Verso Books

Book SynopsisIn this urgent response to violence, racism and increasingly aggressive methods of coercion, Judith Butler explores the media's portrayal of armed conflict, a process integral to how the West prosecutes its wars. In doing so, she calls for a reconceptualization of the Left, one united in opposition and resistance to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of interventionist military action.Trade ReviewJudith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time. -- J. M. BernsteinJudith Butler is the most creative and courageous social theorist writing today. Frames of War is an intellectual masterpiece that weds a new understanding of being, immersed in history, to a novel Left politics that focuses on State violence, war and resistance. -- Cornel WestHers is a unique voice of courage and conceptual ambition that addresses public life from the perspective of psychic reality, encouraging us to acknowledge the solidarity and the suffering through which we emerge as subjects of freedom. -- Homi K. BhabhaA trenchant and brilliant book. * Utne Reader *An impressive and challenging book from one of the leading intellectuals of our time. * Diva *Judith Butler strongly upholds the tradition of dissenting voices in America, even in the midst of climate of fear and censorship that comes close at times to McCarthyism * Politics and Culture *Frames of War is an earnest, thought-provoking and uncompromisingly critical work on an issue of singular relevance * Red Pepper *

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Book SynopsisBillions of dollars were hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilisation. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis? In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory. The election of Donald Trump only confirms the bankruptcy of a liberal order on its last legs. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.Trade ReviewZizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation. * New Yorker *One of the most innovative and exciting contemporary thinkers of the left. * Times Literary Supplement *Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj Zizek ... one of the world's best-known public intellectuals. -- John Gray * New York Review of Books *A gifted speaker-tumultuous, emphatic, direct-he writes as he speaks. -- Jonathan Rée * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisNo other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.Trade ReviewThese are key texts in the study of modernism, of expressionist drama and of realism, and of many closesly related general questions. ... It is genuinely an indispensable volume. -- Raymond WilliamsThis is vital reading for anyone concerned with the relationship between art and socialism. -- John FowlesUnlike conventional anthologies of Marxist writings on art, Aestheticand Politics has the form of an intellectual epic, presented as a series of mutual confronations between its protagonists. * Telos *

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Book SynopsisIn her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.Trade ReviewIt's clear that its author is still interested in stirring up trouble-academic, political and otherwise. * Bookforum *A book that shines with the splendor of engaged thought. * Brooklyn Rail *Here is a unique voice of courage and conceptual ambition that addresses public life from the perspective of psychic reality, encouraging us to acknowledge the solidarity and the suffering through which we emerge as subjects of freedom. -- Homi K. BhabhaJudith Butler is quite simply one of the most probing, challenging, and influential thinkers of our time. -- J.M. Bernstein

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Book SynopsisWomen are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women's desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women-and their bodies-want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to?In this elegant, searching book-spanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on Me-Too, consent and feminism-Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women's desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood?In today's crucial moment of renewed attention to violence and power, Angel urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions about perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we fulfil Michel Foucault's teasing promise, in 1976, that 'tomorrow sex will be good again'Trade ReviewThe real joy lies in the artfulness with which she uses these intimate episodes as a way of unwrapping the larger issue of what it means to be a woman, both object and subject of desire. -- Olivia Laing * The Guardian *Offers an arresting mix of diaristic experiences with her lover . . . and heady reflections from feminist thinkers like Susan Sontag and Virginia Woolf. A genre-busting nonfiction account that reads like poetry, revels in ambiguity, and intentionally defies definition, the book explores the slippery emotions of sex in fiery, collage-like scenes intended to reconcile the contradictory 'metaphors we love by.' * O Magazine *Ghostly and poetic . . . [A] thinking woman's meditation on sexual desire. * Publishers Weekly *Unconventional, deeply personal . . . often poetic. * The New Yorker *Angel embraces the impossibility of extricating fact from feeling. -- Julia Klein * The Boston Globe *One of the most insightful and articulate writers at work today. -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, andIn this impressive and intelligent examination of the father figure, Angel expertly intersects the subject with feminism, mythology, Donald Winnicott, Brett Kavanaugh and more. Her unstinting eye and intellectual vigour make Daddy Issues an engaging interrogation. It feels utterly vital in the context of #MeToo and the political flux the world currently finds itself in. -- Sinead GleesonAn ardent, rigorous, nuanced investigation into the question of consent, at once illuminating and empowering. A truly vital guide to navigating the difficult waters of 21st century desire. -- Olivia LaingThought-provoking ... [Angel's] jargon-free prose and nuanced readings of popular culture and postmodern theory enlighten. Readers will value this lively and incisive inquiry into the sexual dynamics of the #MeToo era. * Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) *One of our most daring, exciting and nuanced writers on the complexities of female desire, pleasure, autonomy and imagination. -- Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of LivingA provocative counterargument to recent feminist dogma. ... Angel raises intriguing questions about commonly accepted assumptions, and she offers reassurance to female readers. * Kirkus Reviews *[Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] takes a taboo topic and removes the stigma by providing facts. Its titular refrain advocates for a better tomorrow. -- Ashley Holstrom * Foreword Reviews *[Angel] writes about complex questions with such clarity and elegance, and amid all the polarised spats that currently pass for considered debate, her work is a breath of fresh air. [Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] is a provocative but clear-sighted analysis of female sexuality in the wake of #MeToo ... I'd urge anyone who cares about sexual ethics to read it. -- Bookseller (Editor's Choice) * Caroline Sanderson *Excellent -- Charlotte Higgins * The Guardian *[A] bible of modern sexuality and consent that all men and women should be reading * Evening Standard *She is reaching towards something else: a world where desire does not have to be known and fixed in advance to protect people from violence. -- Hettie O'Brien * Guardian *Tenderly inflected and meticulously argued, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again should be required reading * New Internationalist - Five Starred Review *A clear-eyed intervention in the crossfire of post-#MeToo sexual politics * TANK Magazine *Voyeuristically fascinating ... Angel dares to suggest that consent is not sexy . we should be aiming for something more complex -- Anna Leszkiewicz * New Statesman *Offers new ways of understanding the complexity of sexual relations . fresh and provoking * The F-Word *Exquisite ... A breathtaking, brilliant invitation not to turn away from complexity and vulnerability -- Hannah Dawson, editor of The Penguin Book of Feminist WritingThis nonfiction tour-de-force is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring themes of consent, power, sex, and the Me Too movement. This is the kind of book that seeks not to create dichotomous binaries, but to complicate the narrative. -- Rachel Krantz * The Millions *Eloquent and lucid -- Celia Walden * Telegraph *Succinct and thought-provoking -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer *Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again offers readers a blend of cultural criticism and provocative theory. -- Tobias Carroll * Inside Hook *Intriguing, philosophical. -- Laura Miller * Slate *One of the smartest, most nuanced and thought-provoking books I've read about sex in the post-#MeToo era. -- Moya Crockett * Stylist *[Angel] is right - consent as a yes/no dichotomy cannot be everything we want it to be. We must recognise that language cannot say everything, especially for women, who have not historically been given the chance to shape it according to their own needs and desires. * The Arts Desk *[Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again is] a necessary contribution to the many conversations about sex and power we have all had since 2017, and Angel's prose, clear and lovely, nimbly navigates the complexities of her subject matter. -- Madeleine Watts * Bookforum *A vital and groundbreaking work that brings nuance to a thorny subject. -- Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett * Guardian *Angel has dissected much of what there is to know about consent, desire, arousal and vulnerability: the four cornerstones of sexuality. Resisting definitive and simplistic conclusions, Angel has been wide-reaching in her research -- Emily S Cooper * Irish Times *Angel not only asks key questions about what women want, but also how we can know what we want. -- Adele Walton * Dazed *

