from the Baltic Sea to the western edge of Russia and incorporated hundreds of Jewish communities with a combined population of some 11 million people. Within this territory, revolutionaries arose from the Jewish misery of Eastern and Central Europe; they were raised in the fear of God and taught to respect religious tradition, but were caught up in the great current of revolutionary utopian thinking. Socialists, Communists, Bundists, Zionists, Trotskyists, manual workers and intellectuals, they embodied the multifarious activity and radicalism of a Jewish working class that glimpsed the Messiah in the folds of the red flag.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday, the world from which they came has disappeared, dismantled and destroyed by the Nazi genocide. After this irremediable break, there remain only survivors, and the work of memory for red Yiddishland. This book traces the struggles of these militants, their singular trajectories, their oscillation between great hope and doubt, their lost illusions-a red and Jewish gaze on the history of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIts impact on me was immense. I devoured it; my political horizons radically expanded. Not only, I came to realise, was there no contradiction between Judaism, socialism and internationalism, but, until the Nazi genocide, they existed in a profoundly interrelated way. -- Sai Englert * Salvage *\u003cbr\u003eAn eye-opening oral history. -- Gabriel Levy, author of Judaic Technologies of the World\u003cbr\u003eA haunting, inspiring and often tragic book, \u003ci\u003eRevolutionary Yiddishland\u003c\/i\u003e uses first-hand interviews, deep archival research and sharp analysis to bring to life a complex landscape of factory workers, partisans, poets, party leaders, refugees, ghetto fighters and movement intellectuals. -- Ben Lorber * In These Times *\u003cbr\u003eThis rich and poignant and often enthralling record traces the Yiddishland revolutionaries from their East European roots through the years of hope and struggle and hideous crimes to the heroic anti-Nazi resistance and beyond, with fascinating asides on Spain and Palestine. There are many lessons for today, not least the significance ofthe lively interaction of revolutionary intellectuals and workers and the efforts to integrate the commitment to radical social and economic change with the formation of a Jewish identity that would break sharply from the stultifying tradition and open the way to the aspirations of the Jewish workers' movement that was at the forefront of revolutionary struggle from its earliest days. -- Noam Chomsky\u003cbr\u003eCould there have been a future for pre-war Jewry in which Israel did not exist and Jews were gathered in a nation state within a federated Soviet Union? This is one of the questions brought up in Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg's book. There is hope for the spirit and aims behind the stories this book tells. Jewish radicalism did not die out in 1942 with the Final Solution. It now expresses itself without Yiddish. -- Clive Bloom * Times Higher Educational Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eA fascinating window onto a lost world. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex relationship between the Jewish left, the general left, and Zionism. The gripping testimonies collected in these pages give the lie to the idea that Jews in the Shoah went like sheep to the slaughter. Brossat and Klingberg do not try to iron out the wrinkles of the past. Their insightful commentary illuminates the passions, paradoxes, triumphs and defeats of the witnesses who populate their book. -- Brian Klug, author of Being Jewish and Doing Justice\u003cbr\u003eNowadays we know more and more about the Nazi Genocide. Unfortunately, we have much less knowledge about the everyday life which preceded the horror and was so brutally terminated. For opening up this world we must praise Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klinberg for their vital new book, \u003ci\u003eRevolutionary Yiddishland.\u003c\/i\u003e Here, life is given priority over death, and the struggles of so many in the Yiddishland allow us to see past the catastrophes. -- Shlomo Sand, author of The Invention of the Jewish People\u003cbr\u003ePraiseworthy * Jewish Currents *\u003cbr\u003eBrossat and Klingberg's book is a memorial to a missing world. As an aesthetic composition, it is beautiful. -- Max Ajl * Mondoweiss *\u003cbr\u003eAltogether, \u003ci\u003eRevolutionary Yiddishland\u003c\/i\u003e is a thoroughly engaging read. It's an important historical document preserving the memory of this radical period of Jewish and European history. -- JP O'Malley * Haaretz *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287887191,"sku":"9781784786076","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784786076.jpg?v=1720057136"},{"product_id":"the-security-principle-from-serenity-to-regulation-9781784787141","title":"The Security Principle: From Serenity to","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Security Principle\u003c\/i\u003e, French philosopher Frédéric Gros takes a historical approach to the concept of \"security\", looking at its evolution from the Stoics to the social network. With lucidity and rigour, Gros's approach is fourfold, looking at security as a mental state, as developed by the Greeks; as an objective situation and absence of all danger, as prevailed in the Middle Ages; as guaranteed by the nation state and its trio of judiciary, police and military; and finally \"biosecurity\", control, regulation and protection in the flux of contemporary society. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this deeply thought-provoking account, Gros's exploration of security shines a light both on its past meanings as well as its present uses, exposing the contemporary abuses of security and the pervasiveness of it in everyday life in the Global North.