Verso Books

Book SynopsisHillary Rodham Clinton is one of the most powerful women in world politics, and the irrational right-wing hatred of Clinton has fed her progressive appeal, helping turn her into a feminist icon. To get a woman in the White House, it's thought, would be an achievement for all women everywhere, a kind of trickle-down feminism.In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the mantle of feminist elect has descended on Hillary Clinton, as a thousand viral memes applaud her, and most mainstream feminist leaders, thinkers, and organizations endorse her. In this atmosphere, dissent seems tantamount to political betrayal.In False Choices, an all-star lineup of feminists contests this simplistic reading of the candidate. A detailed look at Hillary Clinton's track record on welfare, Wall Street, criminal justice, education, and war reveals that she has advanced laws and policies that have done real harm to the lives of women and children across the country and the globe. This well-researched collection of essays restores to feminism its revolutionary meaning, and outlines how it could transform the United States and its relation to the world.FAQThis is a book critical of Hillary Clinton. Is this book sexist?No. The contributors are radical and feminist, and almost all are women. But sometimes even men write things about Hillary that are not sexist. Aren't you helping the Republicans?Only if you think that even one person will read a book by a coven of leftwing feminists, find it convincing, and conclude that she should vote for one of those misogynistic reactionaries.Isn't this the wrong time?No. It's never too late or too soon to criticize someone who is about to become the most powerful individual on earth. If you think there's ever a time to withhold comment on such a person, you might be an authoritarian. Don't you care about feminism?Yes. That's why we did this.Trade ReviewThis book isn't just a feminist indictment of Hillary Clinton . It's an indictment of a left that has failed to reckon with capitalism's dark side. -- Amanda Erickson * Washington Post *This collection of essays deconstructs Hillary's problematic history as a candidate who professes to be a feminist but whose policies have been pretty straight garbage for the nation's vulnerable since the start. -- Holly Wood * Medium *A feminist critique of a feminist candidate . devastating. * Kirkus Reviews *Intensely engrossing for Hillary Clinton's left-wing opponents-and for left-leaning readers still on the fence . The powerfully critical essays reject the 'ruling class feminism' of Clinton in favor of a 'left feminism rooted in an understanding of women's material conditions' . A damning portrait of both Clinton and American politics. * Publishers Weekly *A refreshing read with a defiant tone [that] pulls no punches when it comes to the Clinton record, from the time she entered the corporate and political world up until her work as Obama's secretary of state . This book will give you the confidence to say: not in our name . The authors who contributed to False Choices provide us plenty of good company in the battles ahead. -- Leia Petty * Socialist Worker *False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton is a good reminder of all of the ways, through a long political career, Clinton has valued power over justice.As False Choices makes clear, this election is not a progressive advancement, it is simply more of the same. -- Jessa Crispin * The Smart Set *

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Book SynopsisCan the tension between relativism and the moral universalism current in contemporary politics be resolved within the framework of liberalism? How is liberal society to interpret the diversity of morals? Is pluralism the appropriate response? How does pluralism differ from the widely condemned ethnocentric relativism-"liberalism for the Liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals"?Confronting liberal thought with its own limitations, Steven Lukes' work is more relevant than ever. While recognizing the dangers of moral imperialism, Lukes argues that a relativist position based on identifying clearly distinct cultural and moral communities is incoherent. Drawing on work in anthropology and philosophy, he examines the nature of social justice, the politics of identity and human rights theory.Trade ReviewPraise for Steven Lukes′s The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: “Written in a beautifully clear style, full of a keen, serious wit … Lukes achieves both lightness and weight in a way many novelists might envy.” —Independent “This book is a box of delights, often wonderfully funny and always deliciously clever, a contemporary political satire to set among the best.” —New Statesman “Knock-out satirical humour.” —Times Literary Supplement “Lukes manages to equal the pace and flair of Candide.”−New York Times Book Review “Utterly magnetic.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Book SynopsisThe distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. Du Bois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Part essay, part autobiography, Darkwater explicitly addresses significant issues, such as the oppression of women and Eurocentric standards of beauty, the historical rise of the idea of whiteness, and the abridgement of democracy along race, class, and gender lines. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans.Trade ReviewThe greatest of the early civil-rights leaders, a figure of towering significance in American politics and letters. * The Guardian *Du Boise ssentially defined black America in the 20th century with his notion of "double consciousness" - the idea that African Americans experience everything in this world both as Americans and as black people. Scholars have come up shaky in their efforts to update Du Bois's simple, but ingenious formula. -- Ta-Nehisi CoatesDu Bois' philosophy is significant today because it addresses what many would argue is the real world problem of white domination.So long as racist white privilege exists, and suppresses the dreams and the freedoms of human beings, so long will Du Bois be relevant as a thinker, for he, more than almost any other, employed thought in the service of exposing this privilege, and worked to eliminate it in the service of a greater humanity. -- Donald J. MorseWe need to view [Du Bois] not simply as the individual genius that he undoubtedly was. We need to view him and his life of struggle and achievement-and betrayal by his native land-as a metaphor for the essential meaning of black life in America. Advocate, statesman, negotiator, defender,champion, ambassador, griot, and peerless challenger of the system, Du Bois was all these things and more of-and for-our national self. . . . He was the best prime minister we ever had for our State That Never Was. -- Bill Strickland[Du Bois was] the greatest of the early civil-rights leaders, a figure of towering significance in American politics and letters ... Remembered for his single-minded commitment to racial justice and his capacity to shape black consciousness, Du Bois used language and ideas to hammer out a strategy for political equality and to sound the depths of the black experience in the aftermath of slavery. -- Stuart HallIn 1920 W.E.B. Du Bois's Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil issued a call for an anti-colonial, internationalist approach to historical and social science scholarship. At a time when anthropology's institutional stance as the science of localized and isolated"primitive" cultures was still being forged, Darkwater offered an alternate mapping of the discipline, one centered on an understanding of capitalism as a racialized, interconnected global system that continually produced inequality and difference. * Dialectical Anthropology *The lasting power of Darkwater's democratic vision.consists not only in what Du Bois is able to see; it also encompasses what he enables readers to see anew - and, possibly, both differently and further than Du Bois himself. Without presuming that it is necessarily or always the case that the view from Du Bois's "veiled corner" will prove more illuminating than the view from another vantage, Darkwater shifts the burden of proof. It forces us to pause and consider the counter-examples that are disregarded or neutralized whenever we talk about democratic, or relatively democratic, societies as though a shared commitment to racial equality were an established fact. -- Lawrie Balfour * Political Theory *In Darkwater DuBois writes what appears as a guide for "colored men and women" on childrearing. But, as it concerns the residents of the future, it is, in fact, a revolutionary political agenda. * The New Centennial Review *

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Book SynopsisAmerica’s leading essayist on the frantic retreat of democracy, in the fire and smoke of the war on terrorIn twenty-five years of imperial adventure, America has laid waste to its principles of democracy. The self-glorifying march of folly steps off at the end of the Cold War, in an era when delusions of omnipotence allowed the market to climb to virtual heights, while society was divided between the selfish and frightened rich and the increasingly debt-ridden and angry poor. The new millennium saw the democratic election of an American president nullified by the Supreme Court, and the pretender launching a wasteful, vainglorious and never-ending war on terror, doomed to end in defeat and the loss of America’s prestige abroad.All this culminates in the sunset swamp of the 2016 election—a farce dominated by Donald Trump, a self-glorifying photo-op bursting star-spangled bombast in air. This spectacle would be familiar to Aristotle, whose portraya