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Book SynopsisThe rise of the IT industry in the nineties promised a new era of freedom and prosperity. It didn’t deliver. Certainly, algorithms are everywhere, but capitalism is no more civilised than ever. In fact, in the hands of private corporations, the digitalisation of the world drives us towards a darker future. The return of monopolies, the dominance of a few platforms, the blurred distinction between the economic and the political all epitomise a systemic mutation. Information and data networks push the digital economy in the direction of the feudal logic of rent, dispossession, and personal domination.How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism offers a fresh genealogy of the Silicon Valley consensus and its contradictions. It disentangles the principles of an emerging systemwide rationale. Large firms compete in cyberspace to gain control over data, and ordinary people are increasingly at the mercy of tech giants. In this new economic order, capital is movi

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Book SynopsisBorn in Jerusalem, Ghada Karmi and her family were forced out of their home in 1948. They shared the fate of the thousands of Palestinians who, in the Nakba, were dispossessed and driven from land lived on for generations. In this moving memoir, Karmi charts their journey from Jerusalem to Golders Green, in north London, and their struggle to put down roots in alien soil. A quest for identity haunts her search for security far from home. Speaking for the vast number of people displaced worldwide, her story is a powerful exploration of the psychological pain of exile.

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Book SynopsisWhy should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Any artwork reflects the artist's intentions, but also its times: therefore all art is political

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Book SynopsisReligion, oil, and war bent to the House of Saud’s will to dominate Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle EastIn recent years the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, has promoted the oil-rich kingdom as an open, liberalizing nation that has invested in culture, tourism, and social innovation to become a beacon for the region. International political manoeuvring, sports sponsorship, and the Vision 2030 programme with its vast architectural planning declare a bold future. But the murder in October 2018 of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul reveals a darker reality: one of intensifying political and religious repression. This is within the tumultuous context of the war in Yemen, sectarian rivalry with Iran, the crisis in Gaza, and volatile relations with the United States.Malise Ruthven, a leading commentator on Islamic affairs, reconstructs the nation’s history. He shows how the royal house co-opted Wahhabism to consolidate its power and enforce authoritarianism in collusion with Western businesses and governments. Unholy Kingdom looks to the nation’s future in the hands of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who touts the country’s liberalisation while aggressively imposing his will upon the region.This essential book traces the shifting fault lines in the Middle East to determine Saudi Arabia’s place in our volatile times.

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Book SynopsisEconomic growth isn't working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities and ecological destructions associated with capitalism, and points to desirable alternatives to it. Not only in society at large, but also on the left, we are held captive by the hegemony of growth. Even proposals for emancipatory Green New Deals or postcapitalism base their utopian hopes on the development of productive forces, on redistributing the fruits of economic growth and technological progress. Yet growing evidence shows that continued economic growth cannot be made compatible with sustaining life and is not necessary for a good life for all. This book provides a vision for postcapitalism beyond growth. Building on a vibrant field of research, it discusses the political economy and the politics of a non-growing economy. It charts a path forward through policies that democratise the economy, "now-topias" that create free spaces for experimentation, and counter-hegemonic movements that make it possible to break with the logic of growth. Degrowth perspectives offer a way to step off the treadmill of an alienating, expansionist, and hierarchical system. A handbook and a manifesto, The Future Is Degrowth is a must-read for all interested in charting a way beyond the current crises.Trade ReviewA most comprehensive analysis of the different trends converging in the degrowth movement, showing its capacity to both subvert the logic of capitalism and project visions of social justice. A book that powerfully challenges any reductive views of degrowth. -- Silvia FedericiThe Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism offers a sober presentation of the futility of the ideology and pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet. Current multiple crises, including the unfolding catastrophic global heating, ought to force humans to pull the brakes on current fatal pathways. However, myopia has locked humans in a fatal pursuit of wealth, power and externalizations built on the platform of oppression, colonial exploitation, ecological despoliation and barbaric economic supremacy made possible by militarism, cultural manipulations, delineation of sacrificial zones and acceptance of enforcement of sacred or untouchable zones to sustain unquenchable consumption and wasteful appetites. This book presents a call for a world in which, through sober acceptance of having toed highly destructive growth, consumption and developmental paths, human beings understand and respect the ecological limits of Mother Earth her and regain both their humanity and place in the communities of other beings. -- Nnimmo Bassey, author of To Cook a Continent, Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in AfricaIn economics, 'growth' implies a malignancy absent in nature: perpetual expansion and extraction. This book rigorously demolishes a concept that is the intellectual foundation of today's economics profession, a central pillar of capitalism and the source of ecological depletion. -- Ann PettiforA radical critique of capitalist growth and a powerful vision for a more just and ecological future. Don't miss this book. -- Jason HickelThis book is to degrowth what the IPCC is to climate science: the best available literature review on the topic. -- Timothée ParriqueAn excellent introduction to the degrowth agenda written in plain language. It shifts the burden of proof concerning solutions to climate and social crises to optimist eco-modernists from all political backgrounds. -- Nick Trantas * Journal of Political Ecology *Degrowth gains ground. * Yes Magazine *Must-read. * Occupy.com *If you are looking for a clear, comprehensive, scholarly but practical overview, then I'd recommend The Future is Degrowth. -- Mark BurtonThis book is a great handbook of ideas to help spread the word. * Bookbuster *Magnificent. The Future is Degrowth is arguably one of the most complete works on the concept of degrowth. This book is essential reading for both actors within civil society movements and policymakers, as it manages to be extremely ambitious in its goals while remaining realistic. * Green European Journal *Behind this strategy to reclaim our world from the forces of collapse is the vision of a free people taking charge of their lives. -- Bernard Marszalek * Counterpunch *