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Frédéric Gros’s genealogy of security is an outstanding study in political thought. \u003ci\u003eThe Security Principle\u003c\/i\u003e covers a lot of ground, from Ancient Greece to contemporary biopolitics, illuminating key transformations in the meaning of the concept of security. Written in a lucid and accessible way, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in how we have come to be so insecure about security.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Sergei Prozorov, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Biopolitics of Stalinism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “In this veritable tour de force, Gros offers an erudite and engaging journey in the history of Western philosophy. He shows how different meanings of security have been sedimented, layer by layer, across thinkers and traditions and the ways in which these meanings are reconfigured in our present. Ultimately, Gros alerts us to the silent siren of security that dangerously allures us while it muffles the promise of politics: the possibility and the hope of changing the world.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e —Banu Bargu, author of \u003ci\u003eStarve and Immolate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287952727,"sku":"9781784787141","price":52.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"storytelling-bewitching-the-modern-mind-9781784786588","title":"Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePolitics is no longer the art of the possible, but of the fictive. Its aim is not to change the world as it exists, but to affect the way that it is perceived. In \u003ci\u003eStorytelling \u003c\/i\u003eChristian Salmon looks at the twenty-first century hijacking of creative imagination, anatomizing the timeless human desire for narrative form, and how this desire is abused by the marketing mechanisms that bolster politicians and their products: luxury brands trade on embellished histories, managers tell stories to motivate employees, soldiers in Iraq train on Hollywood-conceived computer games, and spin doctors construct political lives as if they were a folk epic. This \"storytelling machine\" is masterfully unveiled by Salmon, and is shown to be more effective and insidious as a means of oppression than anything dreamed up by Orwell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA compelling and very readable polemic. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eFrench writer Salmon here treats us to the useful spectacle of a relentless polemic against a ubiquitous idea widely held to provoke only positive feelings. As used by branders or politicians, 'storytelling' is, on his argument, a sedative, suppressing the desire for truth in favour of satisfying narrative form. -- Steven Poole * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eFascinating ... intellectually satisfying ... Salmon's insights are thought-provoking and have ramifications beyond the world of advertising. * Washington Post *\u003cbr\u003eSalmon draws together his arguments into a coherent and chilling whole. * Independent *\u003cbr\u003eSalmon makes a riveting case for how public relations (or more euphemistically, storytelling) has come to dominate statecraft and business in the West. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eThis book, which is both concise and clearly written . guides us through these texts which are largely unknown and now very influential. * Le Monde *\u003cbr\u003eThere are certain books that make you feel less stupid after reading them than before . It is a fascinating and never jargon-heavy book. * Le Progrès *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741287985495,"sku":"9781784786588","price":12.86,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784786588.jpg?v=1720057137"},{"product_id":"europes-fault-lines-racism-and-the-rise-of-the-right-9781784787226","title":"Europe's Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is clear that the right is on the rise, but after Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the spike in popularity of extreme-right parties across Europe, the question on everyone's minds is: how did this happen?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn expansive investigation of the ways in which a newly-configured right interconnects with anti-democratic and illiberal forces at the level of the state, \u003ci\u003eEurope's Fault Lines\u003c\/i\u003e provides much-needed answers, revealing some uncomfortable truths.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat appear to be \"blind spots\" about far-right extremism on the part of the state, are shown to constitute collusion-as police, intelligence agencies and the military embark on practices of covert policing that bring them into direct or indirect contact with the far right, in ways that bring to mind the darkest days of Europe's authoritarian past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOld racisms may be structured deep in European thought, but they have been revitalized and spun in new ways: the war on terror, the cultural revolution from the right, and the migration-linked demonization of the destitute \"scrounger.