Verso Books

Book SynopsisWhat does Brazil's lurch to the hard right under Jair Bolsonaro portend for Latin America's most populous society, and how has it come about? Perry Anderson, foremost observer of the Brazilian scene in the English-speaking world, offers a matchless account of the country's recent political upheavals: after the dashed hopes of the Cardoso years, the soaring popularity of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; the parliamentary coup d'état against his successor, Dilma; and the sweeping election victory of Bolsonaro, backed by the Armed Forces and a youthful new right. Always something of a world unto itself, under the Workers' Party, Brazil had bucked the global trend towards a tighter neoliberalism. With its lodestar, Lula, now behind bars, a weighing up of the PT's legacy, and of the contrasting Bolsonaro regime, is urgently needed.Trade ReviewOne of the world's great historians, unrivalled in his ability to master and synthesize vast historical literatures -- Jeet Heer * New Republic *Extraordinary originality and penetrating insight. Sweeping, subtle, sophisticated, provocative, pungently written: all of the above apply * Andrew Bacevich, author of Twilight of the American Century [For American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers] *His writing is sharp and erudite and even those who do not share his politics will learn from his book -- Gideon Rachman * Financial Times [for American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers] *A magnificent achievement. It is a product of his ability, near-unique in today's world of ideas, to distil a country's history and politics into a few thousand words that are at once combative and informative -- Mihir S Sharma * Business Standard, New Delhi [For The Indian Ideology] *Exposes some substantial faultlines in recent Indian writing about India and with some justice question the emerging consensus around India's democratic successes -- David Arnold * Times Literary Supplement [For The Indian Ideology] *masterfully recounts the rise and fall of the Brazilian Left. -- Nick Burns * The American Interest *A devastating critique of the rule of the PT. -- Marcelo Hoffman * Berfrois *An approachable yet erudite reconsideration of Brazilian politics between 1994 and Bolsonaro's first year in office...The prose is light, delightfully romping through the twists and turns of Brazilian political life and skewering everyone along the way -- Matthew M. Taylor * Latin American Research Review *

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Book SynopsisWho owns London? In recent decades, it has fallen into the hands of the super-rich. It is today the essential 'World City' for High-Net-Worth Individuals and Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals. Compared to New York or Tokyo, it has the largest number of wealthy people per head of population. Taken as a whole, London is the epicentre of the world's finance markets, an elite cultural hub, and a place to hide one's wealth.Alpha City moves from gated communities and the mega-houses of the super-rich to the disturbing rise of evictions and displacements from the city. It shows how the consequences of widening inequality have an impact on the urban landscape. Rowland Atkinson presents a history of the property boom economy, going back to the end of Empire. It tells the story of eager developers, sovereign wealth and grasping politicians, all paving the way for the wealthy colonisation of the cityscape. The consequences of this transformation of the capital for capital is the brutal expulsion of the urban poor, austerity, cuts, demolitions, and a catalogue of social injustices.Trade ReviewAlpha City is the heart-breaking, carefully-told, story of how London - its heart, mind and soul - was stolen from the people by the plutocrats and their minions. When, the book asks, will the greed of the super-rich end up strangling the city, whose body sustains them? Rowland Atkinson has delved deep to uncover the extent of the super-rich's grip on London. A masterpiece. -- Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and 1%London, Alpha City, tops the global power city index, but rankings aside what does this really mean? In this superb book Atkinson tells us - it means hyper-activity, hyper-consumption, and hyper-gentrification. The fall out is eviction and dispossession of the poor, even the middle classes, the city and its spaces territorialised by the super-wealthy, the collapse of any ethics of care. This is the shady, corrupt world of money destroying the city. And Atkinson tells the story so well through his vivid descriptions of London's neighbourhoods, streets, and buildings as captured, even stolen. This engaging and provocative book is a must read for Londoners, urbanists, and those interested in social, economic and political justice. -- Loretta Lees, King’s College, LondonIn Alpha Cities, Rowland Atkinson lays bare how London has been geared up as the world's monument to inequality. It exposes the tactics of gilded elites alongside their legions of enablers and hangers on, and the ways in which they have turned an already tough city into a 21st century dystopia, where the ultra-rich glide through pristine, soulless environments while the infrastructure we all need decays around us. This fast-paced guide to the new gilded age is a timely warning of how much damage inequality can do. -- Douglas Murphy, author of NincompoopolisA great book which provides vital insights into a strangely under researched group - the wealthiest people on the planet. -- Anna Minton, author of Big CapitalRowland Atkinson's excellent, lively and deeply researched book opens the lid on a can of dangerous worms. While Britain's policies to tempt the world's mobile hot money and its owners have blessed a small section of the population, Atkinson reveals how this has cursed far larger numbers of people, as the super rich have sucked away wealth, talent, investment, culture, government attention, and opportunities from the majority. As he puts it, "the rich kill the cities built to attract them." A welcome and urgently important corrective to the dominant British narrative that the super-rich benefit London and the wider nation. -- Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure IslandsTurning large swathes of London over to the Super-Rich was meant to generate a sloshing pool of wealth that would 'trickle down' to the rest of us. In practice, the detailed, informed and devastating trawl through the global capital of the ruling class in Alpha City proves the only thing that has trickled down is contempt -- Owen Hatherley, author of The Ministry of NostalgiaAtkinson writes with beautiful elegance. Almost every page has a sentence I wish I'd written myself! But his fundamental argument is hard-hitting and could not be more relevant for our troubled times. His analysis of London's 'alphahoods' is a reminder, if we need it, of how unequal cities-not just London-have become. -- Glyn Robbins * City *

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Book SynopsisHow London was bought and sold by the Super-Rich, and what it means for the rest of usWho owns London? In recent decades, it has fallen into the hands of the super-rich. It is today the essential 'World City' for High-Net-Worth Individuals and Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals. Compared to New York or Tokyo, the two cities that bear the closest comparison, it has the largest number of wealthy people per head of population. Taken as a whole, London is the epicentre of the world's finance markets, an elite cultural hub, and a place to hide one's wealth.Rowland Atkinson presents a history of the property boom economy, going back to the end of Empire. It tells the story of eager developers, sovereign wealth and grasping politicians, all paving the way for the wealthy colonisation of the cityscape. The consequences of this transformation of the capital for capital is the brutal expulsion of the urban poor, austerity, cuts, demolitions, and a catalogue of social injustices. This Faustian pact has resulted in the sale and destruction of public assets, while the rich turn a blind eye toward criminal money laundering to feather their own nests.Alpha City moves from gated communities and the mega-houses of the super-rich to the disturbing rise of evictions and displacements from the city. It shows how the consequences of widening inequality have an impact on the urban landscape.Trade ReviewA fascinating interdisciplinary study, which is a must read for anyone interested in the links between emotional security, private security, surveillance and the architecture of an increasingly militarised environment. -- Anna Minton * [on Domestic Fortress] *An urgent and important book that should be read by anyone keen to get to grips with the ways homes are morphing into fortresses across the world. -- Stephen Graham * [on Domestic Fortress] *Alpha City is the heart-breaking, carefully-told, story of how London - its heart, mind and soul - was stolen from the people by the plutocrats and their minions. When, the book asks, will the greed of the super-rich end up strangling the city, whose body sustains them? Rowland Atkinson has delved deep to uncover the extent of the super-rich's grip on London. A masterpiece. -- Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and 1%Turning large swathes of London over to the Super-Rich was meant to generate a sloshing pool of wealth that would 'trickle down' to the rest of us. In practice, the detailed, informed and devastating trawl through the global capital of the ruling class in Alpha City proves the only thing that has trickled down is contempt.' -- Owen Hatherley, author of The Ministry of NostalgiaOpens the lid on a can of dangerous worms. While Britain's policies to tempt the world's mobile hot money and its owners have blessed a small section of the population, Atkinson reveals how this has cursed far larger numbers of people, as the super rich have sucked away wealth, talent, investment, culture, government attention, and opportunities from the majority. A welcome and urgently important corrective to the dominant British narrative that the super-rich benefit London and the wider nation. -- Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure IslandsA great book that provides vital insights into a strangely under researched group - the wealthiest people on the planet. -- Anna Minton, author of Big CapitalIn Alpha Cities, Rowland Atkinson lays bare how London has been geared up as the world's monument to inequality. It exposes the tactics of gilded elites alongside their legions of enablers and hangers on, and the ways in which they have turned an already tough city into a 21st century dystopia, where the ultra-rich glide through pristine, soulless environments while the infrastructure we all need decays around us. This fast-paced guide to the new gilded age is a timely warning of how much damage inequality can do. * Douglas Murphy, author of Nincompoopolis *Timely and relevant...Alpha City takes us through the ugly world of a mega city captured by wealth. Cities and towns have always struggled with inequality and the social and spatial realities of unequal access to power and resources. In the great global cities, such as London and New York, these inequalities have often been more stark. -- Eoin Ó Broin * Irish Times *An urgent reminder of the capital's inequalities. -- Ceri Radford * Independent *The inequalities are glaring. It is a revealing but unsettling read, whatever page you land on. -- Angela Cobbinah * Camden New Journal *Essential reading before Covid-19, is even more so now . . .vividly describes how the super-rich have distorted the socioeconomic and physical landscape of London * Morning Star *[Atkinson] writes with flair. The long-term result of the pressures he charts is starting to be felt. -- Mika Ross-Southall * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisIf farce follows tragedy, what follows farce? Where does the double predicament of a post-truth and post-shame politics leave artists and critics on the left? How to demystify a hegemonic order that dismisses its own contradictions? How to belittle a political elite that cannot be embarrassed, or to mock party leaders who thrive on the absurd? How to out-dada President Ubu? And, in any event, why add outrage to a media economy that thrives on the same? What Comes After Farce? comments on shifts in art, criticism, and fiction in the face of the current regime of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption. A first section focuses on the cultural politics of emergency since 9/11, including the use and abuse of trauma, paranoia, and kitsch. A second reviews the neoliberal makeover of art institutions during the same period. Finally, a third section surveys transformations in media as reflected in recent art, film, and fiction. Among the phenomena explored here are "machine vision" (images produced by machines for other machines without a human interface),"operational images" (images that do not represent the world so much as intervene in it), and the algorithmic scripting of information so pervasive in our everyday lives.Trade ReviewEvery word cuts to the quick in this extraordinary book. Foster shows that true criticism must be swift and surgical, but it must also hurt. He casts his relentless and unflinching gaze on the crises of our time, from new fundamentalisms to alternative facts, from cultural imperialism to perpetual war. And yet these essays do not pose the twenty-first century as a cycle of tragedy and farce, doomed to repeat itself, but as a threshold-through which art can, and perhaps must, take us * Michelle Kuo *What Comes After Farce confirms what many have known for a long time: Hal Foster is indisputably the most important cultural critic writing in English today. No one else consistently offers such nuanced and cogent analyses of the tangled trajectories of the arts and media in this era of globalized financial capitalism. At the same time, few come close to Foster's discerning familiarity with the work of the most venturesome artists, novelists, filmmakers, and architects or to his critical understanding of the difficulties and challenges now facing them in our current state of emergency. -- Jonathan Crary, author of 24/7These essays, mostly on art (and culture and politics and violence and technology), read as one seamless and disturbing account of a catastrophic historical epoch: our own. Hal Foster offers no solace but instead his deft and trenchant wisdom on how we got here. -- Rachel KushnerIlluminating, theoretically informed criticism of contemporary art. -- Kevin Brazil * art-agenda *The rapid pace of Foster's prose captures the frenzied historical moment he is exploring, and his reluctance to offer simple answers acknowledges that multiple possibilities for reshaping our culture are currently ranged against each other. ... [this] lively and eloquent book convinces us that provocative artistic interventions remain possible. -- Oliver Eagleton * Guardian *Foster traces how artists have responded to the political situation, while also asking how art criticism should respond to artworks and, through them, the broader moment ... The title [What Comes After Farce?] is apt, not only because it invokes a great problem facing the left-how to imagine a future amid this mess-but also because it reflects the interrogative quality of the book's texts. -- Erika Balsom * Art in America *The clarity of his prose is satisfying in itself ... While I was reading What Comes After Farce? I felt that I was in the hands of one of the most skillful critics at work today. -- Barry Schwabsky * The Nation *Foster's various texts move smartly and broadly across spheres ranging from sculpture and painting to cinema and literature, but most consistently he choreographs a dance between art and the larger culture that is its cradle. The articulation of one always imprints the other. Time and again in this respect, Foster is a pleasure to read for his sweeping statements that are still earned in their matter-of-factness, as when he makes short work of the contemporary art world's spiraling expansion in tandem with shifting economic structures. -- Tim Griffin * Artforum *Magisterial ... [Foster possesses] a breathtaking erudition that he wears lightly. -- PopMatters * Vince Carducci *

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Book SynopsisAmericans have long been asked to support the troops and care for veterans' psychological wounds. Who, though, does this injunction serve?As acclaimed scholar Nadia Abu El-Haj argues here, in the American public's imagination, the traumatized soldier stands in for destructive wars abroad, with decisive ramifications in the post-9/11 era. Across the political spectrum the language of soldier trauma is used to discuss American warfare, producing a narrative in which traumatized soldiers are the only acknowledged casualties of war, while those killed by American firepower are largely sidelined and forgotten.In this wide-ranging and fascinating study of the meshing of medicine, science, and politics, Abu El-Haj explores the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder and the history of its medical diagnosis. While antiwar Vietnam War veterans sought to address their psychological pain even as they maintained full awareness of their guilt and responsibility for perpetrating atrocities on the killing fields of Vietnam, by the 1980s, a peculiar convergence of feminist activism against sexual violence and Reagan's right-wing "war on crime" transformed the idea of PTSD into a condition of victimhood. In so doing, the meaning of Vietnam veterans' trauma would also shift, moving away from a political space of reckoning with guilt and complicity to one that cast them as blameless victims of a hostile public upon their return home. This is how, in the post-9/11 era of the Wars on Terror, the injunction to "support our troops," came to both sustain US militarism and also shields American civilians from the reality of wars fought ostensibly in their name.In this compelling and crucial account, Nadia Abu El-Haj challenges us to think anew about the devastations of the post-9/11 era.Trade ReviewA bracing, riveting, and vitally important critique of American empire and the ideological mechanisms for normalizing permanent warfare. Few authors have considered the psychosocial and ethical instruments of imperial warfare with such clarity or looked so directly at US culpability in the War on Terror. Every single US taxpayer should read this book. -- Joseph Masco, author of The Future of FalloutIn this path-breaking book, Abu El-Haj examines changes in the understanding of combat trauma to demonstrate that psychiatry, operating in tandem with imperial interventions, helps create the political conditions necessary for the reproduction of U.S. militarism. With her finger on the pulse of American political life, she shows how perpetrators become victims, while the primary casualties of American military violence are ignored, dismissed, and forgotten. -- Lisa Wedeen, author of Authoritarian ApprehensionsTable of ContentsIntroductionPart 1: From Agent to VictimChapter 1: Psychiatry as Radical Critique: "Post Vietnam Syndrome"Chapter 2: The Politics of Victimization: Feminism, the Victims of Crime Movement, and Reconstructing the War in VietnamPart 2: Combat Trauma After 9/11Chapter 3: Soldier's Trauma, RevisitedChapter 4: The Politics of Moral InjuryPart 3: Conscripting CitizensChapter 5: Caring for MilitarismChapter 6: The (American) Civilian EpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThe publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most influential figures in the Western Marxist tradition. On Ideology charts Althusser's critique of the theoretical system unveiled in his own major works, and his developing practice of philosophy as a "revolutionary weapon."Trade ReviewOne reads him with excitement. There is no mystery about his capacity to inspire the intelligent young. -- Eric HobsbawmAlthusser traversed so many lives-so many personal, historical, philosophical and political adventures; marked, inflected, influenced so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and provocative force of his thought-that the most diverse and contradictory accounts could never exhaust their source. -- Jacques Derrida