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Book Synopsis"Without Lenin there would have been no socialist revolution in 1917. Of this much we can be certain."Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the October 1917 uprising, is one of the most misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In his own time, there were many, even among his enemies, who acknowledged the full magnitude of his intellectual and political achievements. But his legacy has been lost in misinterpretation; he is worshipped but rarely read.On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali explores the two major influences on Lenin's thought-the turbulent history of Tsarist Russia and the birth of the international labour movement-and explains how Lenin confronted dilemmas that still cast a shadow over the present. Is terrorism ever a viable strategy? Is support for imperial wars ever justified? Can politics be made without a party? Was the seizure of power in 1917 morally justified? Should he have parted company from his wife and lived with his lover?In The Dilemmas of Lenin, Ali provides an insightful portrait of Lenin's deepest preoccupations and underlines the clarity and vigour of his theoretical and political formulations. He concludes with an affecting account of Lenin's last two years, when he realized that "we knew nothing" and insisted that the revolution had to be renewed lest it wither and die.Trade ReviewReading this book on your vacation will make your life better and your mind broader. -- Branko MilanovicAli encourages the reader to take a fresh look at Lenin's choices in the context of a repressive autocracy, the poverty and misery of the bulk of the population under tsarism and the industrialised slaughter of the first world war. What underpins his book is the view that October was an "innocent and utopian birth" that was subsequently "twisted" into Stalinism by three devastating years of civil war. -- Daniel Beer * Guardian *A powerful tool for those wanting to understand the real Lenin and therefore the real politics behind those revolutionaries who fought so hard but ultimately failed in their goal. -- Lindsey German * Counterfire *[The Dilemmas of Lenin] aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and Soviet hagiography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his political thought. -- David Sessions * The New Republic *An incredibly powerful, panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure of the twentieth century ... The Dilemmas of Lenin helps attentive readers comprehend something of what happened in history, the realities of our time, and how the future could unfold if we approach it with understanding and commitment. -- Paul Le Blanc * International Socialist Review *

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Book SynopsisWith heart-wrenching reporting and incisive analysis, In These Times magazine has charted a staggering rise in inequality and the fall of the American middle class. Here, in a selection from four decades of articles by investigative reporters and progressive thinkers, is the story of our age. It is a tale of shockingly successful corporate takeovers stretching from Reagan to Trump, but also of brave attempts to turn the tide, from the Seattle global justice protests to Occupy to the Fight for 15.Featuring contributions from Michelle Chen, Noam Chomsky, Tom Geoghegan, Juan González, David Moberg, Salim Muwakkil, Ralph Nader, Frances Fox Piven, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Slavoj Zizek, and many others, The Age of Inequality is the definitive account of a defining issue of our time.Trade ReviewAs In These Times has documented for the past forty years, the great issue of our time is our nation's movement toward oligarchy. We have a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality and a political system that is being bought and sold. We must make it clear that the greed of the 1 percent, corporate america, and wall street cannot continue. We must stand together and say 'enough is enough.' -- Bernie SandersTo get out of the current political and economic hole, we need to understand how we ended up here. For decades, In These Times has been marshaling some of our finest minds to tackle this vital question, and here are the illuminating results of that investigation. -- Naomi KleinIf we can't address the gross unfairness that's come to mark our economic life, we probably can't address our other problems either. These are some of the planet's sharpest minds, and what they say must be heard. -- Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New PlanetCompiles chronologically arranged excerpts from the Chicago-based publication's coverage of labor and the economy from its 1976 launch through the dawn of the Trump era. The result is a sweeping chronicle of the slow-motion coup by which the billionaire class seized all the levers of power in our erstwhile democracy and used them to siphon wealth upward from ordinary workers to the corporate elite. -- Danny Duncan Collum * Sojourners *

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Book SynopsisDoes it ring a bell? The first-person narrator, a cultivated man of middle age, looks back on the story of an amour fou. It all starts when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a pre-teen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narratormarked by her foreverremains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita.We know the girl and her story, and we know the title. But the author was Heinz von Eschwege, whose tale of Lolita appeared in 1916 under the pseudonym Heinz von Lichberg, forty years before Nabokov's celebrated novel took the world by storm. Von Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful work faded from view. The Two Lolitas uncovers a remarkable series of parallels between the two works and their authors. Did Vladimir Nabokov, author of an imperishable Lolita who remained in Berlin until 1937, know of von Lichberg's tale? And if so, did he adopt it consciously, or was this a classic case of "cryptoamnesia," with the earlier tale existing for Nabokov as a hidden, unacknowledged memory?In this extraordinary literary detective story, Michael Maar casts new light on the making of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.Translated by Perry AndersonTrade ReviewThe essay works not only as a shining example of exhaustive research, but as a noteworthy case study of artistic copyright and intellectual property ... Surprisingly enjoyable * Time Out *Elegant * Guardian *Genuinely original piece of work, startling in its revelations and fascinating, perhaps even a little troubling, in its implications ... Striking * Irish Times *Micheal Maar is an acute analyst and an elegant stylist who can make even a wild-goose chase highly readable * Times Literary Supplement *Maar is a literary sleuth, his method a Holmesian combination of instinct, some intellectual delegation and close reading. He makes John Sutherland seem like bumbling Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. * Glasgow Herald *

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Book SynopsisFounder of whiteness studies surveys the race/class relationshipDavid Roediger’s influential work on working people who have come to identify as white has so illuminated questions of identity that its grounding in Marxism has sometimes been missed. This new volume implicitly and explicitly reminds us that his ideas, and the best studies of whiteness generally, come from within the Marxist tradition. In his historical studies of the intersections of race, settler colonialism, and slavery, in his major chapter (with Elizabeth Esch) on race and the management of labor, in his detailing of the origins of critical studies of whiteness within Marxism, and in his reflections on the history of solidarity, Roediger argues that racial divisions not only tell us about the history of capitalism but also shed light on the logic of capital.

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Book SynopsisInside This Place, Not of It reveals some of the most egregious human rights violations within women's prisons in the United States. In their own words, the thirteen narrators in this book recount their lives leading up to incarceration and their experiences inside- ranging from forced sterilization and shackling during childbirth, to physical and sexual abuse by prison staff. Together, their testimonies illustrate the harrowing struggles for survival that women in prison must endure.Trade Review"Inside This Place, Not of It is essential reading for anyone interested in the stories of women who compel us to see their humanity, tenacity, and value as people." - Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black

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Book SynopsisThey arrive from around the world for countless reasons. Many come simply to make a living. Others are fleeing persecution in their native countries. Millions of immigrants risk deportation and imprisonment by living in the U.S. without legal status. They are living underground, with little protection from exploitation at the hands of human smugglers, employers, or law enforcement. Underground America, from the Voice of Witness series, presents the remarkable oral histories of women and men struggling to carve a life for themselves in the U.S.Trade Review"This book fills a gap in our understanding of the issue by humanizing the people at the center of an otherwise cold debate." Huffington Post