\" Drawing on her work for the Institute of Race Relations over thirty years, Liz Fekete exposes the fundamental fault lines of racism and authoritarianism in contemporary Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor the twenty-five years I have known Liz Fekete she has been a tireless anti-racist and anti-fascist fighter, as well as a people's intellectual and a political inspiration. Fekete brings that cumulative experience, insight and commitment to her brilliant new book, Europe's Fault Lines, which maps the shifting terrain of racism and right wing populism in Europe, as well as continued forms of resistance. This book not only paints a gut-wrenching portrait of the vulgarity and violence of Neoliberalism, but through her clarity of analysis, Fekete gives us sustenance for the struggles that lay ahead. -- Barbara Ransby, author of \u003ci\u003eEslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs Paul Robeson\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRacism, for Liz Fekete, is the breeding ground of fascism, and her struggle to combat both-on the ground and in her writings-has earned her the reputation of being an intrepid organiser, an inspirational speaker and an organic intellectual. -- A. Sivanandan, Director Emiritus of the Institute of Race Relations\u003cbr\u003eFor twenty-five years, Fekete relentlessly monitored Europe's far right while the continent's leaders preferred to look away. With right-wing extremism finally recognised by the mainstream as a fundamental threat to Europe's future, her indictment of those who enabled, amplified, and aided the rise of the hard right is an essential contribution to the defense of democratic values. -- Arun Kundnani, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Muslims are Coming\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eEurope's Fault Lines\u003c\/i\u003e, Liz Fekete has not only written an excellent study of how racism is once again being normalised but how, in turn, it is acting as cloak under which fascism is resurgent. -- Nicolas Lalaguna * Morning Star *\u003cbr\u003eA relatively brief book, but it makes important points that are often left out of the discussion. -- Daniel Trilling * Prospect *\u003cbr\u003e[Europe's Fault Lines] provokes a range of emotional responses, from rage to helplessness, but closes leaving the reader equipped with an intellectual arsenal to begin resisting fascism in all its guises. * Peace News *\u003cbr\u003eFekete provides an accessible and stimulating discussion on the roles of the state, intellectuals, the media, and uneven development in the triumph of the right in our age of crisis and rage ... Europe's Fault Lines is a wealth of resource on one of the most disturbing aspects of our age of rage. * The Bullet *\u003cbr\u003eA perspicacious enquiry into the 'fomenting of a reactionary cultural revolution' over the last few decades ... provid[ing] the reader with a clear picture of the state of political play in Europe. * Counterfire *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741288018263,"sku":"9781784787226","price":19.84,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784787226.jpg?v=1720057138"},{"product_id":"claude-levi-strauss-a-critical-study-of-his-thought-9781784787073","title":"Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was among the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this rigorous study, Maurice Godelier traces the evolution of his thought. Focusing primarily on Lévi-Strauss's analysis of kinship and myth, Godelier provides an assessment of his intellectual achievements and legacy. Meticulously researched, Lévi-Strauss is written in a clear and accessible style. The culmination of decades of engagement with Lévi-Strauss's work, this book will prove indispensible to students of his thought and structural anthropology more generally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphoses of Kinship\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is a blockbuster of a book. Nothing like it has been written since Lévi-Strauss's \u003ci\u003eStructures élémentaires de la parenté\u003c\/i\u003e (1949) or Meyer Fortes's \u003ci\u003eKinship and the Social Order\u003c\/i\u003e (1969). Yet in the sweep of its evidence and argument, Godelier's \u003ci\u003esumma\u003c\/i\u003e is more ambitious and far-reaching than either of these. It is at once a major intervention in the discipline of anthropology, and a work of the widest human interest. Kinship has the reputation of being the most technical department of anthropology, the least accessible to a general public. But while \u003ci\u003eMétamorphoses \u003c\/i\u003esynthesizes a huge range of complex materials, it is written in an unfailingly lucid style that makes no assumptions of professional familiarity with terms and debates about kinship, but always takes care to explain them in language anyone can understand. The book is both a monument of scholarship and agripping set of reflections on universal experience. It is certain to be read and discussed for years to come. -- Jack Goody * New Left Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphoses of Kinship\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGodelier has reasserted the value of our rich tradition of discussions of kinship matters. He has also shown how the category has metamorphosed as it has drawn in new issues of pressing current importance in modern life and made his case that, far from being genuinely in decline, the study of kinship is central to our understanding of what it means to be human. -- Robert H. Barnes * Comparative Studies in Society and History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphoses of Kinship\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is this constellation of world views and ways of being that we meet in Maurice Godelier's powerful and often provocative new book, The Metamorphoses of Kinship. In this timely and challenging study, Godelier heralds the revival of kinship studies within the discipline of anthropology. In striking and elucidating prose, Godelier writes both for the trained anthropologist and for the general public. This is a book that aims to introduce the merits of anthropology to a broader readership.