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Book SynopsisIn his iconoclastic and controversial study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in global culture to a disturbing examination of Holocaust compensation settlements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel’s evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it has today.Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism’s victims comes from some of the very people who profess most passionately to defend it. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries and legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket

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Book SynopsisHito Steyerl is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Her work, both as an artist and a writer, has consistently challenged the political boundaries between art and technol­ogy. In this new collection of groundbreaking essays, she explores how AI, the use of large language models and the algorithmic creation of imagery transform our understanding of the world. She argues that such practices cannot be divorced from the economic and political conditions of the times.Medium Hot is a collection of scintillating meditations on the limits of art and technol­ogy: the essential handbook for the present conjuncture. The pieces here probe the man­ufacture and distribution of images in the age of AI and climate change. She asks whether art can be made not only by machines but for machines. She argues against the production of images that heat up the planet, disfranchise workers and fuel the arms trade, and questions whether such creations can even be called art.In an era of such rapid change, Steyerl does vital work investigating whether machine learning will infiltrate every aspect of our lives and what that means for the future.

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Book SynopsisAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin implemented a political system of "imitation democracy," marked by "a huge disparity between formal constitutional principles and the reality of authoritarian rule." How did this system take shape, how else might it have developed, and what are the prospects for re-envisioning it more democratically in the future?These questions animate Dmitrii Furman's Imitation Democracy, a welcome antidote to books that blandly decry Putin as an omnipotent dictator, without considering his platforms, constituencies, and sources of power. With extensive public opinion polling drawn from throughout the late- and post-Soviet period, and a thorough knowledge of both official and unofficial histories, Furman offers a definitive account of the formation of the modern Russian political system, casting it into powerful relief through comparisons with other post-Soviet states.Peopled with grey technocrats, warring oligarchs, patriots, and provocateurs, Furman's narrative details the struggles among partisan factions, and the waves of public sentiment, that shaped modern Russia's political landscape, culminating in Putin's third presidential term, which resolves the contradiction between the "form" and "content" of imitation democracy, "the formal dependence of power on elections and the actual dependence of elections on power."Trade ReviewIn the flatlands of post-communism, one exceptional figure always stood out. Uniquely, in the mind and character of Dmitri Furman the two distinct incarnations of the Russian intelligentsia came together, at a time when both seemed to have all but disappeared. Virtually unknown outside the country, and little registered within it, he was a scholar of comparative religion and an anatomist of the aftermath of the USSR who joined political integrity and intellectual originality in a body of work that addressed the fate of his country, and the past of the world, in ways that were equally and strikingly passionate and dispassionate. -- Perry Anderson * London Review of Books *Russia is an imitation culture. Throughout the country's history it has formulated its existence using European formulas. But then unable to compete on the well-established democratic terms Russia has repeatedly positioned itself as a special civilization, in essence, what the West is not. Dmitry Furman's book discusses one of the most important moments in russian history - transition from communism to democracy, as it were. At the time it seemed that Russia's cycle of imitation of the West and then the resentment that it cannot or doesn't not want to follow the rules, could finally be broken. Despite all the democratic promises it was not. Furman brilliantly and meticulously explains as why Russia constantly falls into an autocratic trap of its own making. His is a sober analysis not only of Russia's past but also grim prospects for democracy in its future. -- Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs, The New School, New York

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Book SynopsisToday, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, state violence, environmental destruction and repressive technologies. At the same time, fields not usually associated with aesthetics make powerful use of it. Journalists and legal professionals pore over open source videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call "investigative aesthetics": mobilising sensibilities often associated with art, architecture and other such practices to find new ways of speaking truth to power.This book draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology, evaluates the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art, and examines radical practices such as those of Wikileaks, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Investigative Aesthetics takes place in the studio and the laboratory, the courtroom and the gallery, online and in the streets, as it strives towards the construction of a new 'common sensing'.The book is an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today.To Nour Abuzaid for your brilliance, perseverance, and unshaken belief in the liberation of Palestine.Trade ReviewThe most astonishing book on architecture that I have read in years. -- Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times * [for Hollow Land] *A masterpiece of political analysis. -- James Ron, The Nation * [for Hollow Land] *Weizman boldly attempts to create an entirely new method to conceptualize the relationship between surfaces, movement, and the tools of war -- Achille Mbembe * [for Hollow Land] *Eyal Weizman's work has become an indispensable source of both insight and guidance in these difficult times -- Paul GilroyWeizman continues to offer daring social and political commentary, questioning taken-for-granted structures and processes that perpetuate oppression and violence -- Legacy Russell, BOMB Magazine * [For The Least of All Possible Evils] *A fascinating treatise on how our political world functions today and how we might seek to interrupt it. -- Jack Smurthwaite * Art Monthly *Expansive ... [Fuller and Weizman] explore sense and sense-making in its fullest political terms: understanding the systemic forces of capitalism as well as an individual's sense of morality. -- Chris Hayes * Tribune *Sharp ... [Investigative Aesthetics] is invaluable as a hyper-aesthetic object itself. -- Michael Eby * Los Angeles Review of Books *Aesthetics is a battleground, a contested space; Investigative Aesthetics is part battle-plan or tactical guide and, more fundamentally, part user's manual for surviving this beautiful and terrifying world. -- Mark Rappolt * ArtReview *An undeviating announcement of the subversive potential of contemporary aesthetic practices. -- Lawrence Abu Hamdan * The White Review, Books of the Year 2021 *