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Book SynopsisThe first decade of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of these disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream remains the same. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics, a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone.In his first book, radical political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of nine billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history.Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone.Trade ReviewIn 100 years' time many of the ideas in this book will be mainstream, while kindergarten students laugh at our mainstream economic textbooks. Bastani's genius is to see the future with crisp clarity, unafraid of the consequences of being right. -- Paul Mason, author of PostcapitalismOne of the most important books to come out of the British left in recent years. Incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging, but also well-written and readable, it provides a fascinating glimpse into a future beyond scarcity and beyond capitalism. Not simply a set of predictions about an unknowable future, it is a call to action to those seeking to bring an entirely new world into being. -- Grace Blakeley, New StatesmanThe debate is no longer about tinkering with our current broken social order, but replacing it: this fascinating book is an absolutely critical contribution, and a must-read for all those who aspire to build a new society. -- Owen Johns, author of The EstablishmentAt a time when our horizons have shrunk, when instead of striving for a better world we look backward to old comforts, Aaron Bastani calls us to dream and struggle for the type of society finally fit for humanity to live as humans should.' -- Bhaskar Sunkara, author of The Socialist ManifestoA startlingly sunny and audacious manifesto that reads the extremity of current political, economic, and environmental crises as a sign of the scale of opportunity for radical change...[Bastani] gamely reclaims the stuff of dystopia for a more buoyant vision . . . Bastani's arguments rest on the conviction that the major problems that face citizens are political in nature-and thus that their only possible solutions will be political, too -- Lidija Haas * Harpers *Angry and lyrical, uncompromising and vivid, Imperial Intimacies is a daughter's reckoning with the bitter legacies of slavery and colonialism as they come to shape the lives of families and individuals, their dreams and desires. A deeply searching and often moving book, it made me think again about the writing of family history and about what it means to be British. -- Alison Light, author of Common PeopleBastani writes with pace, economy and infectious enthusiasm ... There are more ideas crammed in here than in a whole shelf of standard politics books. And in today's fraught world, the time to read whole shelves of politics books may have passed. -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *Fully Automated Luxury Communism offers a hopeful vision of a possible future, one that, with its blend of utopian energy and careful argumentation, is worth taking seriously. * Vector *Attempts to take the word back to Marx's post-work, post-scarcity future. -- Sarah Jaffe * Bookforum *A startlingly sunny and audacious manifesto that reads the extremity of current political, economic, and environmental crises as a sign of the scale of opportunity for radical change...[Bastani] gamely reclaims the stuff of dystopia for a more buoyant vision. -- Lidja Haas * Harpers *A rising young leftwing provocateur . . .There are more ideas crammed in here than in a whole shelf of standard politics books -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *[Fully Automated Luxury Communism] is a provocative ... reckoning with the end of market capitalism, and what might follow ... in outlining the benefits of decarbonised economies, worker-owned businesses, people's banks, planet taxes and universal basic services, Bastani is starting to put flesh on the spectre that might one day haunt Europe again. -- Gavin Jacobson * New Statesman *In outlining the benefits of decarbonised economies, worker-owned businesses, people's banks, planet taxes and universal basic services, Bastani is starting to put flesh on the spectre that might one day haunt Europe again -- Gavin Williamson * New Statesman *Jeremy Corbyn's new left ... do not wish only to manage capitalism. They want something more. They are something more. And this book is an attempt to explain what that more is. * Times *[Bastani's] limpid prose, fuelled by an infectious revolutionary elan, adroitly synthesises ... big ideas for lay readers and deftly elucidates the continued relevance of Marx's writings... [Fully Automated Luxury Communism] serves as a vital broadening of our political horizons * Morning Star *A feisty manifesto . . . proposes a blueprint for a new society; one in which advanced technology will free humanity from the necessity to work * New Internationalist *An entertaining ... romp through some of the most profound innovations and developments that could, if managed under the aegis of socialism, transform the way in which we live our lives. * Quietus *A stimulating intervention ... fascinating on the dazzling possibilities of the present * New Humanist *A knowingly provocative ... utopian manifesto ... a refreshing departure from the the usual forecasts of machine-led jobpocalypse. * Times Literary Supplement *It's a manifesto that imagines life in a post-capitalist world where automation has replaced manual labour, and it applies the theories of Marx to show how this could save us from dystopia. Its a pretty audacious book.' -- Gruff Rhys * Observer *

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Book SynopsisImmersive, engrossing report on the European refugee crisisA mother puts her children into a refrigerator truck and asks, “What else could I do?” A runaway teenager comes of age on the streets, sleeping in abandoned buildings. A student leaves his war-ravaged country behind because he doesn’t want to kill. Everyone among the thousands of people who come to Europe in search of asylum each year possesses a unique story. But those stories don’t end as they cross into the West.In Lights in the Distance, acclaimed journalist Daniel Trilling draws on years of reporting to build a portrait of the refugee crisis as seen through the eyes of the people who experienced it firsthand. As the European Union has grown, so has a tangled and often violent system designed to filter out unwanted migrants. Visiting camps and hostels, sneaking into detention centers, and delving into his own family’s history of displacement, Trilling weaves together the

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Book SynopsisThis influential collection explores the pivotal texts and topics in the Marxist tradition. Ranging over questions of social theory, political theory, moral philosophy and literary criticism, it looks at the thought of Marx and Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin and Althusser. They include Geras's influential and widely-cited treatment of fetishism in Capital, his comprehensive review of recent debates on Marxism and justice, discussions on political organisation, revolutionary mass action and party pluralism, and a novel analysis of the literary power of Trotsky's writing. In close dialogue with common themes and arguments in the literature of revolutionary Marxism, Geras brings some of his persistent preoccupations to the fore; with the normative foundations and some of the epistemological assumptions of this tradition, with issues of socialist democracy, working class self-education and emancipation.Trade Review[For Marx and Human Nature] This remarkable short book deserves to be widely read and not only by those interested in Marxology. For it achieves something rare in its field: rationally compelling proof. Not only does it conclusively refute a widely current legend about Marx's thought . it does so with striking elegance, economy, and argumentative power. * Times Literary Supplement *[For The Legacy of Rosa Luxembourg] This is a useful and thoughtful book, in which the power and originality of Rosa Luxemburg's thinking emerges." -- E H Carr * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisEric Hazan, author of the acclaimed The Invention of Paris, leads us by the hand in this walk from Ivry to Saint-Denis, passing such familiar landmarks as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pompidou Centre, the Gare du Nord and Montmartre, as well as little-known alleyways and arcades. Filled with historical anecdotes, geographical observations and literary references, Hazan's walk guides us through an unknown Paris. He shows us how, through planning and modernisation, the city's revolutionary past has been erased in order to enforce a reactionary future; but by walking and observation, he shows us how we can regain our knowledge of the radical past of the city of Robespierre, the Commune, Sartre and the May '68 uprising. And by drawing on his own life story, as surgeon, publisher and social critic, Hazan vividly illustrates a radical life lived in the city of revolution.Trade ReviewAn ardent student of the anatomy of the city, Hazan is a keen observer with a remarkable memory: despite his limitations, he has written an unmissable account of Paris's unique and defiant physiognomy. -- Lauren Elkin * Guardian *Fifty years after the demonstrations and strikes of May 1968, it seems right to include a book that traces the history of radicalism, protest and attempted erasures in the City of Light. Hazan takes us on a very French journey through the French capital's intellectual as well as urban and architectural history, illuminating forgotten markers of radical struggle alongside the architectures of empire, representation and modernity. -- Edwin Heathcote * Financial Times *The writer and publisher Eric Hazan, who was born on the Left Bank in 1936, vividly evokes the atmosphere of the time in his new book, A Walk Through Paris. -- Jonathan Derbyshire * Financial Times *This is not a guidebook... [Hasan] sees the beauty, of course, and sniffs at some recent attempts at "architecture," but he's most dedicated to uncovering the spots where revolutionary blood has been scrubbed from the cornerstones of pre- and post-Haussmannian buildings - the spirit of revolt the city's planners still try to keep at bay. * New York Times *The book is a thought-provoking read full of information that only a lifelong Parisian can know. * France Magazine *Riots were a fact of 20th-century life, too, and the anniversary of the civil unrest of Paris in May 1968 is marked by Eric Hazan, who revisits the key sites in A Walk Through Paris. -- Tom Gatti * New Statesman *The book is rich, dense and allusive and Hazan is remarkably good company, endlessly digressive and serious about his politics, but always good humoured and, most importantly, still in love with the city. -- Andrew Hussey * New Statesman *Hazan has written one great book about Paris. This is merely excellent. He has a languorous style that disguises a serious purpose. Thus he can point out where Baudelaire was born, where Picasso painted Guernica and where Nerval committed suicide almost in the style of a practised conductor on an open-top bus while pursuing more original thoughts. -- Hugh Macdonald * Sunday Herald *In tracing a continuity of resistance and its presence within the contradictions of the contemporary city, Hazan makes a compelling argument that 'the people have not lost the battle of Paris'. This book similarly brings the solitary act of reading and the social experience of urban life into constant dialogue. Passages from Balzac, Baudelaire and André Breton come to mind at different street corners, verbal illuminations reflecting the ambience of a particular locale. In these enlightened pages, Hazan deftly guides the reader through a Paris where history and literature animate the lived experience of the present. -- Eugene Brennan * Washington Post *Hazan is much concernced with riot, insurrection, protest, and revolution. He is, naturally, on the side of the proletariat. A Walk Through Paris is sometimes a work of urbanism, sometimes a subversive history book, sometimes a kind of tourist guide. -- Geoff Nicholson * LA Review of Books *Eric Hazan's elegant, characteristically learned account of his journey through contemporary Paris, written in a tone both intimate and authoritative, is at once a companionably unhurried evocation of the city's rich, radical past and-at a time when capital is dramatically reorganising its topography-a bracingly urgent intervention in debates about the city's future. As André Breton might have observed, there really are no lost steps here. -- Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking

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Book SynopsisSurviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated presents oral histories of thirteen people from all walks of life, who, through a combination of all-too-common factors-overzealous prosecutors, inept defense lawyers, coercive interrogation tactics, eyewitness misidentification-found themselves imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. The stories these exonerated men and women tell are spellbinding, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring.