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith singular conviction and remarkable depth, Godelier traces anthropology's long courtship with kinship studies.a hopeful and compelling read. -- Fiona Murphy * Irish Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Metamorphoses of Kinship\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA truly monumental work * Times Higher Education Supplement *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise forThe Mental and the Material\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEngaging and intriguing - Anthropology, it would seem, may yet return from the graveyard of structuralism to stir up some debate in the social sciences. * New Statesman *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Enigma of the Gift\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book restores one's faith in the anthropological project and will, I hope, mark the beginning of a new era of anthropological argumentation. one marvels at the clarity of Godelier's thought. He does not mask his central propositions in obscurantist post-modern prose. His use of abstruse concepts such as the 'real', the 'imaginary', and the 'symbolic' is not obtuse. He knows what he wants to say and his persuasive rhetoric is captivating... his use of the criticalmethod sets new standards for scholarly disputation. Godelier does not dismiss. He carefully criticises, modifies and transcends. The argument is forceful but always intellectually generous. But what really sets him apart is that the 'native point of view' is just as much the raw material for critique as is the point of view of fellow academics. As such, there is enough in this book to upset just about everybody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis provocative book is of interest not only to anthropologists and Pacific specialists, but also to historians, political scientists, religious studies specialists. Indeed, it should be read and debated by all scholars concerned with developing a critical stance on the human condition. -- Chris Gregory * Journal of Pacific History *\u003cbr\u003eToday, in his authoritative and unrivalled study, Maurice Godelier returns to Lévi-Strauss, the theoretician. Laying out his production in chronological order and examining it, Lévi-Strauss' former assistant at the Collège de France, and acclaimed anthropologist in his own right, Maurice Godelier has less appreciation for his style than his contemporaries: \"The formulas are superb, but they are literally meaningless.\" At least the reader is forewarned. We are not here to chat. The book is divided in two parts: \"Kinship\" and \"The myths\". It is the first time the entire corpus of Lévi-Strauss' work has been presented in chronological order, by topic, and compared with recent research. Step by step, Godelier retraces sixty years of scholarship: we watch his thinking emerge and change, a laborer not content with a disorderly series of phenomena but who seeks the underlying rule, anonymous and silent - the rule of exchange, of marriage, of mind processes. In passing, Godelier clarifies the famous but misunderstood universality of the incest taboo and gives us access to little-known studies such as those concerning the notion of \"house\". But more than producing an inventory, Godelier takes stock. Against a background of unfailing admiration, Godelier points out Lévi-Strauss' deliberate omissions, his denial of the role of descent in the analysis of kinship systems, the absence of the political and religious domains in his understanding of the myths. But instead of eroding the monument, the criticism picks out its bone structure, reveals its formidable coherence and provides a better understanding of its singularity, of what makes this body of work seem such a stubborn undertaking, sometimes so sure of itself: the desire to make anthropology into a hard science that carries its reasoning through to its logical conclusions. -- Philippe Chevallier * L’Express *\u003cbr\u003eOne would dream of seeing a study devoted to Godelier's production the likes of the one he himself has just published on Lévi-Strauss, whose assistant he was at the Collège de France after having first worked under Fernand Braudel. Godelier's Lévi-Strauss is like a \u003ci\u003eBourdieu \u003c\/i\u003ethat might have been written by Michel Foucault, a \u003ci\u003eJankelevitch\u003c\/i\u003e by Emmanuel Lévinas or a \u003ci\u003eDumézil\u003c\/i\u003e by Jean-Pierre Vernant: two minds viewing each other in a \"mirror\", the one illuminating the other. Godelier devotes himself to the most modest, attentive and insightful of critical readings (and clearly the best equipped from a scholarly standpoint). He runs Lévi-Strauss work through a veritable IRM, terming it \"\u003ci\u003eimmense, multiple, uncommonly creative\u003c\/i\u003e\",a work that has \"\u003ci\u003efecundated\u003c\/i\u003e\" the entire field of the human and social sciences. He shows its unity, its delicate architecture, the possible rebounds and developments - and also the dead-ends, the \"omissions\" and sometimes the errors. Maurice Godelier's book is not a homage to Lévi-Strauss; it is a homage to the scholarship, to the knowledge for which Lévi-Strauss laid the cornerstone. -- Robert Maggiori * Libération *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741288149335,"sku":"9781784787073","price":28.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784787073.jpg?v=1720057136"},{"product_id":"the-abcs-of-socialism-9781784787264","title":"The ABCs of Socialism","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe remarkable run of self-proclaimed \"democratic socialist\" Bernie Sanders for president of the United States has prompted-for the first time in decades and to the shock of many-a national conversation about socialism. A \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e poll in late November found that a majority of Democrats had a favorable view of socialism, and in New Hampshire in February, more than half of Democratic voters under 35 told the Boston Globe they call themselves socialists. It's unclear exactly what socialism means to this generation, but couple with the ascendancy of longtime leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party in the UK, it's clear there's a historic, generational shift underway.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book steps into this moment to offer a clear, accessible, informative, and irreverent guide to socialism for the uninitiated. Written by young writers from the dynamic magazine \u003ci\u003eJacobin\u003c\/i\u003e, alongside several distinguished scholars, \u003ci\u003eThe ABCs of Socialism\u003c\/i\u003e answers basic questions, including ones that many want to know but might be afraid to ask (\"Doesn't socialism always end up in dictatorship?