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Book SynopsisFrom the acclaimed author of How Will Capitalism End? comes an omnibus of long-form critical essays engaging with leading economists and thinkers. Critical Encounters draws on Wolfgang Streeck's inimitable writing for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, among other publications. It opens with treatments of two contrasting historical eras - factory capitalism and financialization - and three of the world's major economies: the United States, France and Germany. Delving into the world of ideas, Streeck discusses the work of Quinn Slobodian, Mark Blyth, Jürgen Habermas and Perry Anderson. Finally, he zooms out to compare his home discipline of sociology to natural history, giving a remarkable and non-deterministic reading of Charles Darwin. In the preface, Streeck reflects on the art (or craft) of book reviewing and the continuing merits of the book form. Critical Encounters also includes a series of 'Letters from Europe', penned as the coronavirus descended upon the Continent.Trade ReviewSynthesises the various strands of left crisis theory into a convincing proposal, as strong psychologically as it is on economics. -- Paul Mason * Guardian, Books of the Year 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End?] *A must-read. * Financial Times, Best Books of 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End?] *Streeck sees a destructive convergence of three fixed trends in late capitalism: a declining rate of economic growth, soaring overall indebtedness, and rising economic inequality in both income and wealth. His work interlocks with recent dark conclusions by Robert J. Gordon, Thomas Piketty, and Wendy Brown, among others. -- Norman Rush * New York Review of Books [on How Will Capitalism End?] *Streeck's sweeping and empirically founded inquiry reminds one of Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. -- Jürgen Habermas [on Buying Time]A superbly provocative work of political economy. -- Aditya Chakrabortty * Guardian [on Buying Time] *A compelling and distinctive analysis of the current political moment. -- Hans Kundnani * The World Today *

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Book SynopsisA young revolutionary plants a bomb in a factory on the outskirts of Algiers during the Algerian War. The bomb is timed to explode after work hours, so no one will be hurt. But the authorities have been watching. He is caught, the bomb is defused, and he is tortured, tried in a day and sentenced to death by guillotine. A routine event, perhaps, in a brutal conflict that ended the lives of more than a million Muslim Algerians.But what if the militant is a "pied-noir"? What if his lover is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust? What happens to a "European" who chooses the side of anti-colonialism? By turns lyrical, meditative, and heart-stoppingly suspenseful, this debut novel by Joseph Andras, based on a true story, was a literary and political sensation in France, winning the Prix Goncourt for First Novel and being acclaimed by Le Monde as "vibrantly lyrical and somber" and by the journal La Croix as a "masterpiece".Trade ReviewVibrantly lyrical and somber...strikingly powerful * Le Monde *A masterpiece * La Croix *Lyrical, precise, and rhythmic * L'Humanité *Empathic, nerve-wracking, and inspired * France Info *A great book even before being a first book * Phillipe Claudel, Goncourt judge *A clear-eyed recreation of postwar Communism and the armed battle against tyranny, shot through with intense prose and insight into the characters' inner lives. * Publishers Weekly *A promising debut ... Andras revives a lost moment in history * Kirkus Reviews *Deeply affecting ... A remarkable book. * Morning Star *Pithy ... in Leser's translation, Andras's prose is like the films of Jean-Pierre Melville, by turns raw and atmospheric, philosophical and hard-boiled. -- Matt Hartman * Protean Magazine *As cogent as it is compelling. -- Jeremy Garber * PowellsBooks.Blog *Remarkable and original ... a short book that leaves a deep impression * New Internationalist *Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us subverts colonial morality and interrogates a philosophical dilemma that is still very much alive in our contemporary consciousness: how can Western powers torture, incarcerate, and execute "terrorists" without first reckoning with their own relentless, centuries-long terrorism? And who is to determine which side serves justice and which perishes? -- Brady Brickner-Wood * Ploughshares *Tightly coiled ... Andras is fastidious about adhering to the known facts. His restraint is commendable * Literary Review *Vivid ... Iveton not only becomes a historical symbol, but reanimated as a flesh-and-blood man who loved and was loved back -- Rebecca Liu * Prospect *Electrifying. ... Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us insists on plumbing the thorniest details of history's scandal, suggesting - convincingly - that certain truths are best revealed in fiction. -- Kaiama L. Glover * New York Times *Andras delivers a brisk, angry slap of outraged idealism . Powerful -- Boyd Tonkin * Spectator *A stunning book * Lucy Writers *Andras brings the story [of Fernand Iveton] back to life with painful immediacy and palpable urgency. * The Arts Desk *Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us is a compact narrative with an elevated pulse and a singular purpose - to show how an unexceptional person may act exceptionally when oppression is too threatening to one's community to ignore. ... [Andras'] prose is lucid, unsparing but also animated by a certain poised affection for its oppressed characters. [His] unfussy, vivid phrasing may evoke the style of another Algeria-based novel - namely Camus' L'etranger. -- Ron Slate * On the Seawall *An intense portrait of a moment in history ... in an equally intense and lyrical translation by Simon Leser ... a powerful book * Lunate Fiction *[Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us] is just 137 pages long, but every one of them is taut and fraught, a nightmare of noble intentions gone horribly wrong. -- James Tarmy * Bloomberg Businessweek (The 14 Books to Put on Your Reading List This Spring) *Short, intense, the best book I've read this month -- David Mills * Sunday Times *Editors' Choice * New York Times Book Review *A modern J'Accuse that puts the state in the dock ... condemnatory and heartfelt -- Sanjay Sipahimalani * Money Control *Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us is a lean, mean slab of righteous radicalism and unjust retribution. A consummate novelist, Joseph Andras is a talent not to be ignored. * Bookshop.org *Subtle, concise, evocative, and poetic. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *Structured around the events of a few bleak months, the circumstances, both personal and political, that led Iveton to his predicament are revealed in flashbacks that are seamlessly inserted into the text. -- Mark Rappolt * ArtReview *Compelling -- Declan O'Driscoll * Irish Times *An austerely compelling account of the capture, trial and execution ... Andras's bleak account is leavened by passages of vibrant lyricism -- Laura Garmeson * Times Literary Supplement *Like the love child of Camus' The Stranger and Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers: elemental, brutal and calm all at the same time. -- Ryne Clos * Spectrum Culture *Tender and beautiful -- Sean Sheehan * The Prisma *A short, very simply but beautifully written book * Irish Marxist Review *

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Book SynopsisEnslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there's no question that they earned their place in history. Pick any Caribbean island and you'll find race, skin colour and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. In A Kick in the Belly, Stella Dadzie follows the evidence, and finds women played a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance - a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.From the coffle-line to the Great House, enslaved women found ways of fighting back that beggar belief. Whether responding to the horrendous conditions of plantation life, the sadistic vagaries of their captors or the 'peculiar burdens of their sex', their collective sanity relied on a highly subversive adaptation of the values and cultures they smuggled with them naked from different parts of Africa. By sustaining or adapting remembered cultural practices, they ensured that the lives of chattel slaves retained both meaning and purpose. A Kick in the Belly makes clear that their subtle acts of insubordination and their conscious acts of rebellion came to undermine the very fabric and survival of West Indian slavery.Trade Reviewreview for Heart of the Race: A feminist classic -- Bernardine Evaristo * Times Literary Supplement *review for Heart of the Race: As relevant as ever . Heart of the Race gives a huge amount of insight into black women's agency and activism in British history. * Institute of Race Relations *review for Heart of the Race: Vivid * National Geographic Traveller *In clear, accessible prose, this book upturns versions of the past that privilege his-story, revealing a more complex and many-layered past, one in which enslaved women were central to the struggle for freedom. -- Suzanne Scafe, co-author of The Heart of the RaceShocking, enlightening, fascinating, challenging, A Kick in the Belly reframes the overwhelmingly male perspective on the transatlantic slave trade through female experiences and acts of resistance. It is a essential corrective to centuries of sublimation and the presentation of black women who lived through this history as passive victims. I cannot recommend it highly enough. -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherStella Dadzie has given us another chapter in women's history by uncovering resistance that is uniquely rooted in controlling reproduction. This is a meticulously researched narrative that privileges the people who were so brutally treated that it was easy to assume they had no agency. We now know that such an assumption would be mistaken. This is an essential addition to the corpus of historical study into the nature, legacy and impacts of the period of African enslavement. It's finally a work that allows us to better understand and recognise how women disrupted the principal economic principles supporting the enslavement of generations of people. -- Arike Oke, Director of The Black Cultural ArchivesWhat has become distinctive of Dadzie's scholarship is the way she centres black women in their own stories and this continues in A Kick in the Belly...After being fed narratives that 'the material doesn't exist', A Kick in the Belly shows that it is really a matter of knowing where to look and how to listen. -- Sarah Lusack * Black Ballad *Amplifies and honours the innovative ways women fought for freedom and kept their cultures alive despite the brutality they faced...When filmmaker Ava DuVernay says she is her ancestor's wildest dreams, these are the women she's talking about. -- Sharmaine Lovegrove * Red *Highlighting the experiences of enslaved women in the Anglo-Caribbean, Dadzie gives primacy, as she did in her seminal book Heart of the Race (with Beverley Bryan and Suzanne Scafe), to Black women's voices. In doing so, she puts a narrative of empowerment and hope at the centre of the brutal history of slavery. -- Meleisa Ono-George * Times Literary Supplement *Transatlantic slavery is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented periods of history. Stella Dadzie offers a much-needed corrective by centring on the experiences of black women forced into the plantation system. -- Kehinde Andrews * BBC History Magazine: Books of the Year 2020 *Over 200 or so pages of impassioned prose, [Dadzie] delves into the many stories of female freedom fighters, from Jamaica's Queen Nanny of the Maroons, who used guerrilla warfare against the British, to those who murdered their masters with poisoned draughts like Baby of St Kitts, or became runaways like Betty, Charlotte and Molly who took flight as a trio from their Barbados plantation. -- Angela Cobbinah * Camden New Journal *

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Book SynopsisOvertime is about the politics of time, and specifically the amount of time that we spend labouring within capitalist society. It argues that reactivating the longstanding demand for shorter working hours should be central to any progressive trajectory in the years ahead.This book explains what a shorter working week means, as well as its history and its political implications. Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis examine the idea of reducing the time we all spend labouring for other on both a theoretical and political level, and offer an analysis rooted in the radical traditions from which the idea first emerged. Throughout, the reader is introduced to key theorists of work and working time alongside the relevant research regarding our contemporary 'crisis of work', to which the authors' proposal of a shorter working week responds.Trade ReviewThis is a vital contribution to the growing debate around free time and reducing the working week.With millions saying they would like to work shorter hours, and millions of others without a job or wanting more hours, it's essential that we consider how we address the problems in the labour market as well as preparing for the future challenges of automation. * John McDonnell, Labour Shadow Chancellor [praise for the authors' report on the shorter working week] *This is a path-breaking report on one of the most promising ideas of our time * Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Utopia for Realists [praise for the authors' report on the shorter working week] *In this terrific book, Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis present a remarkably clear and powerfully compelling case for shorter working hours as a path to greater sustainability, equality, and freedom. -- Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem With WorkOvertime is a stirring call to action in the fight for a shorter working week. Crucially, Lewis and Stronge remind us that no victories for workers have ever been won without struggle. Overtime is a critical text for socialists seeking to understand how the world of work has changed, and how to imagine a world in which our lives are no longer dominated by it. -- Grace Blakeley, author of The Corona CrashThe centuries old struggle by workers to free themselves from the dictatorship of work has emerged once more. Freedom from drudgery and the reduction in working hours have never been won without a fight. This book will prove invaluable in arming not only those who want to understand that struggle but also more importantly those who want to engage in it. -- John McDonnell, MPIt's no longer enough for the left to just shout jobs, jobs, jobs. Overtime not only shows why shorter working weeks need to be an integral part of a new deal for all workers, but also how it will be won. -- Ellie Mae O'Hagan, Director of CLASS think tankFocusing on a work-obsessed society, the failure of labor-saving technology to reduce work hours, the undervaluing of women's work, and the toll of work on the environment, Overtime brings both hope and despair. * Booklist *A compelling case for shortening the current work week, a policy that could see less overworking, more jobs, gender equality and a greener future. -- Ella Glover * Huck *Timely ... reveals the urgency of the conversion to a shorter working week. -- Adele Walton * gal-dem *

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Book SynopsisThroughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest-rallying others around them or, sometimes, inspiring uprisings many years later. This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent should be in the arsenal of every rebel who understands that words and ideas are the ultimate weapons.Trade ReviewThe Verso Book of Dissent shows the many ways in which the constant struggle to create a better world has broken through the walls of apathy and acquiescence. -- Noam ChomskyA delightful anthology to dip into if you are or have ever been disgruntled with the status quo . for radicals everywhere. -- Nick Lezard * Guardian *A very right-on compendium of opposition to authority. -- Gavin Bowd * Scotland on Sunday *Reading the [The Verso Book of Dissent] is like encountering the best version of our angry selves. -- Jonathan Messinger * Time Out Chicago *A near-definitive anthology. -- Richard Whittaker * Austin Chronicle *The anthology's editors excerpt the writings of a wide array of historical figures, including Socrates . Martin Luther King . [and] the Marquis de Sade. * National *A unique anthology. * Kaleidoscope *Almost a Leftist coffee-table book ... a good gift for budding activists and writers. * Global Comment *This anthology presents voices of dissent from throughout history and across the globe: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos, demonstrating that words and ideas are the ultimate weapons. * Greenlight Books *