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Book SynopsisJust as Donald Trump's victorious campaign for the US presidency shocked liberal Americans, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious "Alt-Right" leaders mystifies many. But the extreme Right has been growing steadily in the US since the 1990s, with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black president of the country, militant racists have come out of the woodwork. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the Far Right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground - an alternative America that is resurgent, even as it has been ignored by the political establishment and mainstream media.Investigative reporter David Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades, and here he provides a deeply reported and authoritative report on the background, mindset, and growth of Far Right movements across the country. The product of years of reportage, and including the most in-depth investigation of Trump's ties to Far Right figures, this is a crucial book about one of the most disturbing sides of American society.Trade ReviewThe seemingly sudden reemergence of the far right in America has left many in a state of panic and bewilderment. Alt-America will be essential in helping us to comprehend the depth of its foundations in national life. -- Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-RightOver the last two decades, David Neiwert has been one of our finest analysts of the American far right, paying sustained, serious and careful attention to the seemingly fringe movements of conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists. Now it turns out these movements are not so fringe after all but have helped elect Donald Trump as president. This crisply written book, grounded in his solid reporting, tells the whole sordid story with clarity and force. More than anyone else, Neiwert understands that Trumpism has deep roots in American culture and history. In this book, he lays out those roots for all to see. -- Jeet Heer, Senior Editor at the New RepublicFor over a decade, David Neiwert has been America's canary in the coal mine-our national early-warning system on the spread of corrosive, eliminationist, right-wing hatred in our midst. -- Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of AmericaDavid Neiwert is among the most astute analysts of the contemporary right. -- Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the TruthNeiwert has not only earned his investigative chops over the past decade or so by exploring the dangerous side of right-wing extremism-he's proven himself to be one of the more lyrical and elegant writers on the beat. * Daily Kos *An alarming, well-researched account of how the far-right extremist underground became empowered in the era of Trump . A prescient discussion of one of the darkest issues facing America today. -- KirkusOffers the most comprehensive account of the United States' renewed extremist cultures . Alt-America excites in its ability to connect the seemingly extraordinary alt-right to the broader culture of wing-nut conservatism, drawing white nationalism, 4chan, Donald Trump, Alex Jones and Fox News together into a wonky negaverse version of political life. -- John Semley * Globe and Mail *Neiwert's book masterfully exposes so many of the interstices between Trump, the far-right nationalists and the toxic manipulators of social media, each feeding off the others. -- Michael Hirsch * The Indypendent *Tracing the ebbs and flows of this far-right extremism in the United States over the last 20 years, Neiwert argues that white nationalist activity in the age of Trump is simply the latest flare-up of what he calls 'Alt-America,' or the segment of the American population that has fed on conspiracy theories, racist misinformation, and deep distrust of federal institutions for decades. -- J.C. Pan * New Republic *

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Book SynopsisMichael Sorkin is one of the most forthright and engaging architectural writers in the world. In What Goes Up he charts the dehumanising regimes of mayors Bloomberg and De Blasio that created a city of glittering towers and increasing inequality. He looks at what has happened to Ground Zero, as a place of memory has been reconstructed by "staritects" and turned into malls. The city, he suggests, has to be reimagined from the street up on a human scale, to develop new ways to revitalise neighbourhoods.Alongside these essays on New York, Sorkin also brings his lifetime's experience as an architect to bear. He talks of the joy of observing a city in order to understand it. Why a young designer must learn to draw by hand rather than only use a computer. There are also personal encounters with some of the greatest names who have changed the city. Sorkin gets lost in Rio with Zaha Hadid and talks about the old Bronx with Marshall Berman.Trade ReviewEasily one of the best architecture critics around ... Sorkin is a flaneur with a sense of public purpose * Guardian *America's most invigorating writer on architecture. * The Observer *Sorkin is one of the most intelligent writers on architecture today. * Library Journal *Sorkin is a formidable opponent of the banal, the ugly, the stupid and the vapidly posturing which, he argues, are all around us. * Publishers Weekly *I am glad Sorkin doesn't take the subway: this is the most brilliant epitome of Manhattan ever written * Mike Davis [On Twenty Minutes in Manhattan] *Michael Sorkin secures his claim to succeed Jane Jacobs . . . He brings to bear an eye every bit as acute, a pen nearly as trenchant, and a political understanding perhaps a little bit more sophisticated of the never-ending struggle over New York's neighbourhoods. * Times Literary Supplement [On Twenty Minutes in Manhattan] *What Goes Up is a series of pithy and piquant essays on the twin problems facing New York and many other large cities: affordability and climate change. -- Bennett Baumer * The Indypendent *Through masterful language and sentence crafting, he weaves together complex ideas, such as the role media and new technologies play in our digital age and their impact on privacy issues, as well as the new context this sets up for the creation of architecture and public space . The need for a critical voice has never been more important. Witness, chronicler, and analyst, Sorkin provides a framework in his writing for critical evaluation of the architectural process and works to ensure that the city remains a place for people. -- Elizabeth Donoff * Architecture Boston *

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Book SynopsisOver the last twenty years, critical discussion of Thomas Mann has highlighted the role of his homosexuality for his creative work. This not only is presented as a dynamic underlying Mann's creative work, but also is the supposed reason for the theme of guilt and redemption that grew ever stronger in Mann's fiction.Michael Maar mounts a devastating forensic challenge to this consensus: Mann was remarkably open about his sexual orientation, which he saw as no reason for guilt. But sexuality in Mann's work is inextricably bound up with an eruption of violence. Maar pursues this trail through Mann's writings and traces its origins back to Mann's second visit to Italy, during which the Devil appeared to him in Palestrina. Something happened to the twenty-one-year-old Thomas Mann in Naples that marked him for life with a burdensome sense of guilt...but what exactly was it?Trade ReviewMichael Maar is an acute analyst and elegant stylist. He has brought out how disturbed and disturbing a writer Thomas Mann can appear again when read with such close and ingenious attention. -- T.J. Reed * Times Literary Supplement *Germany's most gifted literary critic of the younger generation. -- Perry Anderson * London Review of Books *Maar is a fine literary sleuth. -- John Banville, Man Booker Prize Winner 2005