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Book SynopsisLike Paris in the 1920s, New York City in the 1960s was a cauldron of avant-garde ferment and artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed and new forms created. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and the alternative press, Everything Is Now chron­icles this collective drama as it was played out in coffeehouses, bars, lofts, storefront theaters, and, ultimately, the streets.The principals here are penniless filmmak­ers, jazz musicians, and performing poets, as well as less classifiable artists. Most were outsiders at the time. They include Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and many more. Some were associ­ated with specific movements (Avant Rock, Destruction Art, Fluxus, Free Jazz, Guerrilla Theater, Happenings, Mimeographed Zines, Pop Art, Protest-Folk, Ridiculous Theater, Stand-Up Poetry, Underground Comix, and Underground Movies). But there were also movements of one. Their art, rooted in the detritus and excitement of urban life, was taboo-breaking and confrontational.As J. Hoberman shows in this riveting his­tory, these subcultures coalesced into a counterculture that changed the city, the country, and the world.

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Book SynopsisPaul Foot was one of the most influential investigative reporters of his generation. For nearly fifty years, he was the scourge of corrupt politicians and dodgy businessmen, a champion of the underdog.In this, the first biography of Paul Foot, journalist Margaret Renn traces Foot’s personal, political and professional trajectories, placing his life and works within the long arc of postwar Britain. Drawing on extensive interviews with those close to him, and utilizing her unparalleled knowledge of his prodigious output, the book brings the many different faces of Paul Foot together into a single portrait.A prolific writer for the Daily Mirror, Private Eye, the Guardian and Socialist Worker, Foot’s investigations broke numerous major stories. He wrote about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, and the issues in some of his campaigns maintained their prominence long after his death in 2004: police corruption in the Step

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions. This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.Trade ReviewThe most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century -- George SteinerBenjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones ... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre. -- Hannah ArendtBenjamin was the interlocutor of all the demons and angels of storytelling. And this is why he knew its endless secrets. Listen to him. -- John BergerA complex and brilliant writer * J. M. Coetzee *

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Book SynopsisOur current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the "creative class" over the rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of care - medical care, child care, agriculture, industrial maintenance and so on. We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care - ill bodies in need of self-care and social care. But the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. The book retraces some episodes of this tradition - beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question discussed is: who should be the subject of care? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.Trade ReviewThe Covid pandemic and other ongoing crises made us all aware that the work of care in all its forms - healthcare, care for the old, care for the victims of natural and social catastrophes, up to self-care - is the type of work that defines our epoch. However, this notion is not exempt from ideological mystifications: from times immemorial, the rich and powerful justify their wealth and power by claiming they care for the needy. Groys analyzes the notion (and practice) of care in all its dimensions, from authentic solidarity to devious manipulations and New Age spiritualist self-care. Philosophy of Care is a book for everyone who wants to understand where we are today and why we are in such a mess. in short, it is a book for everyone. -- Slavoj ZizekBoris Groys has deepened the intellectual project of Art History in ways that will be felt for decades to come. With The Philosophy of Care, he expands and focuses the question of care to encompass the physical and the symbolic, the self and the other, value and life, recognition and recovery. The future is defined by the fragility of life --individual life, collective life and planetary life-- and the omnipresence of death. Groys offers us a new version of 'the common task' that binds us all. -- Benjamin Bratton

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Book SynopsisA narrative account of Jim Crow as people experienced it.

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Book SynopsisThe Long Twentieth Century traces the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Arrighi argues that capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries," each of which produced a new world power that secured control over an expanding world-economic space. Examining the changing fortunes of Florentine, Venetian, Genoese, Dutch, English and finally American capitalism, Arrighi concludes with an examination of the forces that have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world dominance. A masterpiece of historical sociology, The Long Twentieth Century rivals in scope and ambition contemporary classics by Perry Anderson, Charles Tilly and Michael Mann.Trade ReviewA vivid, fact-filled expose of the cyclical monetary forces that surge through human society. * Observer Review *The Long Twentieth Century has the grandeur of a sprawling epic and the schematic grace of a Richard Neutra blueprint ... It is the single most useful text on offer for anyone who wants to narrate the story of world capitalism-from its nascent form on the rim of the Mediterranean to the current reach of the United States' empire, and beyond. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Made no concrete prediction, but nevertheless interpreted the rising power of Wall Street since the 1970s as a symptom of imminent US decline, followed perhaps by an era of Chinese global leadership. -- William Davies * New Statesman *This book is one of the most comprehensive presentations concerning the history of capitalism from early modern times up to the present. -- Joseph Vogl * Shepherd.com *