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Book SynopsisWith the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal markets since the 19thCentury, and especially since World War II, has been inscribed into everyday practices that are usually unconsciously reproduced. The authors show that they are a main driver of the ecological crisis and economic and political instability.The Imperial Mode of Living implies that people's everyday practices, including individual and societal orientations, as well as identities, rely heavily on the unlimited appropriation of resources; a disproportionate claim on global and local ecosystems and sinks; and cheap labour from elsewhere. This availability of commodities is largely organised through the world market, backed by military force and/or the asymmetric relations of forces as they have been inscribed in international institutions. Moreover, the Imperial Mode of Living implies asymmetrical social relations along class, gender and race within the respective countries. Here too, it is driven by the capitalist accumulation imperative, growth-oriented state policies and status consumption. The concrete production conditions of commodities are rendered invisible in the places where the commodities are consumed. The imperialist world order is normalized through the mode of production and living.Trade ReviewThe highly readable book by Brand and Wissen exposes an internal contradiction fraught with consequences: the imperial mode of living undermines its own operating conditions. Currently, the dominant reaction to this fact consists of desperate attempts to secure the exclusivity of this mode of living even under altered conditions. -- Stephan Lessenich * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung *The facts of the "imperial mode of living" are nothing new. The merit of the authors lies in showing its related problems broadly, well founded in theory and substantiated by empirical material. -- Joachim Hirsch * Frankfurter Rundschau *To fight the ecological crisis, the realm of political economics ought to be included as well, because it would clearly show the problems with the global North's globalised norms of production and consumption. -- Jutta Bichl, Paolo Freire Zentrum, AustriaDeveloping a counter-hegemony to the imperial mode of living would mean articulating both structural and everyday alternatives. Brand and Wissen call for seeking out confrontation with the elites in contested societal (nature) relations and countering the imperial mode of living with a solidary one. -- Evelyn Linde * analyse & kritik *Empathy for the worries of people who are situated well above average on a global scale, but are increasingly unsettled in their sphere of life, would be needed for the transformation-oriented left, if it were to take a hegemonic project seriously. -- Andreas Novy * Austrian Journal of Political Science *An explosive book that not only helps in understanding the multiple crises of our times, but also shows approaches for overcoming them. -- Knut Henkel * die tageszeitung *The book shows that a sound analysis of society is not an academic end it itself but has a high relevance for the political discourse. -- Bernd Sommer * GAIA *Using the term "mode of living", the authors succeed in defining the embedding of global power relations in the everyday actions of people in the North without raising moral accusations. [.] The imperial mode of living has the hallmarks of compulsion, but at the same time enables, creates conveniences and expands scopes of action. While it can be sustained only for the price of intensifying economic and ecological crises, it contributes to the stabilization of the societies of the North, including their injustices, and remains attractive for those excluded, whose hope is not pinned on overcoming the imperial conditions, but on participating in the exclusive privileges. -- Gerd Schoppengerd * express *Brand/Wissen conceive the term "mode of living" [...] as a category of systematic connections between action and structure. The term connects the analysis of the everyday practices people use to reproduce social conditions to a critique of social structures that make just these practices appear to be the conditions for a good life [...]. Norms for modes of production and consumption are embedded in these practices just as much as are forms of state regulation that arose from social conflicts. In other words, the imperial mode of living forms part of a hegemonic combination that does not confront the social actors as something external but constitutes them as subjects and conveys a capacity for action to them, which they adopt and reproduce in their everyday practices. -- Jörg Reitzig * Politikum *With their effort to start with the daily normality of the imperial mode of living, Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen managed an important strike, especially in the political realm. -- Klaus Dörre * Sozialismus *If you want to understand the multiple crises of our times and are searching for answers, you must read this book. It is an exceptional proof of the practical value of political science. -- Gerhard Klas * Südwestrundfunk. Die Buchkritik *An essential political read for our times. Spelling out the brutal contradictions of the 'imperial mode of living' and its 'green economy', Brand and Wissen invite the reader to consider a 'solidary mode of living'. Here, sociability and sustainability can be joined, and hopefully celebrate the rich plurality of global cultures. -- Ariel SallehThis lucid articulation of 'the imperial mode of living' as a pathbreaking concept, helps us to better understand the continuing neo-colonial relations of production and consumption between the Global North and South. It shows their devastating social and ecological consequences, and why 'green economy' like approaches will not save us and the planet. Rather, systemic, fundamental alternatives are needed, and this book brilliantly demonstrates why. -- Ashish KothariProudly wearing the cloaks of what they call revolutionary Realpolitik and radical reformism, Brand and Wissen offer both a bracing and radical assessment of the current ecological crisis and a roadmap of the pathways from fossil capitalism. The imperial model of living saturates everyday life resting upon the unlimited appropriation of resources, a disproportionate claim to global and local ecosystems and sinks and cheap labor from elsewhere. Yet the concrete production conditions of consumed commodities and their environmental destructiveness in the Global North and South alike are typically invisible, rarely crossing into critical reflection. The Imperial Mode of Living offers a brilliant analysis of how and why this sense of normality is produced in a time of multiple and overlapping crises, and how such a mode of living simultaneously creates these crises and stabilizes social relations in the countries where its benefits are concentrated. A tour de force. -- Michael Watts, University of California, BerkeleyThe Imperial Mode of Living introduces a much needed addition to our understanding of imperialism by looking at the ways in which global structures of imperial domination, extraction, and production have created consuming classes with imperial lifestyles that threaten the ecological survival of the planet. It also helps make sense of the new phase of imperial domination and extraction of the global South through engendering consuming classes in both the global North and South. By making visible the taken-for-granted daily practices of consumption and production and linking them to imperial structures, Brand and Wissen have produced an indispensable contribution. -- Michelle Williams, Professor of Sociology and Chairperson of the Global Labour University Programme, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South AfricaBrand and Wissen assert that it will only be possible to overcome the destructive global imperial mode of living by changing the current ways of working and of consumption, and by putting solidarity into practice across society. The German-language publication of the book garnered a discussion that was both broad and intensive, precisely because the authors insist on the need to rethink social transformation beyond hitherto concepts of reform or revolution. -- Joachim Hirsch, Goethe University, Frankfurt/M.The Imperial Mode of Living is a very enlightening and also useful conceptual tool to connect the mainstream essentialist criticism of capitalism and a critical analysis of the everyday life of people within it. With the help of it, we can have a better understanding of the political and economic dynamics of contemporary capitalism, a globalized as well as 'universalized' system or hegemonic mode of living, which constitutes a great challenge for the emerging global Green-left politics. -- Qingzhi Huan, Beijing UniversityThis book vividly illuminates what imperialism means today, elucidating the deep structures of social and ecological injustice on which prosperity is currently premised. Eschewing simple moral appeals, the book superbly threads together the cultural and economic forces that make the richer parts of the world feel comfortable with the status quo. Brand and Wissen lay the groundwork for a much-needed shift in the cross-border conversation over alternatives. -- Emma Dowling, author of The Care Crisis (2021)The Imperial Mode of Living is a powerful contribution to the Left's strategic debates worldwide. Its bold and controversial thesis on the everyday implications of global economic and ecological inequality deserves to be discussed widely. -- Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, AmsterdamA pathbreaking thesis - and a truly essential reading for making sense of the 'global constellations of power' that shape the world we live in. Looking at the socio-ecological contradictions of Western societies from the perspective of their manufactured elsewhere, and the normalized violence of extractive relations - this book magisterially complements the tradition of anti-imperialist, 'revolutionary Realpolitik' (Rosa Luxemburg). -- Stefania Barca, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, PortugalComing out of the Corona virus crisis, there has to be a radical transformation in the way that we live. This book is an excellent way into the discussion of the mode of living that is destroying the earth. A solidary mode of living or authoritarian neo-liberal corona capitalism: that, the authors suggest, is the choice we face. No debate could be more important. -- John HollowayIn the tradition of debates about imperialism, this book emphasizes its effects on the crucial level of everyday life and, more broadly, interrogates what constitutes our modes of living today. Bringing together consumption, extractivism and production, Brand and Wissen provide an updated reading and multilevel map not only of capitalist exploitation, but also of the underlying political elements behind migration, the rise of the right and the urgent need to rethink class and ecology from the point of view of social reproduction. Through the notion of themode of living as a constellation of elements, this book is a renewal of anti-imperialist theory. -- Verónica Gago, Universidad de Buenos AiresAn accessible and deep examination of imperialism's historical and present construction of a global economy designed to not only dominate the peoples and nations outside the capitalist core, but also to keep that economy's ecological destructiveness in those nations, too. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *In her great work of 1913, Rosa Luxemburg had shown that the accumulation of capital is only possible if there is an outside that enables the preservation and development of the inner core of the capitalist mode of production. Inevitably capitalism is an imperial order. Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen link this insight of Luxemburg to the fact that the mode of living, including desires, everyday production and consumption patterns such as mobility in the centers of modern capitalism are also imperial. They describe the strategy for an alternative of a solidary mode of living, the emergence of which requires nothing less than a new Great Transformation beyond capitalism. -- Michael Brie, Head of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rosa-Luxemburg-StiftungThis book is a must read, particularly poignant for scholar working on consumption and sustainability. The concept of an 'imperial mode of living' captures the idea that power relations permeate both everyday life, and political as well as economic spheres. Mundane and routine practices, performed without much reflexivity - such as driving a car or preparing a meal - reveal broader social inequalities and forms of environmental deterioration that become normalized, accepted, even respected, and thus difficult to change. From describing the problem and introducing the concept, the authors then lead us down a promising avenue: that of solidarity and social learning. Such measures are not the sole remit of heroic individuals, however, they require multiple and perhaps messy collective action. Because...Ya basta! -- Marlyne Sahakian, University of GenevaA book for these times ... The Imperial Mode of Living not only offers a novel grasp of the links of everyday life to crises and inequalities on a global scale, but it also takes a stand for the necessity of politics from below. -- Stefan Schoppengerd * LSE Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThroughout written history and across the world, women have protested the restrictions of gender and the limitations placed on women's bodies and women's lives. People-of any and no gender-have protested and theorized, penned manifestos and written poetry and songs, testified and lobbied, gone on strike and fomented revolution, quietly demanded that there is an "I" and loudly proclaimed that there is a "we." The Book of Feminism chronicles this history of defiance and tracks it around the world as it develops into a multivocal and unabashed force.Global in scope, The Book of Feminism shows the breadth of feminist protest and of feminist thinking, moving through the female poets of China's Tang Dynasty to accounts of indigenous women in the Caribbean resisting Columbus's expedition, British suffragists militating for the vote to the revolutionary petroleuses of the 1848 Paris Commune, the first century Trung sisters who fought for the independence of Nam Viet to women in 1980s Botswana fighting for equal protection under the law, from the erotica of the 6th century and the 19th century to radical queer politics in the 20th and 21st.The Book of Feminism is a weapon, a force, a lyrical cry, and an ongoing threat to misogyny everywhere.Trade ReviewA perfect bedside book for feminists. A commonplace book that is anything but commonplace. -- Alix Kates Shulman

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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 * Unmastered is a smart rejoinder to the idea that pleasure has nothing to teach us. -- Parul Sehgal * Slate *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, and LondonIn 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 Laing, author of Funny WeatherThought-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 * 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 * InsideHook *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 *[Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] welcomes us to experience a twenty-first-century feminist version of Freud's aporia. -- Jeannie Suk Gersen * New Yorker *A necessary contribution to an important conversation. * The Week *A well-researched exploration of what sex, sexism, desire and power mean now. -- Mika Ross-Southall * Spectator *Angel makes the compelling argument that desire should not have to be known in advance in order to protect women from sexual violence and that consent is not static. -- Daisy Schofield * Huck *A breath of fresh air ... [Tomorrow Sex Will be Good Again] describes with great, sensitive accuracy the reality of being a woman with a sex life in the twenty-first century. -- Marianela D’Aprile * Jacobin *Timely . Angel does much more than merely refresh what has become a tired conversation about consent. . a slim, potent, elegantly argued polemic -- Zora Simic * Australian Book Review *Angel is measured and meticulous, which makes her book delightful, powerful, and worthwhile. -- Joseph Fischel * Signs *[Angel marshals] pithy arguments about consent, desire, arousal, and vulnerability, and these arguments are anchored by solid and hearty feminist claims. -- Shoniqua Roach * Signs *This work is misleadingly slender, more capacious than slight . [Angel] evokes the indeterminate radiance encountered in Georgia O'Keeffe's floral paintings, a space where the possibilities of sex reside as 'an unfolding'. -- Tali Lavi * Saturday Paper *Short but rich in ideas ... [Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] offers a thoughtful, nuanced articulation of the problems and issues we face surrounding sexual assault and bad sex, without rushing to a solution. -- Elodie Rose Barnes * Lucy Writers' Platform *It should not be women's responsibility to keep sex safe. Angel argues powerfully that sexual ethics not be reduced to hard and fast prescriptions about consent -- Fiona Capp * Sydney Morning Herald *A much-needed intervention. -- Vicky Spratt * Refinery29 *One of the most important books you'll read all year. -- Jessie Thompson * Evening Standard *[Angel] argues for uncertainty and vulnerability ... Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again is part of an emancipatory project that, paradoxically, asserts a need not to be strong. -- Anne Enright * New York Review of Books *Gracefully argued and informed by flashes of brilliance ... a powerful contribution to the not always rational debate about consent and feminine sexual autonomy. * The Australian *Incisive and elegant ... in four searching essays that treat consent, desire, arousal, and vulnerability in turn, Angel does not reject legal and material remedies but looks beyond them, seeking succor in the interstices of our erotic relationships-in the sheer force and fact of desire itself. -- Becca Rothfeld * Boston Review *Exciting. -- Alexandra Schwartz * New Yorker *Angel is here to stick up for the timorous and to defend vulnerability as both a sexual virtue and a deep well of potential pleasure ... a rich companion piece to [Unmastered] -- Sarah Gilbert * Sydney Review of Books *Packs a punch -- Hannah Witton * More Hannah - Best 2021 Books *Brilliant -- Izabella Scott * White Review *

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Book SynopsisIn austerity Britain, disabled people have been recast as worthless scroungers. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and the media alike have made the case that Britain's 12 million disabled people are nothing but a drain on the public purse. In Crippled, journalist and campaigner Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the stories of those most affected by this devastating regime. It is at once both a damning indictment of a safety net so compromised it strangles many of those it catches and a passionate demand for an end to austerity, which hits hardest those most in need.Trade ReviewEveryone should read this book. * Labour Briefing *Frances Ryan's Crippled powerfully brings into sharp focus the lived experiences of disabled people. -- Sam Smethers * Fawcett Society *A powerful book ... Austerity kills and it is killing disabled people. Ryan does a brilliant job of describing the human costs. * Fabian Society *A blistering polemic, full of telling details. * Guardian *This powerful book by respected journalist, Frances Ryan is the perfect wake-up call for anyone sleep-walking through austerity. -- Simon Duffy * Fabian Review *Comprehensively and competently dissects the spin behind austerity, and its most unpardonable effects. * LeftLion *Crippled is a timely read that could bring anyone out of a Brexit news-induced stupor. * politics.co.uk *In Crippled, Frances Ryan, a fine journalist, broadcaster and campaigner for disability rights, robustly stacks up the evidence that ought to put politicians - especially chancellors - in the dock. -- Yvonne Roberts * Observer *A devastating look at both the policies that impact disabled people and the toxic rhetoric behind them - and what needs to change to make it right. * Vice *A devastatingly on-point critique of austerity politics and the worsening attitudes towards those with disabilities. * Morning Star *Frances and her columns were a constant source of inspiration as we researched and prepared I, Daniel Blake. She never loses sympathy for the human experience, nor lets the personal story undermine the razor sharp analysis of power. Crippled is another stunning piece of investigative journalism. It does make the blood boil, and cuts right through the propaganda. -- Paul Laverty, Screenwriter of I, Daniel BlakeFiercely angry, compulsory, and shocking reading - shining a vital light on the cruelty austerity Britain has meted out to those with disabilities. Do not look away. Read this and fight back. -- Angela ClarkeA brilliant, bitter blend of polemic and reportage that is certainly worthy of Orwell but which, more importantly, is eminently worthy of the betrayed citizens whose lives have been blighted by Tory austerity. It's high time a writer should do our disabled friends, family, colleagues and neighbours justice. It is forensic in its condemnation. It will make you rage. -- Lucy Rhiannon CosslettI wish I could force everyone in the UK to read this book. It's a ferocious, thoroughly substantiated indictment of this government's maltreatment of its disabled children, women and men. It's not a secret that austerity is a choice, but Frances Ryan intimately maps this calculated evil and the cost, in lives, it exacts. -- Rob DelaneyA fascinating insight into the harsh realities of living as a disabled person in the 21st century. A must read for anyone with a conscience -- Lee RidleyThis devastating depiction of the impact of austerity on disabled people should shake our political system to its foundations. Frances Ryan forensically exposes the scandalous politics that have left so many disabled people cold, hungry, living in poverty and pain and often suicidal. It's a cry from the heart but more importantly it's a determined demand for change. -- John McDonnellFrances Ryan reminds us what real investigative journalism looks like - except that this is a book, compelling in the case it makes. Vulnerable, disabled people are treated with conscious cruelty by politicians who have closed their eyes to the despair they have caused. We know that the welfare state has been almost wrecked, but Frances Ryan's impeccable research shows, in detail, what this means in the daily lives of those with disabilities. Keep this book on your shelves, refer to it often, and use the ammunition in its pages to bring back compassion and dignity for all our citizens. -- Ken LoachNo one has done more to shed light on how austerity is harming disabled peoples lives. This book is so important, it should be read at least by every policy maker in the country. -- Jess Phillips, MPRyan is an expert in her field. Furthermore, as a disabled person writing about disabled peopleas rights and issues, her voice is a vital addition to the debate. Essential reading. -- Baroness Tanni Grey-ThompsonThis book should be widely read. Students of disability, those who work with us in any capacity and those who study social policy will particularly benefit from reading Crippled. * Critical Social Policy *should become a classic of disability literature. Every voter in Britain should read it. Every MP should be required to. * Sick Magazine *