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Book SynopsisIn the Summer of 1973, workers occupied the Lip watch and clock factory, sparking a national cause and controversy. The Lip occupation and self-management experience captured the imagination of the Left in France and internationally, as a living example of the spirit of May '68. In Opening the Gates, Donald Reid chronicles the history of this struggle. Beginning with the early stirrings of worker radicalism in 1968, Reid's meticulously researched narrative details the nationally publicised conflict of 1973, the second bankruptcy and occupation of 1976 and the conversion of Lip into a group of cooperatives operating into the 1980s.Trade ReviewCompelling -- John Harris * Guardian *Donald Reid's magisterial reconstruction of the Lip "affair" of the 1970s restores a crucial and neglected storyline about the long 1968. -- Julian Bourg, Boston University * H-France Salon *Donald Reid's book, carefully documented with a mass of detail, is to be welcomed for reminding us of an enthralling page from working-class history. -- Ian Birchall * rs21 *A must-read for historians, Reid's study will also open up for general readers the atmosphere of a time so far in the past that it is forgotten, yet so near that history has yet to remember it. -- William M. Reddy, Duke UniversitySome fifty years on from 1968, Donald Reid rightly identifies Lip 1973 as an important landmark in "the last widespread expression in France of a belief in the creativity and moral universe of workers engaged in labor conflicts as the driving force of social transformation." Reid's careful reconstruction of the Lip factory occupation, using an impressive array of archival materials and oral history interviews, vividly recreates the hopes, the excitement, the vicissitudes, and the disappointments of this turning point in French labor history. A must read for historians, Reid's study will also open up for general readers the atmosphere of a time so far in the past that it is forgotten, yet so near that history has yet to remember it. -- William M. Reddy, William T. Laprade Professor of History and Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Duke UniversityThis gripping and beautifully researched book may well be the definitive work on the Lip Affaire - that heroic struggle of French workers who in 1973-74 transformed their company into a combative self-administered community. Donald Reid's encompassing reconstruction is not only empathetic and political; it is also a significant contribution to French social history "from below" between May 68 and the beginning of Mitterand's presidency in 1981. -- Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social HistoryPraise for The Miners of Decazeville:Few books that I have read provide such a thorough and well-documented demonstration of the dynamic interrelationship between capitalism and the state and the complexity of the challenge presented to labor in seeking to struggle against their combined force. This is illuminating history. -- Christopher Johnson * The Journal of Social History *What stands out is [Opening the Gates's] thrilling retelling of an occupation and its reminder to us that there are many different ways to live and work. * Socialist Review *Although I have been living in France for the past ten years, I regret to say that the Lip Affair was unknown to me until now, but having read Donald Reid's description of what transpired, I can understand why. It is simply stunning how the mass media arbitrarily select those events in society which they want to highlight, and those which they want to ignore 'in the interests of the viewer.' I am convinced that the 'gate-keeper' policy of the mass media is one of the primary reasons why the public in general today remain detached from many key issues facing the planet, including consumerism, social inequality, and the onrushing environmental disaster. The multiple issues still confronting women today are of course foremost in my mind when I write this. The ways in which the Lip workers-as Reid describes-confronted their problems, including their strategies in dealing with the media, are therefore truly inspiring, and this book clearly deserves the widest possible dissemination across the social and political spectrum. -- Peter Watkins, Film DirectorDonald Reid has not just written a masterpiece of modern labor history. His brilliant narrative about the Lip workers who ran their own factory makes clear that they were blazing a new direction for the left. Although their experiment in self-management did not survive, it should inspire anyone who believes in the democratization of everyday life. When workers in the middle of France leaped beyond being just employees or aggrieved strikers, they showed that another world might indeed be possible. -- Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University and editor, DissentDon Reid's history of the protracted struggle of workers in the Lip watch factory is the most comprehensive and imaginative account that exists in English or French. What one worker called "the perfume of self-management" wafts through the pages of this book, bringing alive the movement that defined social upheaval in France in the long 1960s. -- Kristin Ross, author of Communal LuxuryIn 1973, French workers at the Lip watch factory in Besançon occupied their bankrupt plant and launched a movement that became a cause célèbre, attracting the attention of politicians, intellectuals, religious leaders, labor organizers, and ordinary citizens. In this magnificently detailed book, historian Donald Reid traces the origins of the movement and follows it through to its dénouement. It will surely be the definitive work on what may have been the last attempt by workers anywhere in the West to demonstrate that self-management was not a pipe dream but a genuine alternative to actually existing capitalism. -- Arthur Goldhammer, Translator and Senior Affiliate at Harvard's Center for European StudiesSophisticated ... a major contribution to the history of workers' control. * French History *For anyone wishing to learn about France (and, in fact, Europe) in the 1970s, Opening the Gates will be required reading for years to come. -- Gerd Rainer-Horn * Journal of Modern History *Don Reid's excellent book is happily something of a "throw-back" study to the 1970s -- John Merriman * The Historian *Opening the Gates is a lasting and remarkable account of French labor -- George Ross * French Politics, Culture & Society *

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Book SynopsisFrom line managers, corporate CEOs, urban designers, teachers, politicians, mayors, advertisers and even our friends and family, the message is 'be creative'. Creativity is heralded as the driving force of our contemporary society; celebrated as agile, progressive and liberating. It is the spring of the knowledge economy and shapes the cities we inhabit. It even defines our politics. What could possibly be wrong with this?In this brilliant, counter intuitive blast Oli Mould demands that we rethink the story we are being sold. Behind the novelty, he shows that creativity is a barely hidden form of neoliberal appropriation. It is a regime that prioritizes individual success over collective flourishing. It refuses to recognise anything - job, place, person - that is not profitable. And it impacts on everything around us: the places where we work, the way we are managed, how we spend our leisure time. Is there an alternative? Mould offers a radical redefinition of creativity, one embedded in the idea of collective flourishing, outside the tyranny of profit. Bold, passionate and refreshing, Against Creativity, is a timely correction to the doctrine of our times.Trade ReviewSuperb, thought-provoking. Mould turns the notion of the 'creative worker' on its head. * Pop Matters *A blistering critique . a pointed polemic that makes frequent and telling connections between creativity and social inequalities. -- David Beer * OpenDemocracy *This book mixes personal experience and sharp sociological analysis in a highly entertaining takedown of one of today's most important ideological tropes: creativity. Oli Mould takes the reader on a rather intimate tour behind the flashy scene of creative work, creative people, creative politics, creative technology and, of course, the creative city. Fortunately, he doesn't leave us in the real dystopia we discover along the way but shows us that a truly creative world is possible. -- Sebastian Olma, author of In Defence of SerendipityFor the past 20 years, creativity has been ubiquitous, an essential part of designs for office interiors, inner-city makeovers, and boosterish attempts by governments to redescribe precarious parts of their economies. It needs to be taken seriously - but it also, arguably, needs to be taken down. In this provocative, and often funny book, Oli Mould points up the absurdities of the creative economy, and some ways we might think beyond creativity. -- Richard J. Williams, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures, University of EdinburghThere are few personal and collective traits that are prized more highly in neoliberal societies than 'creativity'. In this powerful and well-aimed critique, Oli Mould lifts the veil on this ideology, to reveal a set of economic and political forces, pushing all of us to bend to the needs of capital. -- Will Davies, author of Nervous States[A] bold plea for truly creative urban thought and action . Creative, that is, in a wide range of subversive but always social ways, and not only outside but against the softly suffocating hegemony of authorized versions of the Creative-Cities script, in all its banal ubiquity. Not before time, this is the creative city turned upside down. * Jamie Peck, Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia [Praise for Urban Subversion and the Creative City] *Thorough, engaging and critical in spirit, and is packed full of theoretical insights and colourful examples of what the author calls 'urban subversion'. Mould is keenly immersed in his subject matter, and his enthusiasm for it is both obvious and infectious. This is a book which every human geography and urban sociology student should read, and would enjoy at the same time * Robert Hollands, Newcastle University, UK [Praise for Urban Subversion and the Creative City] *In this fascinating, meticulously researched, truly global book, Oli Mould introduces us to the creative city of subversion and desire. A much needed act of liberation from the official terrain occupied by the creative class. * Professor Roger Keil, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University [Praise for Urban Subversion and the Creative City] *

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Book SynopsisIn austerity Britain, disabled people have become the favourite target. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and media alike have made the case Britain's 12 million disabled people are a drain on the public purse. In Crippled, leading commentator Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the story of those most affected by this devastating regime. This includes a paralyzed man forced to crawl down the stairs because the council wouldn't provide accessible housing; the malnourished woman sleeping in her wheelchair; and the young girl with bipolar forced to turn to sex work to survive. Through these personal stories, Ryan charts how in recent years the public attitude towards disabled people has transformed from compassion to contempt: from society's 'most vulnerable' to benefit cheats. Crippled is a damning indictment of a safety net gone wrong, and a passionate demand for an end to austerity measures hitting those most in need.Trade ReviewFrances 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 it often, and use the ammunition in its pages to bring back compassion and dignity for all our citizens.' -- Ken Loach, director of I, Daniel Blake"This 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 determine demand for change." -- John McDonnellRyan is an expert in her field. Furthermore, as a disabled person writingabout disabled peopleas rights and issues, her voice is a vital additionto the debate. Essential reading. -- Baroness Tanni Grey-ThompsonNo 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, MPFrances 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 Loach, director of I, Daniel BlakeThis 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 McDonnell'A 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 Ridley, Lost Voice Guy"I wish I could force everyone in the UK to read this book. It's a ferocious, thoroughly substantiatedindictment 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 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 CosslettFiercely 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 ClarkeFrances 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 BlakeA devastatingly on-point critique of austerity politics and the worsening attitudes towards those with disabilities. * Morning Star *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 *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 *Crippledis a timely read that could bring anyone out of a Brexit news-induced stupor. * politics.co.uk *Comprehensively and competently dissects the spin behind austerity, and its most unpardonable effects. -- https://www.leftlion.co.uk/read/2019/june/live-review-dr-frances-ryan-crippled-waterstones/ * LeftLion *A powerful polemic * 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 *A blistering polemic, full of telling details. * Guardian *A powerful book ... Austerity kills and it is killing disabled people. Ryan does a brilliant job of describing the human costs. * Fabian Society *Frances Ryan's Crippledpowerfully brings into sharp focus the lived experiences of disabled people. -- Sam Smethers * Fawcett Society *Timely * Red Pepper *Everyone should read this book * Labour Briefing *A powerful statement of a compelling social issue ... [that] should be noted for the personal reading lists of students, academia, political activists, government policy makers, and non-specialist general readers. -- Susan Bethany * Midwest Book Review *Read [Crippled], get angry and act: some of society's most marginalised people are depending on it. * Independent *Ryan takes us on a tour of Britain to demonstrate how the rights of disabled people have been curtailed. Crippled marshals wide-ranging research and on-the-ground reportage as well as bristling with anger. It's sobering, but fundamentally necessary. * Financial Times [for the audiobook edition] *