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Book SynopsisThe extended critical interview is especially flexible as a form, by turns tenacious and glancing, elliptical or sustained, combining argument and counter-argument, reflection, history and memoir with a freedom normally denied to its subjects in conventional writing formats. Lives on the Left brings together sixteen such interviews from New Left Review in a group portrait of intellectual engagement in the twentieth century and since.Four generations of intellectuals discuss their political histories and present perspectives, and the specialized work for which they are, often, best known. Their recollections span the century from the Great War and the October Revolution to the present, ranging across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Psychoanalysis, philosophy, the gendering of private and public life, capital and class formation, the novel, geography, and language are among the topics of theoretical discussion. At the heart of the collection, in all its diversity of testimony and judgement, is critical experience of communism and the tradition of Marx, relayed now for a new generation of readers.Lives on the Left includes interviews with Georg Lukács, Hedda Korsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, Dorothy Thompson, Jir?i Pelikan, Ernest Mandel, Luciana Castellina, Lucio Colletti, K. Damodaran, Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, Adolfo Gilly, João Pedro Stédile, Asada Akira, Wang Hui and Giovanni Arrighi.New Left Review was founded in 1960 in London, which has remained its base ever since. In fifty years of publication, it has won an international reputation as an independent journal of socialist politics and ideas, attracting readers and contributors from every part of the world. A Spanish-language edition is published bi-monthly from Madrid.Trade ReviewThe biography of the review cannot be reduced to a formula: its experience so far has been too rich and too contradictory... It is up to date without being merely journalistic; it is scholarly but unscarred by citation-compulsion; and it is analytical about the long-term forces at work in politics rather than obsessed by the spume of the latest wavelet of manoeuvring and posturing... That's what I admire above all about NLR: its intellectual seriousness-its magnificently strenuous attempt to understand, to analyse, to theorise. -- Stefan Collini * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisSlavoj Zizek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the "Elvis of cultural theory", and today's most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes-all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema and Zizek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. Now Verso is making his classic titles, each of which stand as a core of his ever-expanding life's work, available as new editions. Each is beautifully re-packaged, including new introductions from Zizek himself. Simply put, they are the essential texts for understanding Zizek's thought and thus cornerstones of contemporary philosophy.The Sublime Object of Ideology: Slavoj Zizek's first book is a provocative and original work looking at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. In a thrilling tour de force that made his name, he explores the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.Trade ReviewThe Elvis of cultural theory. * Chronicle of Higher Education *The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus. * The Village Voice *The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades. -- Terry EagletonUnafraid of confrontation and with a near limitless grasp of pop symbolism * The Times *Zizek is a thinker who regards nothing as outside his field: the result is deeply interesting and provocative. * Guardian *Zizek is one of the few living writers to combine theoretical rigor with compulsive readability. * Publishers Weekly *Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation * New Yorker *

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Book SynopsisBaltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an "age of riots" as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history. Rioting was the central form of protest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet it was supplanted by age of the glorious strike and labour protests of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From, from the seventies on, we're seen a return of the strike - now changed along with the coordinates of race and class.From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse. Riot.Strike.Riot is a tour de force of political and theoretical analysis.Trade ReviewRiot, in this absolutely necessary book, is considered as differential procedure and rigorous improvisational method, as essential repertoire on the way from general malaise to general strike. But then this conception folds tightly yet disorderly into a new and open set of questions. It's not that the raging, ragged entrance to the new golden age is the new golden age. It's not that theory can't bear a riot. It's just that riot makes new ways of seeing what theory can and can't do and imposes upon us a kind of knowledge of our own embarrassing and already given resources of enjoyment. Joshua Clover says riot deserves a proper theory but here-sly, stone cold-he gives us more than that. Now we have some guidelines for the new and ongoing impropriety that fleshes forth and fleshes out our optimal condition. -- Fred Moten, scholar, activist, poet and author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition and The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black StudyIn its sweep, rigor, and elegance, Riot. Strike. Riot. is pleasurable and provocative, worthy of the urgent debates it should inspire. -- Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation and Who We Be: The Colorization of AmericaRiot. Strike. Riot. is the crystalline analysis of this fraught moment-between communism and anarchism, between street protest and economic strike. Clover's text is clear without being simple, contemporary yet historical, and affectionate without being mawkish-much like a riot, in fact, it opens up the future while remembering that the past is comprised of little other than exploitation, exclusion and the kinds of violence that deliberately are attributed to the very people who suffer most from it. -- Nina Power, senior lecturer in philosophy at Roehampton University and author of One-Dimensional WomanOne of the liveliest, sharpest, and erudite cultural theorists in the US. -- Charles Mudede * The Stranger *Frisky, audacious . Riot. Strike. Riot screams across the sky of our electoral theater. -- Michael Robbins * Chicago Tribune *[Riot. Strike. Riot] thrills. It elucidates and, in a way, valorizes a taboo fixture of the political arena in an era of seemingly perpetual economic crisis and withering patience for mere reform. -- Sam Lefebvre * East Bay Express *Phenomenal...The genius of Riot. Strike. Riot lies in its concise and historically confident analysis of riots. -- Justin Slaughter * Public Books *Joshua Clover provides a history of the present that is at once erudite and militant. In unfailingly elegant prose he not only traces where today's struggles came from but also proposes how they can chart the path to a new future. -- Michael Hardt, co-author of AssemblyIf communism is, as Marx wrote, "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things," then Joshua Clover is its most lucid and uncompromising contemporary theorist. Among its many virtues, Riot.Strike.Riot explains how our time of stagnant economic growth, exclusionary state violence, and uprisings of those left without reserves, might be capitalism's end times. In doing so, he challenges all of us who are committed to bending the status quo toward justice to an ambition adequate to its breaking point. -- Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Race and America’s Long WarWhy do we find police in places where there was once an economy? This unique book is abrilliant, clearheaded analysis of the historical relation between two forms of struggle, focusingon the riot, a pre-capitalist form returning in the transformed mode of "riot prime" as one of themost telling forms of our late capitalist present. Along the way, Joshua Clover gives us muchneeded concepts to deal with the strange new negations we have come to encounter in thismoment of waning accumulation-Long Crisis, the production of nonproduction, aerosolizedproduction-as capital shifts its center of gravity to circulation, and nonlabor struggles emerge asthe logical form of social conflict based on shared distance from labor markets rather than sharedlabor conditions. R-S-R' is a theory of riot but as such, crucially, a theory of periodization; it isessential reading for all students of the present. -- Sianne Ngai, author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting

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Book SynopsisShlomo Sand was born in 1946, in a displaced person's camp in Austria, to Jewish parents; the family later migrated to Palestine. As a young man, Sand came to question his Jewish identity, even that of a "secular Jew." With this meditative and thoughtful mixture of essay and personal recollection, he articulates the problems at the center of modern Jewish identity. How I Stopped Being a Jew discusses the negative effects of the Israeli exploitation of the "chosen people" myth and its "holocaust industry." Sand criticizes the fact that, in the current context, what "Jewish" means is, above all, not being Arab and reflects on the possibility of a secular, non-exclusive Israeli identity, beyond the legends of Zionism.Trade ReviewPerhaps books combining passion and erudition don't change political situations, but if they did, this one would count as a landmark. (In praise of The Invention of the Jewish People) -- Eric Hobsbawm * Observer *Sand's quiet earthquake of a book is shaking historical faith in the link between Judaism and Israel. (In praise of The Invention of the Jewish People) -- Rafael Behr * Observer *No discussion of the region any longer seems complete without acknowledgement of this book. (In praise of The Invention of the Jewish People) * Independent on Sunday *A radical dismantling of a national myth. (In praise of The Invention of the Jewish People) * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThe extent and irreversibility of US decline is becoming ever more obvious as America loses war after war and as one industry after another loses its technological edge. Lachmann explains why the United States will not be able to sustain its global dominance. He contrasts America’s relatively brief period of hegemony with the Netherlands’ similarly short primacy and Britain’s far longer era of leadership.Decline in all those cases was not inevitable and did not respond to global capitalist cycles. Rather, decline is the product of elites’ success in grabbing control of resources and governmental powers. Not only are ordinary people harmed, but also capitalists become increasingly unable to coordinate their interests and adopt policies and make investments necessary to counter economic and geopolitical competitors elsewhere in the world.Conflicts among elites and challenges by non-elites determine the timing and mould the contours of decline. Lach

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Book SynopsisIn this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that the all-pervasive presence of data in our networked society has given rise to a new mode of production, one not ruled over by capitalists and their factories but by those who own and control the flow of information. Yet, if this is not capitalism anymore, could it be something worse? What if the world we're living in is more dystopian than the techno utopias of the Silicon Valley imagination? And, if this is the case, how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyse this new world of information, but the ones to change it, too.Drawing on the writings of the Situationists and a range of contemporary theorists, Wark offers a vast panorama of the contemporary condition and the classes that control it.Trade ReviewOne book from which I drew much courage that I was not wrong to believe that something more fundamental was in play, and that capitalism itself was in question, is McKenzie Wark's 2019 exquisite Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? I cannot recommend it too strongly. Many of my ideas resonated loudly with hers. -- Yanis VaroufakisA provocative and compelling exploration of our digital world as it crashes towards ecological disaster. Counter-intuitive, insightful, and imaginative, Capital is Dead is a timely reminder that there are things worse than capitalism - and we may just be living through them. -- Nick SrnicekMcKenzie Wark's call for an experimental, vulgar form of revolutionary approach to digital commodification is a challenging read, full of provocative observation. -- Andy Hedgecock * Morning Star *Wark has long been a brilliant scholar of Marxism, Situationism and Poststructuralism, rewriting the canon of critical theory. -- Dave Beech * Art Monthly *Wark takes a flamethrower to these ideas through a reading of Marx that burns away the metaphors of phantasmagorical fetishes, such as the commodity form, the spectacle, and false consciousness, that have occupied much critical theory to date. -- Vince Carducci * Popmatters *Thoughtful and compelling. -- Garrett Pierman * Marx & Philosophy *

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Book SynopsisWhat if we took sex out of the box marked 'special', either the worst or best thing that a human person can experience, and considered it within the complexity of reality? In this extraordinary book, despite longstanding tabloid-style sexual preoccupations with villains and victims, shame and virtue, JoAnn Wypijewski does exactly that.From the HIV crisis to the paedophile priest panic, Woody Allen to Brett Kavanaugh, child pornography to Abu Ghraib, Wypijewski takes the most famous sex panics of the last decades and turns them inside out, weaving what together becomes a searing indictment of modern sexual politics, exposing the myriad ways sex panics and the expansion of the punitive state are intertwined.What emerges is an examination of the multiple ways in which the ever-expanding default language of monsters and victims has contributed to the repressive power of the state. Politics exists in the mess of life. Sex does too, Wypijewski insists and so must sexual politics, to make any sense at all.Trade ReviewWhat We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo speaks for many women who resist (sometimes quietly) the peer pressure that has no name, and for women dismayed by the politics of belief infecting our secular conversations about sex. Injustice has become a sustainable resource, and JoAnn Wypijewski has been documenting its variations quite eloquently for 25 years. Her reporting is solid and energetic. Wypijewski knows how to unpack a monster. -- Tracy Quan, author of Diary of a Manhattan Call GirlJust causes, Wypijewski reminds us, have a bad habit of overreaching justice. Revisiting some of the most notorious sex abuse cases of recent times, she shows how little attention the media has given to actual facts and alternative interpretations. These incisive and controversial essays are a tour d'force by a brilliant journalist with unbounded empathy. -- Mike DavisJoAnn Wypijewski stimulates us to think freshly about sex and sexual politics, and she is not afraid to infuriate both those who consider themselves sexual progressives and traditional conservatives. Let's call a town meeting of the whole country to grapple with the insights, the fury, and most of all the wisdom in this essential book. -- Peter Davis, Academy Award winning filmmaker of Hearts and Minds, author of Girl of My DreamsWypijewski lays bare the twisted logics we employ to convince ourselves that there are easy distinctions between love, brutality, sex, and capitalism. Forceful and brilliant analysis, an unrelenting excavation not just of what happened and to whom, but what it means to all of us watching from the sidelines. Wypijewski, like few other writers, provides an archaelogy of sex which is in turn an archaelogy of power. -- Yasmin NairUncomfortable, powerful, and moving; few writers can give us the nitty-gritty of sex and its messiness within the grand sweep of history, and get both the big picture and the details exactly right. -- Jeffrey Escoffier, author of American Homo, Research Associate at the Brooklyn Institute for Social ResearchJoAnn Wypijewski has written steadily and courageously on topics that paralyze other reporters into silence or lukewarm compromise. She knows that our horror of crime springs from the same root as our need for scapegoats. Her essays are always perceptive, and always worth reading -- David Bromwich, author of American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell UsFrom Woody Allen to Matthew Shepherd to monster priests and Harvey Weinsteins, today's high sex scandals are media and courtroom myths of total innocence versus total guilt-larded with very real, globalized rage. They're postmodern passion plays whose buy-in, not just from patriarchs but also from feminists, has rendered these narratives chillingly sterile-and dead in their sterility. For years, JoAnn Wypijewski has been packing her bags and visiting the venues of civic libido behind the scandals. And then, with beautiful prose and complex analysis, she reports back to us the true messiness: of sex, life, late capitalism, fear, and yet the hope that still breathes in the mess. Her work is a national treasure. -- Debbie Nathan, journalist, co-author of Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch HuntJoAnn Wypijewski is the finest and most fearless literary journalist writing today, and in these crucial and stunningly beautiful essays she brings into bracing focus the deepest politics of desire. No other writer is telling these stories; maybe no other writer could with such generosity of spirit. 'Mercy is the scandal now,' she writes of the the ways in which too many have come to prefer the counting of sins to the dream of liberation, but this is no book of lamentations. Through a series of moments intimately observed, Wypijewski summons us again to consider the possibilities for pleasure, eros as ally, in any struggle to get free. Hers is a prophetic voice. -- Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family and This Brilliant DarknessUnpicks the logic that allows us to convince ourselves that there are easy distinctions to be made between love and brutality. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *

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Book Synopsis‘Building a society that operates within ecological constraints requires an unleashing of our political imaginations, and this book helps us do just that’—Astra Taylor, author of The Age of InsecurityHalf-Earth Socialism is a radical call to action to save the planet, including trenchant proposals to rewild half the earth to absorb carbon emissions and restore biodiversity; rapidly transition to renewable energy, paired with drastic cuts in consumption; and shift to global veganism to reduce energy and land use. As this thrilling and provocative book makes clear, we must humbly accept that humanity cannot fully understand or control the earth — but we can plan new energy systems, large-scale rewilding, and food production for the common good.'Half-Earth Socialism embraces the hardest choices, the most exacting ecological constraints, and thinks with them to reinvent climate utopianism’—Richard Seymour,

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Book SynopsisFollowing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fortunes of NATO - pronounced "braindead" only a few years prior - have been miraculously revived. The alliance, buoyed by surging European military budgets and inflows of combat-ready troops and cutting-edge hardware, looks forward to welcoming additional member states. Originally conceived as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, NATO has outlasted its ostensible foe by over three decades. Its geostrategic remit is limited to the North Atlantic in name only. Treaty obligations range from the Andes to the Gulf of Aden and the Khyber Pass, and allied commanders now prepare for battle in the South China Sea.Natopolitanism takes an in-depth look at the evolution and aggrandizement of NATO since the turn of the 1990s. What purposes does NATO serve in the post-Cold War world? What is the balance sheet of a quarter century of alliance expansion, and what part did it play in the eruption of conflict on Europe's eastern marches?Contributors to the volume, including John J. Mearsheimer, Mary Elise Sarotte, Susan Watkins, Wolfgang Streeck, and Volodymyr Ishchenko, revisit this this history as it unfolded. Varying in viewpoint and judgment, all share a critical perspective at odds with wartime pieties.Trade ReviewAfter Donald Trump brazenly doubted NATO's necessity, the Ukraine war reanimated the zombie. This indispensable collection sets sanctimony to one side, gathering diverse reflections on the alliance's functions and trajectory since the Cold War - including in the coming of the Ukraine war itself. -- Samuel Moyn, Yale UniversityA bracing critical review of the 'most successful alliance' in history. An essential primer for the new era of Natopolitanism. -- Adam Tooze, author of CrashedThis collection of essays and documents regarding NATO's role as the military wing of US capitalism and its increasingly aggressive approach to that role is important and (obviously) timely. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *

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Book SynopsisCelebrate your favourite radical publishing house with our official branded merch! The Verso V Notebook beautfully celebrates our logo, is fully lined in the signature Verso red and in a handy portable size and lined paper throughout.

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Book SynopsisThis provocative book offers the first sustained critique of the theory and practice of pacification.

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Book SynopsisIn A Sextet on the Great War, Perry Anderson picks out from the highly charged historiography on the First World War one leading historian from each of the major powers that survived the conflagration: Fritz Fischer, famous historian of German war-guilt; Pierre Renouvin, a disabled serviceman and preeminent authority on the conflict in France; Luigi Albertini, the Italian newspaper tycoon who unlike any other scholar on the Grear War was himself a leading actor in pitching his country into it; Paul W. Schroeder, the American expert on the system of European interstate relations and its breakdown in 1914; Keith Wilson, the one radical deviant from a patriotic consensus in Britain about the country’s role in the outbreak of the fighting; and, from Australia (a dominion dragooned into the Great War by the British), Christopher Clark, acclaimed author of The Sleepwalkers and Revolutionary Spring. A Sextet on the Great War is a compelling analytical

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Book SynopsisA slyly subversive bildungsroman that presents a brutal portrait of misplaced love, by the author of lauded Nothing Can Hurt YouAfter dropping out of college, a young woman wanders through New York both invisible and vulnerable, studying the city's strong magic and longing for a man she knows will never love her back. She thinks she finds salvation when Charlotte Herzfeld, the young wife of a successful businessman, hires her as a live-in nanny to accompany the family on their trip to Berlin. As the Herzfelds begin to crack under the weight of their secrets, she finds herself in a more precarious position than ever before.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisIn this provocative and now-classic work, Friedrich Engels explores the interrelated development of the family and the state from ancient society to the Victorian era. Drawing on new anthropological theories of his time, Engels argued that matriarchal communal societies had been overthrown by class society and its emphasis on private, not communal, property and monogamous, rather than polygamous, sexual organization. This historical development, Engels argued, constituted "the world-historic defeat of the female sex." A masterclass in the application of materialist thought to history and anthropology, and touching on love, monogamy, property, and the development of the human, this landmark work is still foundational in Marxist and socialist feminist theory.