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Book SynopsisIn this landmark book, the author of The New Enclosure provides a forensic examination and sweeping critique of early-twenty-first-century capitalism. Brett Christophers styles this as 'rentier capitalism', in which ownership of key types of scarce assets - such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, or digital platforms - is all-important and dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals: rentiers. If a small elite owns today's economy, everybody else foots the bill. Nowhere is this divergence starker, Christophers shows, than in the United Kingdom, where the prototypical ills of rentier capitalism - vast inequalities combined with entrenched economic stagnation - are on full display and have led the country inexorably to the precipice of Brexit. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers' examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it. Frequently invoked but never previously analysed and illuminated in all its depth and variety, rentier capitalism is here laid bare for the first time.Trade ReviewIn praise of The New Enclosure:With his carefully crafted and meticulously researched study, he has made an essential contribution to our understanding of politics and government in modern Britain. -- Adam Tooze * Financial Times *In praise of The New Enclosure:The biggest privatisation of all isn't housing, railways, or utilities, but the oldest source of oligarchic power-land. In this clear, readable, accessible and maddening book, Brett Christophers makes clear the massive mismanagement, waste, opacity and centralisation of wealth that has resulted. Necessary reading for anyone who wants to know where ruling class power comes from, and how to take it back. -- Owen HatherleyIn praise of The New Enclosure:If you're someone who's interested in Britain-and I mean Britain tout court: the whole 80,823 square miles of its physical existence-then this is a book you must read. -- Will Self * Guardian *In praise of The New Enclosure:Brett Christophers's The New Enclosure towers with empirical and argumentative force. Christophers dissects the process by which 1.6 million hectares, or 8 percent of Britain, ended up in private hands since the election of Margaret Thatcher. This is a stunning work of scholarship. It speaks to the history of capitalism and social inequality, cast as the undemocratic ownership of nature. -- Steven Stoll * Orion Magazine *In praise of The New Enclosure:British taxpayers have been robbed blind by the recent fire sale of 400 billion pounds of public land. Like Henry VIII's destruction of the monasteries, Thatcher's privatisation frenzy has led to the destruction of public assets unprecedented amongst leading economies, and to the enrichment of landowners and financiers. In this comprehensive and rigorously researched book, Brett Christophers opens up a field of study-public land-largely buried by academia, landowners and no doubt, by financiers. A must-read. -- Ann PettiforA seminal study * Guardian *Our economic present is supposed to be characterised by free markets, unleashed creative entrepreneurship, the control of knowledge, and globalisation of production. Yet as Brett Christophers shows in this incisive and vital study, the supposedly long-dead rentier is the characteristic capitalist of our age, not the entrepreneur of neoliberal theory. Thinking beyond the clichés, and the standard statistical summaries of the economy, he shows that instead of entrepreneurs there are exploiters of ownership and control who underinvest in the future. The new rentiers are everywhere, passively piling up the returns accruing from investments, from land, from housing, monopolistic utilities, consumer credit, and the control of platforms, natural resources and long-term contracts. -- David Edgerton, author of Rise and Fall of the British NationEmpirically rigorous and theoretically insightful, Rentier Capitalism is a fascinating contribution to the debate on the changing face of British capitalism. Christophers makes a clear and compelling case that the profits of some of the largest British corporations stem not from production itself, but from their ability to exploit their control over critical resources to extract economic rents.' -- Grace Blakeley, author of StolenEmpirically rich and theoretically astute, Rentier Capitalism offers a definitive account of a central feature of neoliberal capitalism: the resurgent power of unproductive assets. Spanning finance, housing, fossil fuels and the public sector out-sourcing racket, this will be a vital resource for anyone seeking to make sense of economic inequality and injustice in the UK and beyond. -- Will DaviesOur economic present is supposed to be characterised by free markets, unleashed creative entrepreneurship, the free production and flow of knowledge, and the frictionless mobility of capital and production. Yet as Brett Christophers shows in this incisive and vital study, the supposedly long-dead rentier is the characteristic capitalist of our age, not the entrepreneur of neoliberal theory. Thinking beyond the clichés, and the standard statistical summaries of the economy, he shows that instead of entrepreneurs there are exploiters of ownership and control who underinvest in the future. The new rentiers are everywhere, passively piling up the returns accruing from investments, from land, from housing, monopolistic utilities, consumer credit, and the control of platforms, natural resources and long-term contracts. -- David EdgertonIn this eye-opening, wide-ranging, and pedagogical book, Brett Christophers reveals the outsized role that rents play in today's economy-from natural resources to intellectual property, from land to finance, from infrastructure to digital platforms. This is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding modern-day capitalism. -- Gabriel Zucman coauthor of The Triumph of InjusticeBrett Christophers' comprehensive study of the dominance of rent will change how we think about inequality. Contemporary capitalism relies more on controlling something valuable than it does on making something valuable. Rentier Capitalism is a brilliant and indispensable book. -- Jodi DeanIf you want to understand the complexities of modern capitalism, there is no better place to start than Brett Christophers' ambitious new exploration of rentierism. Unique in examining this phenomenon across its multiple facets, Christophers' insightful analysis reveals the inner workings of rentier capitalism with grit and detail. This is essential reading for all serious students of political economy. -- Greta R. Krippner, University of MichiganAt last! For some years the great and the good have been muttering about the rentierisation of the economy, without really defining what they mean. What is rentier capitalism and what do we do about it? How did capitalism go from being all about "doing" to all about "having"?These are some of the most important questions we should be pondering in the coming years. And now, finally, we have a book that defines this crucial trend and provides a forensic analysis of it. An insightful, fascinating read. -- Ed Conway, Sky News Economics Editor, a Times columnist, and author of The SummitTo understand the inequalities of wealth and power that define contemporary capitalism, read this important book. Rentierism shapes every sphere of our shared lives, Christophers shows, from energy to real estate, aerospace to health care, and entertainment to Airbnb. Tracing the different way each sector is organized to compel payments to those who monopolize its key assets, the book explains how rent takes multiple forms. It is this variability that allows capitalism's extraordinary profits--and inequalities--to be generated at every juncture. -- Timothy MitchellWe are plagued by wealth and income inequality, declining productivity, falling investment, and polarized populations. But how are they related? Christophers answers that question, in my view definitively, by showing us how the economy we inhabit is a province of rents protected by power, in everything from finance and patents to carbon extraction and land ownership. Few books come along that fundamentally challenge the way you see the world. This is one of them. Christophers rewired my understanding of capitalism on a fundamental level. Piketty told us that the Trente Glorieuses were a stochastic blip, not a fundamental change. He saw that in the data. Christophers builds upon this insight a theory as to why that is that is both compelling and powerful - that the equilibrium state of capitalism is one of rent accumulation - and that such an equilibrium is a question of class power exercised through the state. -- Mark BlythAn essential read for anyone thinking about what UK governments might need to do differently as the pandemic upends the economy, and people's jobs, without doubt feeding an appetite for some significant change in the philosophy of public policy. -- Diane Coyle * The Enlightened Economist *An important and urgent contribution to our understanding of modern capitalism. -- Christine Berry * openDemocracy *A striking reminder of the way-in the UK economy, in this case-concentration of ownership has continued to increase in recent decades. -- Diane Coyle * Five Books, Best Economics Books of 2020 *Arguably one of this year's most important books. -- Will Hutton * Guardian *Rentier Capitalism is an autopsy report for a decomposing corpse. Christophers clinically dissects a corrupted body, before arriving at a probable cause of death. Of course, capitalism is still with us, but for those wanting to understand the system more, the better and sooner to end it, this book is essential reading. -- Glyn Robbins * Socialist Review *It's all crackling, shimmering stuff ... you'll start seeing rentiers everywhere, hearing them in every news bulletin, or envisioning how they all interlock like a lattice of money-pipes, situated at almost every choke point in supply, and all involved in massive anti-competitive behaviour. -- Mic Moroney * Irish Times *From North Sea oil to the railways to water and electricity, this is a damning book about what successful British firms actually do - bid for privatised contracts, charge large rental fees, and sit back and let the profits come in from poor-quality, monopolised services. -- Owen Hatherley * Tribune *Rentier Capitalism presents convincing evidence of the extent to which rent-seeking has become a central aspect of the British economy. -- Richard Goulding * Greater Manchester Housing Action *Masterful ... a rigorously researched and theoretically insightful account of how large areas of capitalism have changed from "doing" to having. -- Sean Byrne * Dublin Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisFor nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick's essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, All That is Given illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick's work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what binds us to the larger world.In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom's Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, All That Is Given brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1970s. Alternately crackling with urgency or lucid with insight, the essays in All That Is Given demonstrate one of America's most beloved critics at her best.Trade Review"Gornick's language is so fresh and so blunt; it's a quintessentially American voice, and a beautiful one." -- Dwight Garner * The New York Times *She deserves as much credit as any writer alive for codifying the current form of the personal essay -- Nora Caplan-Bricker * The Cut, New York Magazine *She presents her interview subjects like characters in literature, as the protagonists of their own experience, and, for that reason, the book is not simply documentary but a work of literature, too, rich, moving, and contradictory. -- Alexandra Schwartz * The New Yorker *Her unrepentant belief in strong feeling as the heartbeat of any political approach to the world explains why, though many good histories of American communism have appeared since Romance, none have captured, elevated, and lit up the experience in quite the same way. -- Lana Dee Povitz * Los Angeles Review of Books *Written with her usual cogency, verve, and elegance -- George Scialabba * Boston Review *Vivian Gornick is more than a formidable intelligence, she's an entire sensibility. The essays collected here show how a mind shapes and becomes itself in engagement with the writers, thinkers, social facts and theories of her many days. The voice, at once her own and the expression of an entire culture-New York, working class, feminist, Jewish, both open-minded and skeptical-is a gift to be handed down from one generation to the next. You're holding that voice in your hands. -- Marco Roth, author of The ScientistsWe all talk the talk about public intellectuals nowadays. Vivian Gornick walks the walk. The essays in Taking a Long Look could not be more direct, more authoritative, more alive with the pleasures of discovery or alert to the ambiguities of argument. Whether writing literary or political criticism, memoir, or feminist polemic, her mastery is assured. -- George Scialabba, author of How to Be Depressed[Taking a Long Look] is illuminating and a welcome addition to the astute critic's oeuvre. * Publishers Weekly *Vivian Gornick is more than a formidable intelligence, she's an entire sensibility. The essays collected here show how a mind shapes and becomes itself in engagement with the writers, thinkers, social facts and theories of her many days. The voice, at once her own and the expression of an entire culture-New York, working class, feminist, Jewish, both open-minded and skeptical-is a gift to be handed down from one generation to the next. -- Marco Roth, author of The ScientistsThe lasting value of her work lies in her commitment to the question of what it means to feel "expressive": to experience the feeling that tells a person "not approximately, but precisely" who they are. -- Dayna Tortorici, The New York Review of BooksVivian Gornick is one of the most important essayists of all time. Whether writing on the self, feminism, isolation or politics, she is urgent, sharp-eyed and vital. A superb collection. -- Sinéad Gleeson, author of ConstellationsAn engaging collection of sharp, lively essays. * Kirkus Reviews *Taking A Long Look is a magisterial volume of essays which span fifty years of cultural and feminist interrogation. -- Lauren LeBlanc * Observer *An exhilarating trip. -- Elodie Rose Barnes * Lucy Writers *Gornick's work is frequently an examination of the seams of history and her unflinching focus shows how things might have been shaped, and perhaps still could be. * Morning Star *Incisive * New York Times *Magisterial -- Lauren LeBlanc * Observer *To read Gornick is to firstly fall in love with the act of reading ... The closeness of her reading resembles an archivist collecting items to store, cataloguing little details invisible to others ... In Gornick's hands, everything has a story to tell. -- Barathi Nakkeeran * Chicago Review of Books *In having another occasion to consider Gornick, there are more opportunities to celebrate what makes her writing so distinctly her own-she is the rare writer who always wants to find, in a chorus, a voice. -- Haley Mlotek * Hazlitt *Vivian Gornick's brilliant half-century writing career can't be captured in a single essay or volume. To engage with her writing is to be left wanting more of her writing. -- Liza Featherstone * Jacobin *Reading Vivian Gornick often feels like watching someone paint: you're not sure, at first, what it's going to be, but you're happy to follow her brushstrokes as the picture emerges ... Gornick repeatedly goes further, looks longer, risks more. -- Claire Lowdon * Times Literary Supplement *Taking a Long Look [shows] Vivian Gornick's consistency as a searing writer and canny thinker. -- Nell Beram * Shelf Awareness *Captivating. Through Gornick, we observe and understand the undertow of politics in an individual's everyday life; we glimpse pain, loneliness and hopefulness. -- Lynn Enright * Irish Times *Gornick is well regarded as a stylist, and her sentences, elegant and precise, are sometimes complex but never unnecessarily ornate ... [Her essays] are lively, well observed, and particularly recommended to students of 20th-century intellectual history. -- J. Oliver Conroy * The Washington Examiner *Gornick has a sharp, authoritative mind and doesn't mince words. -- Michael Quinn * Red Hook Star-Revue *Gornick never deals the simplistic, polemical blow; instead, she mines her own hard-won experience and profound and honest ambivalence about great writers (with great flaws) to illuminate their significance as well as our collective life and times. -- Melissa Benn * Books of the Year 2021, New Statesman *This compulsive collection functions as a primer to a mind whose vitality is hard to match ... [Gornick's] insights have lost none of their brilliance. -- Hephzibah Anderson * The Observer *