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Book SynopsisThe analysis of May 68 in Paris, Berkeley, and the Western world has been widely reconsidered. But 1968 is not only a year that conjures up images of Paris, Frankfurt, or Milan. It is also the pivotal year for a new anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politics to erupt across the Third World - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Japan's position - neither in "the West" nor in the "Third World" -provoked a complex and intense round of mass mobilizations through the 1960s and early 70s. The Japanese situation remains remarkably under-examined globally. Beginning in the late 1950s, a New Left, independent of the prewar Japanese communist moment (itself of major historical importance in the 1920s and 30s), came to produce one of the most vibrant decades of political organization, political thought, and political aesthetics in the global twentieth century. In the present volume, major thinkers of the Left in Japan alongside scholars of the 1968 movements reexamine the theoretical sources, historical background, cultural productions, and major organizational problems of the 1968 revolutions in Japan.Trade ReviewPraise for The Sublime Perversion of Capital:"What is capital? What is its relation with the 'world' and with the nation? What is its origin, its limit, and its 'other'? Reading the 'debate on Japanese capitalism' in the 1920s and 1930s against the grain of contemporary concerns, Gavin Walker invites us to a breathtaking intellectual journey. He provides a masterful interpretation of a crucial historical debate and makes a landmark contribution to our understanding of global capitalism and to the forging of a new project of liberation." -- Sandro Mezzadra, coauthor of, Border as Method, or, The Multiplication of LaborPraise for The Sublime Perversion of Capital: "Gavin Walker's superb The Sublime Perversion of Capital is a brilliantly imaginative recovery of Marx's worldly vocation and the original premises of historical materialism dedicated to combining the immediacy of local contemporary circumstances with the global reach of capital. He realizes this singularly vital program by reflecting on the writings of the economist Uno Kozo, especially his thinking on logic and history, as they intervened and culminated in the famous Marxian debate on capitalism in Japan's 1920s and 1930s in a context sparked by a rapidly uneven passage into capitalist modernity and its spillover into imperialism." -- Harry Harootunian, author of, Marx After Marx: History and Time in the Expansion of Capitalism

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Book Synopsis"Only martyrs know neither pity nor fear. Believe me, the day when the martyrs are victorious will be the day of universal conflagration". Jacques Lacan made this gloomy prophesy back in 1959: but doesn't it also apply to our own time? Faced with a rise in attacks around the world, can we really just blame the 'radicalization of' Islam'? What hope is there for the alienated youth, as the wars that have ravaged the Middle East spill out across the globe?For Alain Bertho, the mounting chaos we see today is above all driven by the weakening of states' legitimacy under the pressure of globalization. Add to this the hypocrisy of the elites who beat the drum of 'security measures', even as they sow the seeds of violence around the world. This disorder is the swamp of despair which can only produce fresh atrocities.Today's youth are the lost children of neoliberal globalization, the inheritors of the political and human chaos it produces. When they find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, their revolt tends to take the paths of martyrdom and despair. The closing of the revolutionary hypothesis allows only fury. The answer, Bertho argues, is a new radicalism, able to inspire a collective hope in the future.Trade ReviewAn important and iconoclastic intervention into the ongoing debate on the planetary mutation in the forms of collective action. Bertho surveys, with an anthropologist's eye, the myriad phenomena of political violence criss-crossing our world on fire-from mass riots to transnational jihadism-to diagnose an irreversible divorce between peoples and powers. Age of Violence challenges us to imagine what future shapes radicalism will take outside the classical nexus of state and revolution. -- Alberto Toscano, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an IdeaInspired by the tragic events of 2015 in Paris, this insightful philosophical and anthropological enquiry locates them within the French and global continuums to which they belong, assessing the combined effect of neoliberal globalisation and the crisis of left-wing politics on the 'children of chaos'. -- Gilbert AchcarAlain Bertho doesn't only ask disturbing questions; he also seeks to answer them. In The Age of Violence, he turns a steely gaze to the rise of collective civil violence across the world. His insights into matrices of un/belonging, crises of truth, and radicalism are essential reading for those of us attempting to make sense of the contemporary world. -- Joanna BourkeThis is a book that has long been necessary. Where most accounts of jihadist violence emphasise its supposed theological or ideological bases, Alain Bertho's Age of Violence is a powerful, profound, beautiful investigation of, and meditation on, the repressed connections between forms of increasingly nihilistic global violence, from ISIS to urban riots to communal murder, and a wider collapse of life chances, political legitimacy and personal meaning visited by the death-hurtle late capitalism. Bertho's book confronts what most accounts will not - the destructive appeal of chances for meaningfully murderous action for the "lost children" of globalisation. This is absolutely essential reading for anyone alarmed by these terrifying symptoms. -- Richard Seymour

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Book SynopsisJohn Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art in Ways of Seeing; as a storyteller and political activist he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants and the oppressed around the world. In 1953 he wrote: "Far from dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics." He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January, 2017. In A Writer of Our Time, Joshua Sperling places Berger's life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond. The book also explores, through the work, the larger questions that vexed a generation: the purpose of art, the nature of creative freedom, the meaning of commitment. Drawing on extensive interviews, close readings and a wealth of archival sources only recently made available, the book brings the many different faces of John Berger together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, thinkers and storytellers of our time.Trade ReviewA welcome intervention that does justice to the legacy of Berger's thought and work which has been criminally underappreciated in Britain. * Morning Star *Berger's talent for 'seeing all sides' of a thing, his incredible floating perspective, would have been worth less had he not used it to choose the right side. -- Sarah Nicole Prickett * Bookforum *

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Book SynopsisMr. Jurgenson makes a first sortie toward a new understanding of the photograph, wherein artistry or documentary intent have given way to communication and circulation. Like Susan Sontag’s On Photography, to which it self-consciously responds, The Social Photo is slim, hard-bitten and picture-free. – New York Times A set of bold theoretical reflections on how the social photo has remade our world.With the rise of the smart phone and social media, cameras have become ubiquitous, infiltrating nearly every aspect of social life. The glowing camera screen is the lens through which many of us seek to communicate our experience. But our thinking about photography has been slow to catch-up; this major fixture of everyday life is still often treated in the terms of art or journalism. In The Social Photo, social theorist Nathan Jurgenson develops bold new ways of understanding photography in the age