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Book SynopsisLiberals have been arguing for nearly a century that racism is fundamentally an individual problem of extremist beliefs. Responding to Nazism, thinkers like gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld and anthropologist Ruth Benedict called for teaching people, especially poor people, to be less prejudiced. Here lies the origin of today's liberal antiracism, from diversity training to Hollywood activism. Meanwhile, a more radical antiracism flowered in the Third World. Anticolonial revolutionaries traced racism to the broad economic and political structures of modernity. Thinkers like C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, and Frantz Fanon showed how racism was connected to colonialism and capitalism, a perspective adopted even by Martin Luther King.Today, liberal antiracism has proven powerless against structural oppression. As Arun Kundnani demonstrates, white liberals can heroically confront their own whiteness all they want, yet these structures remain.This deeply researched and swift-moving narrative history tells the story of the two antiracisms and their fates. As neoliberalism reordered the world in the last decades of the twentieth century, the case became clear: fighting racism means striking at its capitalist roots.Trade ReviewDrawing lessons from a long tradition of anticolonial, anti-imperialist, and Marxist intellectuals and movements, Arun Kundnani demonstrates how racism and capitalism are indivisible parts of one global system. And unless we can see the whole, we'll never know how to fight. -- Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom DreamsThis is the book we need to deepen our understanding of how ideas of racism and anti-racism became divorced from questions of who has what and why. Kundnani explains in gorgeous detail how in the twentieth century, people who were struggling to build a new world came to comprehend racism, capitalism, and colonialism as codependent systems. And he shows us how neoliberalism has shaped new racisms-involving, for example, 'the terrorist' and 'the welfare queen'--pointing to key areas of the fight today. -- Amna A. Akbar, professor of law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of LawAn important and absorbing intervention into debates around racism today, illuminating the profound structural links between imperialism, racism and capitalism. Kundnani shows us how an understanding of this long history is a vital resource for our fights against exploitation and oppression today. -- Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent EmpireWith theoretical precision and clarity, Kundnani lays out the failings of liberals and the left, offering instead a radical anti-racism fit for tackling the urgent issues facing the world today. -- Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British PolicingWhat is Antiracism? is going to be a major staple for decades to come. -- Joshua Briond, host of the Millennials Are Killing Capitalism podcastTears into the system-and the liberal excuses that surround it -- Yuri Prasad * Socialist Worker *Provide[s] a structural analysis of racism, including colonialism and capitalism, whilst showing how liberal ideas of anti-racism can be easily co-opted to support new forms of racist power ... an essential read -- Benjamin Ashraf * New Arab *Cutting ... With over three decades of activism and an impressive body of work to his name, Kundnani draws on a history of collective struggle to offer answers to how anti-racism can be rescued from corporate whitewashing to instead challenge the structures of 'racial capitalism'. -- Sigrid Corey * Red Pepper *

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Book SynopsisThink today's anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today's anti-abortion movements is largely financed and planned by far-right extremists. Many of them are avowedly fascist and white supremacist, afraid of a "great replacement" of the world's white population by other races, who are working hard to reshape governments and policies across Europe, North America and around the world. Much of this far-right organizing and funding network, however, has been overlooked by today's feminist and left movements. As investigative journalist Sian Norris uncovers here, it is through attacking abortion rights that fascist ideas from the dark web, incel chat boards, and fringe organizations comes to enter mainstream debate -- and to then shape governmental policy across Europe, from authoritarian regimes like Hungary's to liberal democracies like Britain. As Norris goes undercover at anti-abortion activist meetings, and pieces together the money trail linking American think tanks to far-right fascist groups, she maps out the pipeline by which fascism has become respectable across the Global North by taking away women's reproductive rights and autonomy.Trade ReviewWhen it comes to the critical issues shaping our society, there are journalists who try to observe and analyse from on high - and then there are journalists like Sian Norris, who throw themselves headfirst into the messy tangle of people, places and politics that matter, and do so with passion and bite. Norris is not a passive stenographer, she's a fighter for a better world and her work might just help us win one. -- Jack Schenker, author of The Egyptians and Now We Have Your AttentionA vital and sobering book. Sian Norris's reporting on reproductive rights has long been prescient, dogged, and courageous -- and in this book she gives us an unflinching portrait of quite how much women stand to lose. Her account of how abortion is positioned in our contemporary moment -- by misogyny, white supremacy, and authoritarianism -- is necessary reading. -- Katherine Angel, author of Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good AgainAttacks on abortion rights are not only assaults on women's freedom to live and love as they choose, most successfully targeting black and ethnic minority women, but they are today a key plank of the far right's drive for power. Providing a splendid call to arms, in these pages Sia^n Norris shows why the struggle to preserve women's reproductive and sexual freedoms is now fundamental to the defeat of fascistic forces globally, as well as the foundation for any fairer, progressive future for all of us. -- Lynne Segal author of Lean on MeAn incisive account of the relationship between white supremacist ideology and the attack on abortion rights. The significance, necessity, and timeliness of this book is, unfortunately, all too apparent. -- Helen Hester, co-author of After WorkA groundbreaking and definitive study of far-right misogyny and how to fight it. Norris traces the networks that are pushing bigotry into the heads of young men across the world and shows how they interact with the "respectable" right. -- Paul Mason, author of How to Stop FascismReminds us that once won, rights - all rights - have to be constantly defended. This excellent book may help do that. -- Vanessa Baird * New Internationalist *Essential reading on what has become - yet again - one of the most important battles of our times. Sian Norris is an illuminating and passionate guide to the war on women's bodies and rights - there is so much here I didn't know, and to have it all set down so lucidly makes this book as invaluable as it is engrossing. -- Marina HydeA thorough, alarmed delineation of threats to abortion rights around the world. * Kirkus Reviews *An effective clarion call against complacency. -- Mia Levitin * Sunday Times *Table of ContentsTABLE OF CONTENTSA note on languageForewordIntroductionChapter One: The Ideology: The Place of Women in Fascist ThoughtChapter Two: The Extremists: The Anti-Abortion Far RightChapter Three: The Infiltration: The Networks that Bring Extremist Right Politics Into the MainstreamChapter Four: The Allies: How (Some) Women Join the Far Right ­- from Trad Wives to Anti-Trans Chapter Five: The Money: Who is Funding the Anti-Abortion Right?Chapter Six: The Politicians: How the Far-Right Influences Governments Around the WorldChapter Seven: The Tipping Point: Which Future Do We Choose?AcknowledgementsNotes

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