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Book SynopsisWhen the successful British mystery writer Judith Moore meets Gavin, a handsome and charming baron, at a birthday party on the Cornish coast, his love transforms her from a bitter, lonely young woman into a romance heroine overnight. After a whirlwind honeymoon in Paris, he whisks her away to a secluded Gothic castle. But soon she finds herself trapped in a nightmare, as her husband's mysterious nature and his alternation between charm and violence become increasingly frightening. As Judith battles both internal and external demons, including sexual ambivalence, psychological self-torture, gaslighting, family neglect, alcoholism, and domestic abuse, she becomes increasingly addicted to her wild beast of a husband. Why do women stay in abusive relationships? The answer can be found in the tortured mind of the protagonist, whose richly layered fantasy life parallels that of the female Gothic romance reader. Filled with dark humor and evocative imagery, Bluebeard's Castle is a subversive take on modern romance and Gothic erotica.Trade ReviewBluebeard's Castle [is] . a stylised retelling of the old fable that mixes self-reference and gaudy excess. Its ­heroine, Judith, a gothic-romance novelist, shacks up in a crumbling castle with a brooding husband; the sex, death and pricy cognac are of a wildly enjoyable piece. -- Cal Revely-Calder, Best Fiction Books of the Year * Telegraph *Both a fantasy and a nightmare ... [Biller] casts a chilling light on the kinds of real-world fairy tales we are all still so often encouraged to believe. -- Elizabeth Dearnley * Times Literary Supplement *A story which is as gripping as it is troubling - and as relevant now as it has ever been. -- Barry Didcock * Herald *Grippingly intense and emotionally resonant, Bluebeard's Castle plants the reader firmly in the mind of a woman being masterfully manipulated, stripping bare any clichés and misconceptions about domestic violence. The result is a brutally honest glimpse into the tragedy of intimate partner violence that millions of women around the world have experienced. -- Sirena He * Esquire *To its final page, Bluebeard's Castle is as much an excavation of the insidious tactics of abusers as it is the culture that belittles and maligns victims, that teaches them to 'fix' their abusers or suffer the consequences. -- Kylie Cheung * Jezebel *A perfect literary debut for a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. And that cover! -- Sophia Stewart, Most Anticipated Books of 2023 * The Millions *A provocative work that adds layers of meaning as one becomes addicted to this page-turner of a book, Bluebeard's Castle is a bit of Alfred Hitchcock mixed with André Breton's Nadja. -- Tosh Berman, author of Tosh: Growing Up in Wallace Berman's WorldWritten by the filmmaker of 2016's The Love Witch, this debut novel has a similar romantic haze and a retro hyper-aesthetic swirl.stylish, scary, and peak modern Gothic. -- Maggie Lange, Most Anticipated Books * Bustle *Anna Biller's sly feminist dissection of gothic tropes is as lush and layered as her cinema...Biller skillfully portrays the gaslighting and abuse that reduce her heroine to making excuses for her boorish husband. -- Molly Odintz, Most Anticipated Books * CrimeReads *Though the story is set in the present day, Biller paints a beautifully creepy atmosphere full of billowy dresses, darkened woods, burning candles, and castle corridors full of ghosts and secrets. The novel's timeless quality helps drive home the unending nature of male violence against women. * Kirkus Reviews *Apparently, there's nothing Biller can't do, because she's bringing her gothic-meets-midcentury-camp aesthetic to the page with Bluebeard's Castle, a retelling of the famous fairy tale that also seems to be in conversation with Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. * BookPage ("Most anticipated mystery and suspense") *Bluebeard's Castle is a truly great novel...it's a delightful page-turner; multilayered and multi-dimensional. While a book of this nature is a risk in any era, it's safe to say that Anna Biller can now add novelist to her sensational register of artistic achievements. * We Are Cult *Equally steeped in the traditions of the Gothic genre and the women's picture, Bluebeard's Castle follows a romance novelist, Judith, as she's dragged into a whirlwind marriage with the dangerously charming Gavin. Its horror stems not just from the crumbling and potentially haunted castle, but from the terror of being trapped with a man who is a relative stranger to her. -- Alexandra Coburn * Screen Slate *This gothic thriller cheekily transports readers to a bygone era by drawing heavily upon classic horror movies and literature, utilizing highly stylized language, tropes, and dated gender roles while generating conversation regarding contemporary issues of consent, agency, domestic abuse, and gaslighting. The author contextualizes the self-sabotage that perpetuates toxic relationships, and fans of the author's film The Love Witch (2016) will enjoy this gothic novel. * Booklist *Biller flexes her mastery of pastiche, vividly sumptuous detail, and the subversion of classic female archetypes. In this, her first novel, a tale that begins in the style of gothic romance turns legitimately terrifying, rooted in the all too real fear of sociopathic male violence. -- Rufus Hickok * BUST *[Biller has] given the classic folk tale a feminist makeover. Call it an erotic Jane Eyre - one that both revels in and subverts the genre tropes to explore, among other things, why women like her heroine, Judith, stay in bad relationships with brooding men. * Everything Zoomer *Bluebeard's Castle is clever, disquieting, and as rich artistically as it is disciplined-in other words, everything you would expect from Anna Biller. Highly recommended! -- Brian W. Walter, professor, author, and editor of The Guestroom NovelistAnna Biller's writing is full and luminous, mirroring the classic fiction of Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë--but with a modern bite that keeps readers going back for more. -- Dominic Charles Howarth * Shelf Awareness *[Biller] transforms the gothic narrative and its spaces into a self-reflexive game; her novel offers a humorous and horrific twist on a genre that here grotesquely folds back on itself to reveal and conceal where true intent lies and the actual bodies are buried -- Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou * Worms Magazine *Bluebeard's Castle is a sexy but subversive romance novel steeped in Gothic imagery. * The Arts Fuse *A gorgeous, distinctly female gaze-but one unafraid to depict the mainstays of women's suffering, from objectification to assault. -- Chelsea Davis * Electric Literature *

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Book SynopsisThis is your nation's history on drugsAmericans are stumbling through a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics-across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?Quick Fixes blows away the pharmacological fog to take a sober look at how drugs have shaped American society. Though particularly acute in recent decades, the contradiction between America's passionate love for and intense hatred of these sub - stances has been one of its defining characteristics for over a century. Through nine chapters, each devoted to the modern history of a drug or class of drugs, Fong examines Americans' fraught relationship with psychoactive substances. As society changes, it produces different forms of stress, isolation, and alienation. These changes, in turn, affect the development and spread of medications and narcotics among the populace.By laying out the histories, functions, and experiences of our chemical com - forts, the hope is to help answer that ever-perplexing question: what does it mean to be an American?Trade ReviewProvocative, methodical, and righteously witty, Quick Fixes provides the fullest articulation I've seen of an argument often implied but rarely fleshed out: that 'drug problems' such as addiction and brutal drug wars are actually about capitalism rather than drugs. Under capitalism, Fong argues, drugs have been used to extract more labor from workers, to profit from workers' isolation and need for relief, and to police marginalized so-called 'surplus' populations. As a result both drug use and drug policing have become harmful compulsions. And because these compulsions are caused by capitalism, not drugs, we cannot free ourselves simply by ending the drug war. -- David Herzberg, author of White Market DrugsDrugs are deeply integrated into American capitalism, not just American culture. 'Profit wins in the end,' as Ben Fong says, but his clear, thoughtful, and troubling account improves the odds of the fight for better, longer lives. -- Craig Calhoun, coauthor of Degenerations of DemocracyWith drug use surging in the US, Ben Fong's fascinating look into America's relationship with psychoactive substances is unprecedented both in rigor and scope. It's a history you've never read before, and a desperately needed examination of where we are, how we got here, and why exactly we're all so blitzed. -- Amber A'Lee Frost, Chapo Trap House

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Book SynopsisWe are living through a cost of living crisis, with interest rate hikes and the prices of everyday consumables and energy bills sky-rocketing. Why is this happening? Sometimes we are told that wages are too high, or that the government has "printed" too much money or that events far away, such as the war in Ukraine, are solely to blame. The plain argument that high prices go together with high profits, falling wages, and weak production is often distorted and hidden by mainstream commentary in the media and elsewhere. This plain-speaking pamphlet tells it straight: the big businesses dominating production and distribution make huge profits out of high inflation, while working people lose out. It sets out factual evidence to illustrate that the source of record profits is the fall in real wages as inflation rises. A large part of the income of working people is being transferred directly into the profits of big business. The pamphlet shows that the deeper roots of the "cost of living crisis" lie in the very low investment and poor productivity growth for many years. The basic steps to resolving the crisis are simple: prices, especially of essentials, must be brought down, and wages, salaries, benefits, and pensions must be increased.Trade Review[An] excellent little book -- Will Podmore * The Morning Star *A small book with a mighty big punch ... Closely argued in clear, accessible language, [The Cost of Living Crisis] demolishes the decades-old lie that wage rises are the source of inflation, and backs that case with hard facts. * Scottish Socialist Voice *

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Book SynopsisIn Only a Voice, George Scialabba examines the chasm between modernity's promise of progress and the sobering reality of our present day through studies of the most influential public intellectuals of our time. In Scialabba's hands, literary criticism becomes a powerful tool for expressing political passion and demonstrating the generative power of argument and an inquisitive mind. Drawing together a diverse group of thinkers, artists, activists, and philosophers-including Edward Said, D. H. Lawrence, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ellen Willis, and Noam Chomsky-Scialabba tours western intellectual history to find that no matter the stakes, critical thought remains a necessary precondition for politics.Every writer, Scialabba writes, faces the choice of whether "to tilt at the state and capital or ignore them" - and the world now is too dire not to choose the former.Trade ReviewEssays from across the storied career of 'critic's critic' George Scialabba. Forthright yet charitable, Scialabba gleans his greatest insights from those he disagrees with and is a model for the practice of independent criticism. -- Ryan Ruby * The Millions *Never has a writer of such enviable talents displayed such evident and unpretentious pleasure in good prose. -- Sam Adler-Bell * Commonweal *Scialabba is as lively as ever...Only a Voice is filled with provocative arguments that make the reader want to argue right back. -- Daniel Lazare * Arts Fuse *A celebrated critic and essayist * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisThrough a close reading of the lives and works of some of the greatest intellectuals of recent times, Adam Shatz asks: do writers have an ethical imperative to question injustice? How can one remain a dispassionate thinker when involved in the cut and thrust of politics? And, in an age of horror and crisis, what does it mean to be a committed writer?Shatz interrogates the major figures of twentieth and twenty-first century thought and finds within their lives and work the roots of our present intellectual and geopolitical situation. Charting the role of the committed intellectual through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre on the Algerian War and Edward Said's lifelong solidarity with the Palestinian people, to Fouad Ajami's role as the "native informant" for pro-intervention cause in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, alongside philosophers and critics Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Claude Lévi-Strauss and the novelists Michel Houllebecq and Richard Wright, each struggled to reconcile their writing and their politics, their thought and their commitments. Writers and Missionaries is an erudite and incisive work of intellectual elucidation and biographical enquiry that demands that we interrogate anew the relation of thought and action in the struggle for a more just world.Trade ReviewWhat strikes the reader immediately is Adam Shatz's range, that of his subjects and that of his learning. It tells us that these essays come from a very free and strong mind. His independence of spirit is part of the intellectual tradition of the wonderfully written work that beguiles us into contemplation, further thought. We follow his questions into the past and return with better understandings of the present. A gifted soul for our times. -- Darryl PinckneyAstounding. The range, strength and intricate connectedness of these essays by Adam Shatz offers great intellectual nourishment for the reader, and his patient engagement with the work and life of the authors he follows to illustrate his ideas is staggering. What pleasure it was to read his thoughtful essays when they were first published, and what a great boost and singular satisfaction to read them altogether in this superb book. -- Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian MemoirFor over two decades, Adam Shatz has re-animated the old Anglo-American model of the man of letters, bringing a cosmopolitan flair and moral urgency to de-politicised realms of literary criticism and intellectual journalism. His refusal of conventional pieties is consistently bracing; these selected essays brilliantly showcase his broad and extraordinarily cohesive sensibility. -- Pankaj MishraThis carefully-orchestrated compendium of Adam Shatz's essays makes a gem of a book. A keen ear and attentive eye have infused his eloquent writing with humane insight and a refined political sensibility. -- Paul GilroyThe art of literary criticism lies in combining, in a condensed form, the beauty of style and the sharpness of thought. The essays gathered in Writers and Missionaries are a model of the genre. They accomplish the difficult task of balancing political commitment with critical distance, a passion for texts with an analytical gaze. They sketch an intellectual landscape made of literary, philosophical, and filmic productions through the prism of colonialism and race, war and antisemitism, emigration and exile, and humanism and structuralism. Adam Shatz's approach to French culture as a crossroads is unconventional and refreshing. This is the art of essay at its best, and a true pleasure for readers. -- Enzo Traverso, Author of Revolution: An Intellectual HistoryReminiscent of an interview, Shatz sets up his opening question, sits back, and simply lets his subjects talk. At its heart [Writers and Missionaries] is an extended exercise in listening. -- George Adams * Oxford Review of Books *The book is infused with life-to read it is almost an antidote to the cynicism that indeed does develop from too many book reviews obviously written as favors, or strategic plays on the part of the reviewer. -- Ann Manov * Los Angeles Review of Books *Indispensable for anyone trying to think seriously about the ethical demands of writing and journalism against the backdrop of dark and even catastrophic times. -- Joshua Leifer * Jewish Currents *These probing essays on writers and artists-such as Richard Wright, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, and Kamel Daoud-reflect Adam Shatz's abiding interests: the intellectual life of the Francophone and the Arab worlds, leftist politics, and the nature of political art. * New Yorker *A sustained and unflinching exploration of the role and formation of the intellectual in our society. -- Isabel Stevens * Sight & Sound *Lucid and stimulating. -- Thomas Lordan * Irish Times *A brilliant collection of political essays by one of our sharpest literary journalists. -- Nathan Thrall * Observer *