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Book SynopsisWhat is it that makes humans human? As science and technology challenge the boundaries between life and non-life, between organic and inorganic, this ancient question is more timely than ever. Acclaimed Object-Oriented philosopher Timothy Morton invites us to consider this philosophical issue as eminently political. In our relationship with non-humans, we decided the fate of our humanity. Becoming human, claims Morton, actually means creating a network of kindness and solidarity with non-human beings, in the name of a broader understanding of reality that both includes and overcomes the notion of species. Negotiating the politics of humanity is the first and crucial step to reclaim the upper scales of ecological coexistence, and not to let Monsanto and cryogenically suspended billionaires define them and own them.Trade ReviewI have been reading Timothy Morton's books for a while and I like them a lot. -- BjorkConsidered by many to be among the top philosophers in the world, especially among those tackling issues related to human effects on our environment, Morton herein provides an important, spirited, and sometimes frenetic analysis of the foundational assumptions of Marxism and other -isms with regard to nature and culture. -- Jeff Vandermeer, author of The Southern Reach trilogy * The Millions *[Morton is] a Ralph Waldo Emerson for the Anthropocene. -- Alex Blasdel * Guardian *A very good introduction to what Theory (capital T) might have to say about climate change and species die-off. -- Ted Hamlton * Los Angeles Review of Books *To read [Timothy Morton] is to be caught up in a brilliant display of intellectual pyrotechnics. -- P D Smith * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisRed Flag Wounded brings together essays covering the controversies and debates over the fraught history of the Soviet Union from the revolution to its disintegration. Those monumental years were marked not only by violence, mass killing, and the brutal overturning of a peasant society but also by the modernisation and industrialisation of the largest country in the world, the victory over fascism, and the slow recovery of society after the nightmare of Stalinism.Ronald Grigor Suny is one of the most prominent experts on the revolution, the fate of the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet empire, and the twists and turns of Western historiography of the Soviet experience. As a biographer of Stalin and a long-time commentator on Russian and Soviet affairs, he brings novel insights to a history that has been misunderstood and deliberately distorted in the public sphere. For a fresh look at a story that affects our world today, this is the place to begin.Trade ReviewA towering figure in the field of Soviet history, Ronald Suny is a prolific and engaged scholar, who has opened up new fields of research -- notably of nationalism and empire -- and been himself open to new conceptual approaches, while remaining true to perspectives on the Russian Revolution and Stalinism that have stood the test of time. His work combines trenchant analysis with lucid and large-scale synthesis. -- S A Smith, author of Russia in RevolutionWith his lightly-worn erudition, good humour and mastery of the field, Ron Suny is the perfect guide to the big questions in Soviet history. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand Stalinism and its interpreters. -- Sheila Fitzpatrick

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Book SynopsisDuring the pitched battle over slavery in the United States, Black writers - enslaved and free - allied themselves with the cause of abolition and used their art to advocate for emancipation and to envision the end of slavery as a world-historical moment of possibility.These Black writers borrowed from the European tradition of Romanticism - lyric poetry, prophetic visions - to write, speak, and sing their hopes for what freedom might mean. At the same time, they voiced anxieties about the expansion of global capital and U.S. imperial power in the aftermath of slavery. They also focused on the ramifications of slavery's sexual violence. Authors like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, George Moses Horton, Albery Allson Whitman, and Joshua McCarter Simpson conceived the Civil War as a revolutionary upheaval on par with Europe's stormy Age of Revolutions. The Black Romantic Revolution proposes that the Black Romantics' cultural innovations have shaped Black radical culture to this day, from the blues and hip hop to Black nationalism and Black feminism. Their expressions of love and rage, grief and determination, dreams and nightmares, still echo into our present.Trade ReviewWritten with deep and layered seriousness, and a healthy willingness to provoke and play, this impressive study reads Black poetry as profoundly political and as exceeding politics. Subtly theorized, especially via Black feminist theory, and attentive to changing imperatives of political coalition building, it nevertheless keeps the poets and the poetry front and center. The old surrealist insistence that poetry can be an emancipatory and creative activity emerges here not as an injunction but as one central aspect of lived history. -- David Roediger, author of How Race Survived US HistoryThe Black Romantic Revolution is well written, characterized by smoothly flowing prose that offers both clarity and nuance. Matt Sandler's meticulous attention to literary form and to cultural context produces a study full of surprises supported by concrete evidence. Above all, The Black Romantic Revolution takes its insights from the authors it examines. Quite deliberately, Sandler refuses to look at nineteenth-century African American poets through the lens of European Romanticism, allowing its ideals to ground arguments about Black writers' validity. Instead, he studies their choices so faithfully that he shows readers how early Black poets developed a Romanticism of their own. Sandler's readers will come to appreciate authors like Frances E. W. Harper and George Moses Horton - as well as the turbulent decades and complex cultural landscape to which they contributed - in truly unexpected ways. * Koritha Mitchell, author of From Slave Cabins to the White House and editor of Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy *With uncommon verve, Matt Sandler correlates Romantic poetic idioms from the natural world regarding whirlwinds and the coming storm to those about revolution and the impending crisis from the political world. The Black Romantic Revolution has as a latent question what happens to our understanding of the long nineteenth-century when re-read through the optics of African American literary studies, historical poetics, and Romanticism. Sandler not only illustrates how African American poets extended the temporal and thematic scope of Romanticism but also how black American poets came to fulfill its political yearnings and aesthetic apotheosis. In so doing, Sandler offers a trenchant critique of, and necessary corrective to, the disciplinary formations that have heretofore failed to put into clearer view the shared horizons between "African American" and "Romanticism." -- Ivy G. Wilson, author of Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of NationalismSandler has assembled a book featuring Black voices from pre-emancipation America. These poets were both free and enslaved and the book centers on their advocacy on emancipation, and their vision about what post-slavery America might be, prophesies that are still felt today. -- Sara Webster * Broooklyn Based *There's no doubt that The Black Romantic Revolution will serve as a valuable guide and resource for scholars who study nineteenth-century African American literature. Moreover, literary scholars interested in Transatlantic studies have much to gain by following Sandler connect the dots from Eurocentric Romanticism to Black American Romanticism. -- Howard Ramsby * Cultural Front *Thunderous, accessible ... Sandler challenges established ideas about the poets' relationship to Romanticism, but never gets bogged down in academic turf battles. Instead, he highlights the work, the poets and their political and cultural worlds, guiding readers through history, biography, theory and engaging close readings of the poems themselves. -- Alan Scherstuhl * Shelf Awareness (Starred Review) *The Black Romantic Revolution brings a somewhat unknown element of US literature further into the public consciousness. Sandler's prose illuminates some of the genre's important texts, placing the works and their creators in the political and literary moment they were composed. Simultaneously, he provides the reader with an understanding of the meaning these poets and their works hold for today, when the ongoing struggle for a genuine and lasting Black liberation from a legacy of US white supremacy remains disturbingly elusive. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *The Black Romantic Revolution is an example of generative scholarship that properly meets the weight of our moment...As Sandler uncovers the neglected artistic and political projects of 19th-century African American poets, he both builds the Western canon and Blackens it...In our moment, this Black work matters. -- Derik Smith * Los Angeles Review of Books *The Black Romantic Revolution does not simply expose the lies about freedom and abolition we have inherited from the 18th and 19th centuries; rather, [it turns] to the past to call forth lyrical alternatives to long-standing narratives about enlightenment and revolution. -- Manu Samriti Chander * Public Books *A glimpse into the ways that Black literary production has capaciously engaged itself beyond the rigid boundaries of genres and intended audiences. * Studies in Romanticism *