\", \"Will socialists take my Kenny Loggins records?\"). Disarming and pitched to a general readership without sacrificing intellectual depth, this will be the best introduction an idea whose time seems to have come again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine.","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741288411479,"sku":"9781784787264","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784787264.jpg?v=1791378980"},{"product_id":"municipal-dreams-the-rise-and-fall-of-council-housing-9781784787400","title":"Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTraversing the nation, \u003ci\u003eMunicipal Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, and in doing so offers an engrossing social history of housing in Britain. John Broughton asks us to understand better their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design and the politicians, high and low, who shaped their work, the competing ideologies which have promoted state housing and condemned it, the economics which has always constrained our housing ideals, the crisis wrought by Right to Buy, and the evolving controversies around regeneration. He shows how the loss of the dream of good housing for all is a danger for the whole of society - as was seen in the fire in Grenfell Tower.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book celebrates an era during which dreams of shelter and security  for all-not just those who could afford to purchase it-were in large  part made a reality, and asks us if we oughtn't to consider reviving  that dream before it gets destroyed completely . There couldn't  be a  better time for this book. -- Lynsey Hanley * Guardian *\u003cbr\u003eRequired reading . provides a comprehensive history of Britain's council estates [that] challenges the well-worn narrative. -- Anna Minton * Prospect *\u003cbr\u003eThis serious, heartfelt book makes a convincing case that publicly  provided homes have to be at least part of the response to the dysfunctional state that British housing has now attained. -- Rowan Moore * Observer *\u003cbr\u003eA fine survey of an astonishing achievement. -- Ed Heathcote * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eBoughton's book works as a gazetteer of public achievement-from Arts and Crafts cottages to modernist monuments to ordinary streets, from Hammersmith to Hull-and a nuanced but polemical tale of how the municipal idea was destroyed, revealing the caricatures and pseudo-history that were used to convince us that the places built to swindle us were better than the places we built for ourselves to live in. -- Owen Hatherley, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain\u003cbr\u003eFollows the epic story of British council and social housing, from its Victorian origins to Twentieth Century estates, the right to buy and the Grenfell fire. While every page is rich with fascinating detail, Boughton also tells the grand narrative of how modern housing was created for millions, and how that dream has been cynically and carelessly undermined. This is an inspiring read and a necessary corrective to the myths that seek to destroy one of the most important struggles of our times - the drive for decent housing for all. -- John Grinrod, author of \u003ci\u003eOutskirts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA well-written, humane and even-handed appraisal of the successes and failures of municipal and national housing programmes from the 1890s to the present. * Blueprint *\u003cbr\u003eA deeply informed account of the ways in which local and national governments in the U.K. have or have not sought to provide affordable housing for their citizens. -- Rebecca Mead * The New Yorker, Favourite Nonfiction Books of 2019 *\u003cbr\u003eDespite the crowded field, Boughton's book has quickly established itself as a landmark text in the reevaluation of the legacy of council housing, a sober, thorough work that reminds us of some of the most significant achievements of Britain's postwar 'social democratic moment. -- Gareth Millington * Public Books *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741288477015,"sku":"9781784787400","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784787400.jpg?v=1720057138"},{"product_id":"the-right-to-have-rights-9781784787554","title":"The Right to Have Rights","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an exiled Jew deprived of her German citizenship, observed that before people can enjoy any of the \"inalienable\" Rights of Man-before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on-there must first be such a thing as \"the right to have rights\". The concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of mass deportations, Muslim bans, refugee crises, and extra-state war, the phrase has become the centre of a crucial and lively debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied disciplines-including history, law, politics, and literary studies-discuss the critical basis of rights and the meaning of radical democratic politics today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVerso has published an elegant little book of essays by four academics who endeavored not only to unpack the phrase but also to find interpretations that can inform and inspire resistance to the current worldwide assault on human rights. -- Masha Gessen * The New Yorker *","brand":"Verso Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48741288542551,"sku":"9781784787554","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781784787554.jpg?v=1720057138"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/collections\/Verso.jpg?v=1790617022","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/collections\/verso-books.oembed?page=22","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}