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Book SynopsisThe energy transition has begun. To succeed - to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power - that process must be fair. Otherwise, mounting popular protest against wind farms will prolong carbon pollution and deepen the climate crisis. David Hughes examines that anti-industrial, anti-corporate resistance, drawing insights from a Spanish village surrounded by turbines. In the lives of these neighbours - freighted with centuries of exploitation - clean power and social justice fit together only awkwardly. Proposals for a green economy, the Green New Deal, or Europe's Green Deal require more effort. We must rethink aesthetics, livelihood, property, and, most essentially, the private nature of wind resources. Ultimately, the energy transition will be public and just, or it may not be at allTrade ReviewDavid Hughes it doing some of the most innovative thinking and writing about energy democracy in the world. The movements for climate justice are in his debt. -- Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingNo task is more crucial than building out renewable energy around the world--but it can't happen at the speed it must unless communities embrace windmills and solar panels. And as this frank, straightforward and clarifying book makes clear, that will happen if and when we have a real stake in these assets. The author's proposals are ambitious but also modest and logical, and they are deeply grounded in real life observation--this is a book to be reckoned with. -- Bill McKibben, author The End of NatureHow do we conjure hope in these times of climate breakdown? In Who Owns the Wind? David McDermott Hughes shows that a climate-stabilizing energy revolution must socialize renewables so that wind power comes to be equated with social justice rather than private gain. McDermott Hughes takes readers to a small town in Spain where wind is abundant, and where citizens rose up against privately-owned, corporate wind power, stymieing energy transition. To head off such resistance, McDermott Hughes advocates for a "socialism of the wind." Who Owns the Wind? shows that we will win fossil fuel abolition only if we succeed in transforming renewable power into a common resource, one that tangibly benefits and enfranchises the communities where turbines and other infrastructure is located. McDermott Hughes's book should be required reading for all energy democracy advocates and environmental justice activists. -- Ashley Dawson, author of Extreme CitiesUntil reading David Hughes' exquisitely written yet hard-hitting and crusading book, I hadn't realized how much hangs on the wind-and on who will own it. From one angle it is an eco-socialist manifesto, pushing its message with an unswerving passion: build millions of wind turbines, yes, but the people must own the wind. From another, it is a sumptuous volume that sparkles with moments of almost synaesthetic beauty-while reading it you feel the Andalusian wind brush your skin...Ultimately, the author finds sparks of hope among his ethnographic and literary subjects: the individuals and the picaresque traditions of southern Spain. For those who would like our planet to remain habitable, this is a must-read. -- Gareth DaleEloquent and incisive, this is an important contribution to climate change discourse. * Publishers Weekly *As radical as the most ambitious of the green revolution's plans. -- Anna Aslanyan * Times Literary Supplement *Fascinating, highly revealing and sometimes poetic ... a joy to read. -- Gabriel Carlyle * Peace News *David Hughes provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the perils and promises of developing renewable energy. Who Owns the Wind? is a joy to read, connecting large scale global forces with the lives and stories of individuals. This is a work full of insight, critical analysis, and even a modicum of hope. -- Richard YorkWho Owns the Wind provides a fantastic account of a tense relationship between a wind farm and a 200-person village...The anthropologist's narration is rich and smooth, carefully untangling the reasons behind the inhabitant's varying postures toward the wind farm and reflecting on where these stances fit in the urgent need for a transition to clean energy. -- Paola Velasco-Herrejón * Journal of Agrarian Change *

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Book SynopsisThe art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene - the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth - is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. Typically, discussions of how culture registers, figures and mediates climate change focus on 'climate fiction' or 'cli-fi', but The Anthropocene Unconscious is more interested in how the Anthropocene and especially anthropogenic climate destabilisation manifests in texts that are not overtly about climate change - that is, unconsciously. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of 'the art and literature of our time'.Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature - across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions - this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term 'the Anthropocene', including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?Trade ReviewA scintillating work of boisterous melancholy. -- China Miéville, author of OctoberMark Bould's provocation kicks off a thrill-ride roller coaster of ideas, speeding us from one savvy insight to another about culture in the era of climate change. An essential read for anyone wanting to better understand what we know and don't know about what comes next. -- Imre Szeman, author of On PetroculturesIf The Anthropocene Unconscious weren't so fun to read, it might be too terrifying to think about. This is a book people will be quoting for the next twenty years. -- Gerry Canavan, co-editor of Green PlanetsBrilliant. A sharp, original, irreverent, and deadly serious exploration of climate's pervasive presence in all modern culture. Bould's critical elicitation of climate change across a wide range of genres, places and texts offers a novel methodology for reading, categorizing, and interpreting Anthropocene culture and the banal monstrosities of its attendant carbon capitalism. The result is a highly prescient critique of its root causes and a better means to fully realize the past, present and future effects of its unfolding catastrophes. -- Graeme Macdonald, University of WarwickBould's work is as impactful in the twenty-first century as Jacques Derrida's landmark thesis of nuclear culture was three decades ago. -- Anindita Banerjee, author of We Modern PeopleA vision from the future, a retrospective analysis of our present situation, a requiem for a world we have already lost. This is a deeply personal missive - and one that carries a powerful message: we conflate the fact and fiction of global destruction at our peril. -- John Gilbey * Times Higher Education *[Bould] is particularly good on film and its qualities ... while [his] critical arguments are carefully made, he is clear that his method includes reading an awareness of the Anthropocene into the cultural gems he examines. -- Jon Turney * The Arts Desk *Worthy and timely ... [The Anthropocene Unconscious] provide[s] us with a cultural critique that has the potential to reshape the way we think about all cultural forms, and the climate - literally - in which they are produced. -- Leila Sackur * It's Freezing in LA *Ebullient ... meshing high-theory with casual lyricism ... Bould's eco-socialist commitments seem increasingly inescapable. -- Lola Seaton * New Statesman *A swift, wide sweep ... the book's central argument is vital: our culture is submerged in climate catastrophe -- Oscar Rickett * i newspaper *Climate change, to Bould, is always on the peripheries of art, even if we can't confront it face-on, even if we would like to forget it, even when we think we were safe -- Lauren Sneade * Economy, Land & Climate Insight *Bould puts forward a compelling argument about what cultural criticism in the Anthropocene should be, and he does so with the hope of curtailing some of the slow violence and injustices of the many widely and unevenly distributed effects of climate change. -- Alison Sperling * Los Angeles Review of Books *A clear call to action, an attempt to awaken us from our slumber. * Science Fiction Studies *

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Book SynopsisWe are told that the future of work will be increasingly automated. Algorithms, processing massive amounts of information at startling speed, will lead us to a new world of effortless labour and a post-work utopia of ever expanding leisure. But behind the gleaming surface stands millions of workers, often in the Global South, manually processing data for a pittance.Recent years have seen a boom in online crowdworking platforms like Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Clickworker, and these have become an increasingly important source of work for millions of people. And it is these badly paid tasks, not algorithms, that make our digital lives possible. Used to process data for everything from the mechanics of self-driving cars to Google image search, this is an increasingly powerful part of the new digital economy, although one hidden and rarely spoken of. But what happens to work when it makes itself obsolete. In this stimulating work that blends political economy, studies of contemporary work, and speculations on the future of capitalism, Phil Jones looks at what this often murky and hidden form of labour looks like, and what it says about the state of global capitalism.Trade ReviewBeneath the noisy sphere of autonomous robots and smart assistants, Jones clearly and patiently reveals the hidden abode of underpaid, overworked, and insecure labourers that underpin our digital society. This is an essential guide to an often invisible world. -- Nick Snricek, author of Platform CapitalismLet Phil Jones be your guide to the darkest underbelly of work under digitized capitalism, where tech barons surveil workers' every move and sell their clicks for profit, and the 'job' falls apart but we work more all the time. A beautifully written call to arms to stop this miserable future before it comes for all of us -- Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You BackIn this fast-paced and exciting read, Phil Jones explores the hidden abodes of the digital economy, where the world's surplus workers label images, moderate content, and teach algorithms how to identify common house pets, all for a few cents an hour. /Work without the worker/ explores how dispossessed microworkers might band together to spearhead a global movement for free-time and material security. -- Aaron Benanev, author of Automation and the Future of WorkTakes readers to the hidden abode of production of artificial intelligence: a world of precarious, highly exploited, and onerous microwork increasingly performed in the slums, prisons, and refugee camps of sclerotic post-crisis capitalism. With an incandescent urgency, Jones argues that such digitally fragmented piecework threatens livelihoods of all sorts, but also that it offers a tantalizing potential for a world beyond wage labor -- if we can fight for it. -- Gavin Mueller, author of Breaking Things at Work[Phil Jones] establishes himself as a leading figure in what might be called post-accelerationism. -- John Foster * The Battleground *Striking ... After reading Jones' book, it is difficult to look at computers, or those who promote them as our collective salvation, the same way as before. -- Katjo Buissink * Marx & Philosophy *Microwork is the latest proof that technological development doesn't end work, but only produces new forms of labour - and new ways of concealing it. -- Katrina Forrester * London Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisIn an age of protest, culture and museums have come under fire. Protests of museum funding (for example, the Metropolitan Museum accepting Sackler family money) and boards (for example, the Whitney appointing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders)--to say nothing of demonstrations over exhibitions and artworks--have roiled cultural institutions across the world, from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to the Akron Art Museum. At the same time, never have there been more calls for museums to work for social change, calls for the emergence of a new role for culture.As director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York municipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that were also political protests. Then in January, 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials became a public controversy--she had objected to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring vice president Mike Pence.In this book, Raicovich explains some of the key museum flashpoints, and she also provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding capitalist values. And she suggests how museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.Trade ReviewUrgent -- Travis Diehl * art-agenda *[Culture Strike] brilliantly problematizes the pervasive old myth of "neutrality." -- Dessane Lopez Cassell * Hyperallergic *A must-read ... Culture Strike contains layers of honest observation from museum professionals, loving critique, historical context, and case studies that illuminate the best and worst in museum culture to offer a clear path forward. -- Cara Ober * BmoreArt *Maps out thoughtful considerations of pressing subjects that apply everywhere. Among them are the private power of philanthropy, the practical and spiritual benefits of staff diversity, unionizing cultural institutions, and the contours of museums' social responsibility. -- Christopher Knight * Los Angeles Times *Offers key contextual and historical lenses through which to consider protests that have occurred at institutions worldwide, addressing topics from museum funding to workers' rights. * Ocula *An engaging and personally invested discussion of the many controversies that have engulfed American museums -- JJ Charlesworth * ArtReview *

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Book SynopsisSilicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists and social critics have united in arguing that we are living on the cusp of an era of rapid technological automation, heralding the end of work as we know it. But does the much-discussed 'rise of the robots' really explain the jobs crisis that awaits us on the other side of the coronavirus? In Automation and the Future of Work, Aaron Benanav uncovers the structural economic trends that will shape our working lives far into the future. What social movements, he asks, are required to propel us into post-scarcity, if technological innovation alone can't deliver it? In response to calls for a universal basic income that would maintain a growing army of redundant workers, he offers a counter-proposal.Trade ReviewAaron Benanav demolishes the popular myths around automation -- Ben Tarnoff, editor of Logic magazineA powerful and persuasive explanation of why capitalism can't create jobs or generate incomes for a majority of humanity. -- Mike Davis, author of Set the Night on FireAn excellent, insightful account of the contours of our present labor crisis. Benanav articulately makes the case for a post-scarcity future. -- Robert Skidelsky, biographer of John Maynard KeynesA highly quantitative analysis of the nature of contemporary unemployment flowers into something quite different and unexpected: a qualitative argument for the invention of new collective capacities in a world where work is no longer central to social life. -- Kristin Ross, author of Communal LuxuryA rare book that manages to soberly assess the contemporary landscape while keeping a clear eye on our utopian horizons. This is an important intervention into current discussions around technology and work - and a must-read for anyone who believes capitalist decay is not the only future. * Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism *Benanav dissects and disproves the idea that automation is eradicating work ... We don't need to wait for robots to do all the work; we can collectively decide what we need, then plan the economy to achieve it. -- Paris Marx * Passage *Thought-provoking ... packs quite a punch of macroeconomics and practical philosophy. -- International Policy DigestHe can write movingly and do so on a global scale -- Patrick McGinty * Pittsburgh Post Gazette *The two parts of Benanav's book-analytic and utopian-correspond to the two halves of the Marxian project: to both interpret the world, and change it -- Lola Seaton * New Statesman *Compelling reading. A rising star among the intelligentsia of the left * Dublin Review of Books *A powerful critique ... [Benanav] carefully chart[s] how our economic system is unable to deliver further social progress and ... set[s] out a believable vision of a non-capitalist future. -- Alexis Moraitis * ROAR *Crucial ... Automation and the Future of Work is impressively multifaceted for such a short text ... an excellent book. -- Mack Penner * Labour / Le Travail *Automation and the Future of Work gathers significant cold water to pour on automation's fever dreams. -- Amelia Horgan * Radical Philosophy *Important ... an eye-opening perspective for a convincing and encouraging political project -- Görkem Giray * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisFrom 9/11 to the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, the eurozone crisis to the Brexit vote, the Great Recession to the Arab Spring, the rise of China to the annexation of Crimea, the passage from Obama to Trump and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the London-based New Left Review has offered a series of sharply critical editorials, combining argument with analysis-radical antidotes to the self-serving accounts of the Anglophone press. Contraventions brings together a selection of NLR's key political writings, covering capitalist boom and bust, the changing forms of American hegemony, the combined and uneven development of world powers, the domestic politics of the US and UK and multiple revolts from below, at the ballot box or in the streets. Bookended by broader surveys of the political-intellectual conjuncture, these essays dismantle mainstream narratives and anatomize the ideologies, institutions and on-the-ground operations of liberal-imperial rule.Contraventions includes texts by Perry Anderson, Tariq Ali, Mike Davis, Susan Watkins, Alexander Cockburn, Peter Gowan, Tony Wood, JoAnn Wypijewski, Tom Hazeldine and Dylan Riley.Trade Review"Since its inception, the review has been an invaluable source of reasoned analysis and insight into critical issues of policy, economy, society, and contemporary culture. A proud record to carry forward into difficult times ahead."– Noam Chomsky"The 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, GuardianTable of ContentsIntroduction by Susan WatkinsI. A GLOBAL HEGEMONY1. Renewals - Perry Anderson2. Our Herods - Tariq Ali3. Testing Formula Two - Perry Anderson4. Flames of New York - Mike Davis5. Force and Consent - Perry Anderson 6. Vichy on the Tigris - Susan Watkins7. Whatever Happened to the Anti-War Movement? - Alexander Cockburn8. US:UN - Peter Gowan9. The Nuclear Non-Protestation Treaty - Susan Watkinsii. CRISIS IN THE HEARTLANDS10. Shifting Sands - Susan Watkins11. Good Riddance - Tony Wood12. On the Concatenation in the Arab World - Perry Anderson13. Spring Confronts Winter - Mike Davis14. Presentism? Reply to T. J. Clark - Susan Watkins15. Annexations - Susan Watkins16. The State of the Union - Susan Watkins17. Passing the Baton - Perry Anderson18. The Politics of Insecurity - JoAnn Wypijewski19. Revolt of the Rustbelt - Tom Hazeldine20. What Is Trump? - Dylan Riley21. America versus China - Susan Watkins22. Five Wars in One - Susan Watkins

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Book SynopsisThe deadly coronavirus spread across societies already riddled with political ills: rampant xenophobia and corruption, privatisation run amok, Brexiteer vainglory of 'a global Britain', a Euroland dominated by self-proclaimed nasty parties, and in America, the unspeakable Trump. As the acclaimed historian Donald Sassoon observes in this blistering polemic, there were morbid symptoms galore.Sassoon paints an unforgettable picture of our galloping descent into political barbarism, mixing blunt exposé and classical references with an astonishing array of data. Why does the United States proportionately have more civilians owning guns than Yemen, where there is a war on? Why did the UK enter the pandemic with fewer doctors than any EU country except Poland and Romania? In Morbid Symptoms he refuses to abandon what Antonio Gramsci termed the optimism of the will, instead recalling a line from Machiavelli's Istorie fiorentine: 'do not impute past disorders to the nature of the men, but to the times, which, being changed, give reasonable ground to hope that, with better government, our city will have better fortune in the future'.Trade ReviewSassoon is both a brilliant writer and has a polymathic range. He has produced a magnum opus, an accessible and genuinely global history of the transformative but unstable character of the capitalist phenomenon. This is a book for today and tomorrow -- Harold James * Financial Times [for The Anxious Triumph] *Studded with fascinating details . . . Familiar facts mingle with jaw-dropping novelties . . . brilliant -- Adam Tooze * Guardian [for The Anxious Triumph] *An unfailingly enjoyable history of a tumultuous half-century. His asides are sometimes playful, sometimes caustic, but always to the point . . . masterly . . . the doyen of comparative historians -- Ferdinand Mount * Times Literary Supplement [for The Anxious Triumph] *

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Book SynopsisNo one personified the age of industry more than the miners. The Shadow of the Mine tells the story of King Coal in its heyday - and what happened to mining communities after the last pits closed. Coal was central to the British economy, powering its factories and railways. It carried political weight, too. In the eighties the miners risked everything in a year-long strike against Thatcher's shutdowns. Defeat foretold the death of their industry. Tens of thousands were cast onto the labour market with a minimum amount of advice and support. Yet British politics all of a sudden revolves around the coalfield constituencies that lent their votes to Boris Johnson's Conservatives in 2019. Even in the Welsh Valleys, where the 'red wall' still stands, support for the Labour Party has halved in a generation. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson draw on decades of research to chronicle these momentous changes through the words of the people who lived through them.Trade ReviewA powerful study of tumultuous political events steeped in knowledge of the coalfields. Essential reading for all those who care about the future - and hence the past - of working-class politics. -- Hilary Wainwright, author of A New Politics from the LeftAfter defeat by Thatcher, the pits were levelled and the Miners' Welfare Halls, their social and intellectual centres, vanished. With carefully controlled passion, this book indicts such ruthless disregard for the values of care and association. -- Sheila Rowbotham, author of Daring to HopeDrawing on decades of research ... [The Shadow of the Mine] is a moving account of 150 years of coalfield history ... By tracing the "deep story" of the marginalisation of Britain's coalfields, it aims to understand the continuing exclusion of working-class people in deindustrialised areas from political and social life. -- Diarmaid Kelliher * Antipode *The Shadow of the Mine reminds us why this spirit [of solidarity and collectivism] has lived on in the coalfields, in spite of people feeling a sense of political betrayal going back decades ... enlightening. -- Conrad Landin * Guardian *Refreshing and necessary ... [The Shadow of the Mine] explains in loving, careful detail why working people's relationship with Labour in former industrial communities ... had become complex and ultimately soured. -- Laura Pidcock * Red Pepper *Beynon and Hudson ... write with authority and respect of the former mining communities of Britain. -- John Lloyd * Financial Times *Starmer and his allies in Renaissance would do better to pick up a copy of The Shadow of the Mine ... As Beynon and Hudson make clear, the succession of defeats inflicted on the trade unions over the last four decades has brought about the gradual fragmentation of old loyalties. -- Tom Blackburn * Tribune *A solid account of the history of the coalfields in Durham and South Wales and the impact of deindustrialisation and closure upon them. -- Mike Phipps * Labour Hub *A brave book ... anyone interested in the transformation that has reshaped Britain's former coalfields should read The Shadow of the Mine. -- Ewan Gibbs * Jacobin *Considered, comprehensive and insightful ... a book that deserves the widest distribution -- Steven Andrew * Morning Star *Elegiac ... [The Shadow of the Mine] provides essential economic and social context for both the Leave vote in 2016 and the consequent collapse of the so-called 'Red Wall'. -- Rhian E. Jones * Tribune *The work of two outstanding 'organic intellectuals' of the very communities they are giving voice to ... Anyone who wants to go beyond the 'Red Wall' platitudes of British politics ought to start with The Shadow of the Mine. * Spokesman *Excellent -- Robert Colls * New Statesman *Superb and timely ... full of lessons and insights for today -- Steve Davies * New Socialist *A concern for the dignity of those who made (and continue to make) their lives in the coalfields runs through the book like an unbroken seam. -- Gavin Bridge * AAG Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisAlong with her mother Emmeline, and her sister Christabel, Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the leading women's suffrage activists in early twentieth-century England, working with the militant Women's Social and Political Union. Unlike her family, however, who looked to parliament and spoke to elite and middle-class women's concerns, Sylvia consistently looked to working women and the labour movement as central to her feminist politics.In this illuminating political biography, feminist historian Barbara Winslow recovers Sylvia Pankhurst's life and work for a new generation of socialists and feminists. From Pankhurst's organizing with immigrant and working women in London's East End to her revolutionary communism and growing internationalism and anti-fascism, Winslow gives us the story of a brilliantly inspiring unorthodox feminist and unorthodox socialist.With a preface from internationally recognized socialist feminist historian and activist, Sheila Rowbotham.Trade ReviewBarbara Winslow not only gives us an impressive account of Sylvia Pankhurst's feminism and socialism; she reveals a forgotten strand of radical politics, extremely relevant today. -- Sheila Rowbotham * Preface *Winslow offers a valuable perspective on a woman who faced challenges of race and sex as she pushed the agenda for social justice in her long political career. * Booklist (review of Shirley Chisholm book) *

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Book SynopsisThe past is weaponised in culture wars and cynically edited by those who wish to impose their ideology upon the physical spaces around us. Holocaust deniers use details of the ruins of the gas chambers Auschwitz to promote their lies: 'No Holes; No Holocaust'. Yet long-standing concepts such as 'authenticity' in heritage are undermined and trivialised by gatekeepers such as UNESCO. At the same, time, opposition to this manipulation is being undermined by cultural ideas that prioritise memory and impressions over history and facts. In Monumental Lies, Robert Bevan argues that monuments, architecture and cities are material evidence of history. They are the physical trace of past events, of previous ways of thinking and of politics, economics and values that percolate through to today. When our cities are reshaped as fantasies about the past, when monuments tell lies about who deserves honour or are destroyed and the struggle for justice forgotten, the historical record is being manipulated. When decisions are based on misinformed assumptions about how the built environment influences our behaviour or we are told, falsely, that certain architectural styles are alien to our cities, or when space pretends to be public but is private, or that physical separation is natural, we are being manipulated. There is a growing threat to the material evidence of the truth about history. We are in serious trouble if we can no longer trust the tangible world around us to tell us the truth. Monumental Lies explores the threats to our understanding of the built environment and how it impacts on our lives, as well as offers solutions to how to combat the ideological manipulations.Chosen as one of the best Architecture and Design books of 2022 by The Financial TimesTrade ReviewThis useful book connects a number of apparently disparate stories about statues and monuments and considers the various ironies of their representation and significance, past and present. A recommended read. -- Professor Corinne Fowler, author of Green Unpleasant LandRobert Bevan's passionate, timely polemic is a much-needed antidote to all the horror stories about 'woke' protesters tearing down monuments. The true threat to our built-up environment, he argues, comes not from the Left, but from governments who employ all the powers of the state to re-write history in their image. It is at times a truly terrifying read. -- Keith Lowe, author of Prisoners of HistoryWide ranging and rigorous, readable and profound, this superb book argues that if we can no longer trust the tangible world around us to tell the truth, then we are in trouble. Bevan offer us solutions arguing that we need to look at ways we can layer our monuments and our city that turns sites of honour into sites of shame, that change the meaning of the past without losing altogether the vital evidence of that past from the public realm. -- Liza Fior, MUF Architecture/ArtThis close reading of the city is a potent response to the culture wars because it deals in precisely the historical honesty that culture warriors have no stomach for. Righteous but always nuanced, Bevan is the perfect guide to the way urban iconography distorts history and entrenches power. -- Justin McGuirk, Senior Curator, Design MuseumA book that makes you sit up ... powerful -- Charlotte Mullins * Country Life *From statues of slave traders to pictures of medieval town centres offered as evidence of "cultural superiority", architecture and public art are everywhere in a coarsened discourse. Robert Bevan...navigates the territory delicately and brilliantly -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times, Best Books of 2022 *One of the most compelling progressive voices in the heritage world ... Using his nuanced knowledge of architectural history, he is attempting to unpick some of the myths and straight lies deployed when architecture is weaponised. -- Eddie Blake * Tribune *Bevan astutely argues that those who manipulate our cultural past are shaping our future, making the case that historic buildings have become battlegrounds for right-wing and nationalist political arguments. * The Art Newspaper, Top Books of 2022 *Knowledgeable and thought-provoking -- Daniel Trilling * Apollo *Topical, thought-provoking, knowledgeable about the uses and abuses of culture wars. -- Rowan Moore, Observer architecture criticMonumental Lies could hardly be better timed ... Bevan's book is the result of many years' research and contemplation, and is thorough, extensive and provocative ... brilliant -- Emma Dent Coad * Building Design *A book on cultural patrimony and historical architecture from Bevan's perspective is necessary ... searching and wide-ranging -- Ben Luke * The Art Newspaper *Blistering ... [a] hugely rewarding book that provides a considered and unexpected commentary on the built environment amid the culture wars -- Tristram Hunt * Times Literary Supplement *A fascinating and very wide-ranging ... rich in detailed discussions of both the artistic and architectural issues and political contexts of many different problems across the contemporary world. -- Dominic Alexander * Counterfire *Powerful ... a must-read book for everyone interested in the questions of heritage representation, diversity and the city, and the way to move forward after painful and violent pasts. -- Ammar Azzouz * Urban Studies *Monumental Lies is a highly absorbing and deserving read, and recommended for anyone with an interest in what the built environment says - or avoids saying - about history. -- Richard Crappsley * Urban Design Journal *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 - KILLERS ON EVERY CORNER CHAPTER 2 STYLE WARS /CULTURE WARS CHAPTER 3THE ANTI-COSMOPOLITAN CHAPTER 4: AUTHENTICITY: THE MATERIAL TRUTH CHAPTER 5 THE MILITARY-HERITAGE COMPLEX CHAPTER 6 THE EVIDENCE OF HISTORY CHAPTER 7: WHITE LIES, MISUNDERSTANDINGS, AND WELL-MEANING MYTHS CHAPTER 8: SUBVERSIVE TRANSFORMATION CHAPTER 9: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? THE MONUMENTAL AND ITS LIMITS

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Book SynopsisIn The Corona Crash, leading economics commentator Grace Blakeley theorises about the epoch-making changes that the coronavirus brings in its wake. We are living through a unique moment in history. The pandemic has caused the deepest global recession since the Second World War. Meanwhile the human cost is reflected in a still-rising death toll, as many states find themselves unable - and some unwilling - to grapple with the effects of the virus. Whatever happens, we can never go back to business as usual. This crisis will tip us into a new era of monopoly capitalism, argues Blakeley, as the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and the tech giants grow to unprecedented proportions.Trade ReviewOne of the most inspiring, thought provoking and insightful voices on the left offers a route map out of this crisis and this is a must read anyone who wants to change the world. -- Owen Jones * [For Stolen] *The best thing I've read about how we got into this mess, and how we get out. -- Frankie Boyle * [For Stolen] *A clear, accessible and informative guide to left economics, showing how we got to this era of capitalist crisis, environmental catastrophe and insurgent socialist revival. Grace Blakeley offers radical solutions to an exploitative and unfair system -- Bhaskar Sunkara * Jacobin [for Stolen] *Grace Blakeley is one of the sharpest of a new generation of economic and political thinkers, with a gift for clearly and eloquently explaining how we got to the crisis point we're in, and why only radical transformation will get us out. A must-read for today s activists on both sides of the Atlantic. -- Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble * [For Stolen] *One of the most inspiring, thought-provoking and insightful voices on the left -- Owen Jones, author of ChavsGrace Blakeley asserts the need for Covid-19 to be a global wake-up call. * Guardian, Biggest Books of Autumn 2020 *As Grace Blakeley notes in her excellent new book, The Corona Crash, not all increases in the size of government are created equal. * Washington Post *[The Corona Crash] makes clear that we simply cannot go back to the way things were. * Huck *Blakeley asks the question: if we are already living in a planned economy, shouldn't those making the decisions be subject to scrutiny? Shouldn't the plans that determine how we live our lives be decided democratically? * Labour Hub *An urgent read ... inspiring and thought-provoking, offering expansive resolutions in line with the Green New Deal that could transform our political, economic, and social systems. -- Anna Cafolla * Dazed *The only solution, [Blakeley] believes, is an enormous global Green New Deal. It would be hard to find a purer iteration of the socialist critique of modern capitalism in a pandemic age. -- Zachary Karabell * New York Times Book Review *An excellent exposition of pre-Covid trends towards parasitic dependence of corporate and financial capital on state monetary policy. -- Bryn Jones * Chartist *Illuminating ... Blakeley connects the dots and draws out the economic and political processes that have led from the postwar boom ... to the current 'corona crash'. * Socialist Appeal *

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Book SynopsisGathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an "anti-state state" that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.Trade ReviewScholars like Ruthie Gilmore, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay, and formerly incarcerated people like Glenn Martin have all done work to expose the many injustices of the industry of our prison system. -- Jay-Z * Time *Ruth Gilmore lays bare the diabolical logic of neoliberal incarceration. She shows us that the prison is a symptom of the decline of our civilization, how the California Nightmare has produced its disposable population. Gilmore's depressingly hopeful analysis is a wake-up call for our somnolence. -- Vijay Prashad, author of Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, WorkfareRuth Gilmore, indefatigable activist-scholar, is one of our most dangerous and important minds. A radical geographer with roots in the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she pioneered the study of mass incarceration's catastrophic impacts on inner-city families and neighborhoods, and together with Angela Davis has played a catalytic role in the creation of today's movement for prison abolition. This powerful collection of essays is an indispensable conceptual armory for that struggle. -- Mike DavisRuthie's clarity and courage is a talisman for these monstrous times, and a guide out of them. -- Vijay Prashad, director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.Abolition Geography isn't shallow romanticism. It is a rigorous criticism of capitalist social relations, which foment premature death and needless suffering of the poor and destroy the planet. Abolition geography is a human necessity for there to be freedom and a livable earth. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, one of the foremost revolutionary thinkers on abolition, draws on real historical traditions of getting free, showing us what is possible and necessary. -- Nick Estes, author of Our History is the FutureThis well-crafted assemblage of thirty years worth of Ruthie Gilmore's countless, brilliant interventions is a tremendous gift to our movements. While tending to grounded practices and particularities, Ruthie's meticulous mapping of interconnected histories offers us prescient analyses across scale, geography, and time. At a time of incredible uncertainty and global upheaval, Abolition Geography illuminates a political vocabulary and vision that reorganizes even conventional left ideologies; a tour de force and absolute must read for our collective trajectories of freedom making as world making. -- Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule and Undoing Border ImperialismThe leaderly wisdom of Ruth Wilson Gilmore infuses this hefty volume, making it an indispensible compendium of practical abolitionism. In her hands, reducing police powers and dismantling the prison industrial complex become immediate matters of political struggle. If you want to come to terms with the movement that shaped the "American Summer" of 2020, this is the best available starting point. -- Paul Gilroy, author of The Black AtlanticRuth Wilson Gilmore is one of the most impactful radical thinkers of our time. This compilation of thirty years' worth of essays, interviews, and co-written reflections, is evidence of the depth and breadth of her extraordinary political praxis. Powerful, provocative, inspiring and inciting, this edited collection offers a formidable indictment of racial capitalism and the carceral state, a deep, complex and multi-faceted portrait of abolitionist work, and a call to action. Readers concerned with freedom-making and liberation will read this brilliant body of work carefully and act decisively. -- Barbara Ransby, activist, historian and author of several books, including Making All Black Lives Matter and Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.Abolition Geography is a collection of three decades of Ruth Wilson's Gilmore's brilliance in the form of essays and interviews on the politics of abolition as a theorist, researcher and organizer. The result is a precious gift that will be read, studied and cherished for years to come by those of us who believe her when she says to be green we must be red, and to be red our world building must be planetary. -- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Noopiming: The Cure for White LadiesAn essential collection of writings from one of the most important thinkers on abolition, geography and racism of our time. -- Karla J. Strand * Ms.Magazine *Abolition Geography is the first collection of writing by this major thinker, activist, and writer in the fields of racism, geography, and incarceration. The book includes essays, articles, and interviews from the last two decades, covering topics such as the origin of mass incarceration and racial violence and the concept of the 'anti-state state'. * Autostraddle *Anyone with an interest in the critical theory of mass incarceration and social justice can't miss this first-ever compendium of writing by one of the most brilliant and radical minds in the field. [An] impactful guidebook for a whole new generation looking to join the movement. * The Chicago Review of Books *For over three decades, Gilmore's work has been crucial to the study of policing and prison abolition...Her newest anthology, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, includes essays on policing, capitalism and organizing [that] are more critical than ever two years after the largest street mobilization in decades. Expertly assembled by scholars Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, the anthology reproduces Gilmore's essays chronologically from 1991 to 2018. The only way to escape the cycles of police violence, protest and retrenchment will be to collectively build popular, abolitionist frameworks for relating to each other. Gilmore's work helps us move toward that goal. -- Andreas Petrossiants * AJ+ *A geographer by training, Gilmore has a sweeping understanding of prisons and policing, one that approaches the issue at scale. If you haven't read her yet, it's a good year to start. -- Lexi McMenamin * Teen Vogue *A scathing exploration of global systems of oppression through a lens of geography, in which [Gilmore] asserts that freedom and liberation are a physical, tangible place - they're material conditions, not platitudes and niceties from ultra-rich politicians. -- Kylie Cheung * Jezebel *Introduced by a stimulating essay by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano, [Abolition Geography] ranges from theoretical chapters originally published in academic journals to public speeches and interviews conducted with other scholars. This anthology format allows the reader to see how Gilmore introduces, experiments with and then develops ideas in real time, taking us from the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the 2021 neo-fascist attack on the US Capitol building. -- Christopher McMichael * New Frame *Gilmore is clear as a bell: potent and factual on injustice, filled with sharp intelligence and even wit, but also somehow continuously surprising and emotional. With every page, Gilmore forces us to think of race, class, prisons, and the world in entirely new ways. -- Kamil Ahsan * NPR *Gilmore's work is enlightening and informative, a must-read for scholars and activists seeking a complex and interdisciplinary deep dive to effectively drive systemic change...Anyone committed to prison reform and social justice has much to learn from Gilmore's insights about the cognitive work and tactical organizing required to imagine and build an abolitionist future. -- Maileen Hamto * Seattle Book Review *Gilmore's prose is descriptive and direct; it describes a society whose economy has failed too many of its members and whose only solution is to create a police state. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *More than explaining or urging any single scalar change in social life, the purpose of Abolition Geography is to develop the ability of its readers to study the transformations of racial capitalism, figure out what to do about them, and follow through with enough patience to withstand the enormity of the task and enough urgency to get it done...Abolition Geography is written to be used. -- Kay Gabriel * Dissent *As Gilmore always reminds us, theory is a guide for action. This volume is a call to get on with the practice of getting free together. -- Orlando R. Serrano, Jr. * Smithsonian Magazine, Best Books of 2022 *Notable book, 2022 * Seminary Co-op *[Abolition Geography] is only the latest generous and supportive gift from Gilmore to liberation-minded abolitionist movements. This gift seems to be written as a call, an invitation to act and do...Abolition Geography contains fire, grit, and hope as well. -- Brit Schulte * The Avery Review *

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Book SynopsisIn this authoritative, accessible study, historian Suzanne Schneider examines the politics and ideology of the Islamic State (better known as ISIS). Schneider argues that today's jihad is not the residue from a less enlightened time, nor does it have much in common with its classical or medieval form, but it does bear a striking resemblance to the reactionary political formations and acts of spectacular violence that are upending life in Western democracies. From authoritarian populism to mass shootings, xenophobic nationalism, and the allure of conspiratorial thinking, Schneider argues that modern jihad is not the antithesis of neoliberalism, but rather a dark reflection of its inner logic.The Apocalypse and the End of History is written with the sensibility of a political theorist and based on extensive research into a wide range of sources, from Islamic jurisprudence to popular recruitment videos, contemporary apocalyptic literature and the Islamic State's Arabic-language publications. The book explores modern jihad as an image of a potential dark future already heralded by neoliberal modes of life. Surveying ideas of the state, violence, identity, and political community, Schneider argues that modern jihad and neoliberalism are two versions of a politics of failure: the inability to imagine a better life here on earth.Trade ReviewSchneider demolishes the myth that modern jihadi violence is anything other than a product of modernity. -- Rashid KhalidiBy attributing Islamic militancy neither to immediately political nor distantly theological causes, Suzanne Schneider's wonderfully lucid and convincing argument allows us to see it in anew as something both familiar and frightening in its ubiquity. The links she draws between the violent, apocalyptic, and nihilistic character of ISIS and the colonial origins of neoliberal practices make for a wholly original approach to the subject. -- Faisal Devji, author of Muslim ZionIn her revelatory new book, Suzanne Schneider dismantles all-too-common invocations of jihad as a timeless, essentialized force that defines a monolithic and static version of Islam. Instead, she situates the concept firmly within the context of contemporary geopolitical, economic, and ideological trends. Deftly juxtaposing classical Islamic jurisprudence alongside social media propaganda videos, the polemics of Western politicians alongside the narratives of individual jihadis, the PowerPoint presentations of private military corporations alongside glossy org charts produced by extremist groups, and more, Schneider brilliantly challenges prevailing assumptions about sovereignty, the nation state, the monopoly on violence, and more. Through her erudite analysis, entities like ISIS emerge not as atavistic reincarnations of medieval brutality, but rather as responses to political and economic conditions that implicate and even darkly mirror developments in the imperial core. The result is both a clarifying vision of our contemporary moment and a generative stock of provocative insights into possible futures for the Middle East, the nations that define themselves as making up "the West," and the broader, interconnected world that contains and belies easy distinctions between the two. -- Patrick Blanchfield, author of Gunpower[Schneider's] discussion of the "jihadists," their motivations and rationales most certainly need to be heard by those who would send their military to foreign lands. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *

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Book SynopsisWe are living in the midst of the greatest public health crisis of our time.Confronting the many challenges of this moment-from the medical to the economic, the social to the political-demands all the moral and deliberative clarity we can muster. Bringing together coverage of the unfolding pandemic from the critically acclaimed Boston Review, this collection explores the history and social legacies of pandemics, explores the place of science in popular culture and policy-making, and interrogates the ways in which science and health have been politicized.Thinking in a Pandemic collects the latest arguments from doctors and epidemiologists, philosophers and economists, legal scholars and historians, activists and citizens, as they think not just through this moment but beyond it.While much remains uncertain, our responsibility to public reason is sure. Now, more than ever, we affirm the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a healthier and more just world.Contributors include: Alex de Waal, David S Jones, Stefan Helmreich, Jeremy Greene, Dora Vargha, Jonathan Fuller, Marc Lipsitch, John Ioannidis, Trisha Greenhalgh, Sarah Burgard, Lucie Kalousova, Cailin O'Connoer, James Owen Weatherall, Natalie Dean.Trade ReviewBoston Review is so good right now. -- Naomi Klein, activist and New York Times best-selling authorBoston Review cuts out the noise, the posturing, and the hysteria and engages ideas with intelligence and humanity. In other words, it's a democratic place for a reading public. -- Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning authorBoston Review has done more than its share to help set the standard for public discourse. -- Victor Navasky * The Nation *When it comes to publishing fresh and generative ideas, Boston Review has no peer. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los AngelesI love Boston Review for being unfailingly smart, perceptive, and unexpected. -- Elizabeth Bruenig * Washington Post *Always challenging, always provocative, Boston Review brings a fresh and insightful perspective to the literature and politics of a multicultural age. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., general editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature

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Book SynopsisThe Unconscious knows no time, it has no before-and-after, it does not have a history of its own. Yet, it does not always remain the same. Different political and economic conditions transform the way in which the Unconscious emerges within the "psychosphere" of society. In the early 20th century, Freud characterized the Unconscious as the dark side of the well-order framework of Progress and Reason. At the end of the past century, Deleuze and Guattari described it as a laboratory: the magmatic force ceaselessly bringing to the fore new possibilities of imagination. Today, at a time of viral pandemics and in the midst of the catastrophic collapse of capitalism, the Unconscious has begun to emerge in yet another form. In this book, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi vividly portraits the form in which the Unconscious will make itself manifest for decades to come, and the challenges that it will pose to our possibilities of political action, poetic imagination, and therapy.Trade ReviewAs a diagnostician, Berardi is among the sharpest. * Slate *Bifo is a master of global activism in the age of depression. His mission is to understand real existing capitalism. Sense the despair of the revolt, enjoy this brilliant 'labour of the negative'! * Geert Lovink, Founding Director of the Institute of Network Cultures *

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Book SynopsisMaking the Revolution Global shows how black radicals transformed socialist politics in Britain in the years before decolonisation. African and Caribbean activist-intellectuals, such as Amy Ashwood Garvey, C.L.R. James, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore, came to Britain during the 1930s and 1940s and intervened in debates about capitalism, imperialism, fascism and war. They consistently argued that any path towards international socialism must have colonial liberation at its heart. Although their ideas were met with opposition from many on the British Left, they convinced significant sections of the movement of the revolutionary potential of colonised peoples. By centring the entanglements between black radicals and the wider British socialist movement, Theo Williams casts new light on responses to the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the 1945 Fifth Pan-African Congress, and a wealth of other events and phenomena. In doing so, he showcases a revolutionary tradition that, as illustrated by the global Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020, is still relevant today.Trade ReviewTheo Williams authoritatively details how Black militant Pan-Africanist radicals in Britain around George Padmore not only fought for colonial liberation in Africa and the Caribbean during the 1930s and 1940s but also worked with the Independent Labour Party led by Fenner Brockway to help change the way half the British Left thought about racism and imperialism. This very impressive organisational history of the International African Service Bureau thus illuminates the wider relationship of socialism to black liberation in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and so represents an invaluable contribution to scholarship on 'the red and the black'. -- Christian HogsbjergA fine, nuanced study of Black radical contributions to critical debates within the U.K, Europe, Africa and the colonies about the interplay of capitalism, fascism, and imperialism. Williams's exceptional archival research is matched by a dogged commitment to recovering the lives and work of key figures like George Padmore and C.L.R. James. This book gives fresh perspective to the 20th century European Left, and helps to decolonize the study of global radicalism. -- Bill V. Mullen, Emeritus Professor of American Studies, Purdue UniversityA timely book which sparkles with fresh ideas. In his accommodating prose Williams shows how the native traditions of British socialism and diasporic Pan-Africanisms coexisted in a jarring but constant dialogue. He brings to light the buried pas de deux which reveals each to have been in the other. This is a history in which every moment resonates for the present.. -- Bill SchwarzWilliams' account throws more light on a story that has yet to be told in its entirety - how campaigners across race lines worked together to contribute to the great world-shaping movements towards decolonisation and liberation. This is a serious and worthwhile addition to scholarship on internationalism. -- Priyamvada GopalMaking the Revolution Global powerfully recasts the story of interwar Black British radicalism, illustrating the ways anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism shaped British socialism. This timely, rich and layered account demonstrates that anti-racism and anti-imperialism were not marginal to the metropolitan left, but instead constituted key axes of debate and contestation among British socialists. -- Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-DeterminaitonThis very thoroughly researched book is an exploration of the political attitudes/policies of left-wing political parties (and then even the Labour Party) regarding imperialism, colonialism and independence in the UK. It investigates the relationships between Black activists - individuals and organisations - and these political parties. After all, 'imperialism was central to capitalism', which explains why some/many want to retain the colonies. And what was the effect on them all? So a vast amount of information on George Padmore, Makonnen, C.L.R.James, Chris Jones, et al, including women activists. And just as much on the organisations they set up/were involved with eg IASB, Pan-African Federation, Negro Welfare Association. It ends with an analysis of their influence on returning African leaders such as Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. -- Marika SherwoodFascinating and revealing -- Neil Rogall * rs21 *

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Book SynopsisWhy is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it often difficult for working people to organize around common interests? How do we begin building a more equal and democratic society? These are the questions that are answered in Confronting Capitalism.Even though political organizing can be very hard, political education does not have to be. This will be the book that a generation of socialists turn to for strategy and understanding. Combining elements of Marxism and modern social science with clear language, Chibber is able to outline the core dynamics of our economy and politics. This book provides an indispensable map of how our world works and a proposal for how socialists might overcome the odds and build a democratic and egalitarian future.Trade ReviewThis is an extraordinary book on the dynamics and politics of capitalism. I cannot think of anyone other than Chibber who could achieve such clarity and such depth. -- Anwar Shaikh, Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research and author of Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises.Arriving just as we're all tempted by despair, Confronting Capitalism brilliantly illuminates our current predicament and guides us towards the only way out. Chibber reminds us that there is no way to fight injustice without confronting capital. And there is no effective confrontation of capital without a mass working-class movement. This book is both a clear primer for new leftists as well as a clarifying call to arms for seasoned veterans. -- Krystal Ball, host of Breaking Points and Krystal Kyle & FriendsA lucid and compelling account of the essential nature of capitalism, and how its shackles can be removed by a revived labor movement animated by a commitment to solidarity and the common good. -- Noam ChomskyIn this slim but mighty account, a social theorist tackles the issues of global inequality, extreme wealth, and rampant corruption in democratic countries, while explaining the structures of international capitalism and how the world can move toward a more equitable future. -- Miguel Salazar * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisTo understand the scale of what faces us and how it ramifies through every corner of our lives is to marvel at our inaction. Why aren't we holding emergency meetings in every city, town and village every week?What is to be done to create a planet where a communist horizon offers a new dawn to replace our planetary twilight? What does it mean to be a communist after we have hit a climate tipping point?The Tragedy of the Worker is a brilliant, stringently argued pamphlet reflecting on capitalism's death drive, the left's complicated entanglements with fossil fuels, and the rising tide of fascism. In response, the authors propose Salvage Communism, a programme of restoration and reparation that must precede any luxury communism. They set out a new way to think about the Anthropocene. The Tragedy of the Worker demands an alternative future - the Proletarocene - one capable of repairing the ravages of capitalism and restoring the world.Trade ReviewSalvage is the most exciting journal to appear on the anglophone left over the past decade: avant-garde Marxism with no illusions, perfectly pitched to our dismal times. Here the formidable Salvage Collective tackles the defining question of those times: the ecological crisis. The result is the most beautiful and urgent essay yet written on what climate catastrophe means for the struggle for communism, in the past, present and future. This is one for the ages. -- Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a PipelineThe kind of realism we need to meet this moment: eyes wide open. Strangely poetic, as befitting a tragedy. I never want to read books about the ecological crisis twice, but this one I will return to many times, because it's layered. Layered but legible; bold and without pretention - this is a book you can't wait to pass along to a friend, because despite its grimness, it evokes that feeling of common cause. -- Holly Jean Buck, author of After GeoengineeringA book that ought to be essential reading for all ... detailed, convincing and critically important. -- Andy Hedgecock * Morning Star *

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