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Book SynopsisDemocracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands, it is the logical conclusion of manipulation by the elite of the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives portray racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities.These actions divert us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors like the media, politicians and academics. While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.Trade ReviewPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:A unique transnational take on the weaponization of liberal values after the Paris attacks. After Charlie Hebdo takes Islamophobia apart and equips us for the fight back. -- Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race RelationsPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:A bold, challenging and forthright collection that raises fundamental questions around issues of race and identity. -- Michael Cronin, Trinity College DublinPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:The attack on Charlie Hebdo has been a transformative event, one that presents particular challenges for freedom of speech. This insightful collection helps us to reflect on how we can develop an alternative narrative on violence, racism, and freedom of expression. -- Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale SuperiorePraise for After Charlie Hebdo:"These essays offer stimulating perspectives on the violent paradoxes of French liberalism. For English speakers, they give valuable context to the political dynamics behind the Charlie episode." -- Nick Riemer, University of SydneyPraise for After Charlie Hebdo:"An engaging contribution to our understanding of the 2015 attacks, examining the media framing of the event and the conflict of values it created in public debate." -- Romain Badouard, University of Cergy-PontoisePraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:Aurélien Mondon has written a brilliant and original book. It involves a comparative history of the French and Australian right in the longue durée and shows how the post-war extreme right parties - the Front National in France and One Nation in Australia - absorbed the inner-spirit of both nations' very different right-wing traditions and were then able to transform the rhetoric and the tone of politics, especially on questions connected to ethnicity and race, under Sarkozy in France and Howard in Australia. This work will change the way scholars view the significance of the resurgence of the populist right in Europe and beyond. -- Robert Manne, La Trobe University, AustraliaPraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:In spite of their different histories and political cultures, France and Australia have been prime examples of a broader trend: the 'mainstreaming' of far right discourses and previously taboo issues associated with them. Mondon's fascinating but also sobering book shows why the far right's electoral performance is a misleading indicator of its political influence; behind it lies a more complex dynamic of ideological normalisation, which may easily serve the far right in the longer term. -- Aristotle Kallis, Lancaster University, UKPraise for The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia:This book provides an original and informed study of the nature and narratives of the extreme right in two developed countries where questions of identity, immigration and the negotiation of change figure prominently in public debate. It makes a valuable contribution to comparative political analysis and will appeal to readers interested in how key populist extremist parties impact on contemporary politics and society. -- Paul Hainsworth, University of Ulster, UKFires a rescue flare warning that the threat to civil society, human rights, and democracy itself must not be ignored-before it is too late. -- Chip BerletA clever, timely interrogation of what racism truly means, and why it persists in modern liberal democracies. Everyone needs to read this. -- Angela SainiReactionary Democracy makes an important contribution to critical thought by mapping the complex ways in which racism has acquired renewed force in the contemporary conjuncture. Drawing expertly on developments in the US, UK and France, the entangled logics of liberal and illiberal racisms are carefully illuminated making transparent the complicity of liberalism with its so-called populist alternative. With liberalism's commitment to democracy compromised, Mondon and Winter boldly call for the construction of an emancipatory, transformative politics committed to ending all structures of oppression and thereby actualizing the promise of democracy for all. -- Satnam VirdeeMondon and Winter offer a razor sharp analysis of the relationship between racism and liberalism to rethink the resurgence of far right, populist politics. Ultimately, this is a hopeful book that demands more from democracy and from ourselves--only by resisting racism and other hierarchical exclusions can we hope to build egalitarian futures. -- Professor Akwugo Emejulu Department of Sociology University of WarwickA powerful account of how liberal media and political elites have colluded with far-right forces, fatally undermining the emancipatory potential of democratic systems of government. -- Imogen TylerAn impressively lucid and hard-hitting primer on some of the gravest dangers of the Western present. With unsparing clarity and nuance, Mondon and Winter delineate how vitiated and retrograde the practice of democracy is today, how it remains in thrall to elite manipulation, and how both racism and white supremacy are central to this project of control and consent. This book makes for uncomfortable reading--which is why it is so urgent and necessary. We can't afford not to hear what it has to say. -- Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent EmpireIt is hard to think of a more necessary and welcome intervention than Reactionary Democracy. The mantle of 'the market place of ideas' has emboldened racism and undermined democracy. The agents of this movement have their allies, and with this book democrats and anti-racists have theirs. A powerful and compelling contribution. -- Professor Nasar Meer, FAcSS; FRSE, University of EdinburghRadical Democracy offers a sustained critical reading of the recent platforming of the populist racist right. Aurelion Mondon and Aaron Winter trace the ways in which this focus on extreme expressions draws attention away from systemic racism and the inequalities capitalism licenses and reproduces. The result is a timely analysis of the the processes and narratives enabling the reproduction of systemic racism. -- David Theo GoldbergReactionary Democracy is an important and incisive contribution to the burgeoning literature on the rise of the far-right in the U.S., France, and the U.K. Challenging the popular narrative that these movements are an inevitability, Mondon and Winter show that the Right's new found power was hardly the will of the people. The right's mainstreaming relied upon a complicit media (unable to adapt to bad-faith and racist provocateurs) and politicians willing to adopt the right's rhetoric. If you want to know how we got into this mess, and are committed to a progressive path out of it, Reactionary Democracy helps to a critical roadmap. -- Victor RayIn elaborating their argument about the mainstreaming of racism, Mondon and Winter register shifts and divergences across different national contexts, providing a thoughtful response to excitable narratives about the global rise of 'populism'. Theirs is also a ferocious, mobilising critique, properly partisan while unsparing of progressive mythologies. They point us towards what's needed to defeat the far-right, not just by engaging with its contemporary complexity and affinities, but by demonstrating incisively how it benefits from wider social and political contradictions -- Gavan TitleyReactionary Democracy is a powerful analysis of how the 'respectable' centre ground is far from innocent in the rise of the far right. Mondon and Winter show how racist ideas have been promoted not just through far right activism but also through everyday language on immigration and identity in mainstream politics and media. Drawing on examples from the US, France and the UK, they argue that elite voices are responsible for normalising anti-immigrant views and facilitating conditions exploited by a resurgent right. The book provides a much-needed health warning against the notion that liberal democracy is a natural ally against racism. By insisting that we should stop 'hyping' the far right and start challenging it, the book eloquently promotes a full-throttle anti-racism when we need it most. -- Des FreedmanReactionary Democracy is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work drawing upon the enduring debate about the causes of systemic racism. Introducing readers to the entanglement of racism and liberal democracy, this co-authored book seeks to shed new light on how these forms of power interact and the possibilities emerging in the wake of this. -- Rahel Süß * LSE Review of Books *Mondon and Winter put forward an ideological analysis that helps explain how the far-right could claim to be championing the grievances of workers while at the same time defending the interests of the wealthy. -- Paolo Gerbaudo * Jacobin *Timely. -- Beatriz Buarque * International Affairs *

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Book SynopsisPoetry by Kay GabrielPhotography by Luc DelahayeArt by Bahar BehbahaniFiction by Katie Kane and David Naimon Richard Seymour: ‘Caedmon’s Dream: On the Politics of Style’Politics and the English language – among others – redux. Bromides, ornamentaphobia and the elitism of ‘clarity’. Robert Knox: ‘Against Law-sterity’Beyond economics and ideology to a jurisprudential horizon. The law of austerity and the austere grounds of law. Esther Leslie: ‘Men of Doubt: Fortini, Benjamin, Brecht’Fragments, scraps, posters and poems, certainty and its discontents, ethics and hunger and a neglected angel. Barnaby Raine: ‘Jewophobia’Navigating sound, fury and fear, the bad faith and even good, in an unstable debate, striving for a theory worthy of the name. China Miévi

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Book SynopsisThis book analyses the French political crisis, which has entered its most acute phase in more than thirty years with the break-up of traditional left and right social blocs. Governing parties have distanced themselves from the working classes, leaving behind on the one hand craftsmen, shop owners and small entrepreneurs disappointed by the timidity of the reforms of the neoliberal right and, on the other hand, workers and employees hostile to the neoliberal and pro-European integration orientation of the Socialist Party. The presidency of François Hollande was less an anomaly than the definitive failure of attempts to reconcile the social base of the left with the so-called modernisation of the French model. The project, based on the pursuit of neoliberal reforms, did not die with Hollande's failure; it was taken up and radicalised by his successor, Emmanuel Macron. This project needs a social base, the bourgeois bloc, designed to overcome the right-left divide by a new alliance between the middle and upper classes. But this, as we have seen recently on the streets of Paris and elsewhere, is a precarious process.Trade ReviewPraise for Structural Crisis and Institutional Change in Modern Capitalism:"This book is historical-institutionalist political economy at its best." -- Wolfgang Streeck * ILR Review *In the authors' view, all the major parties in France have given up on the traditional postwar "social-liberal" compromise that combined moves toward fluid labor markets, external openness, and EU cooperation with continued redistribution, social solidarity, and upward mobility. -- Andrew Moravcsik * Foreign Affairs *

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Book SynopsisFormer social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think.Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we're getting out of it, and what we're getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history-to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?Trade ReviewOne of our most astute political analysts * China Miéville, author of October *A bracing tour through the social and political context and impact of Twitter and Facebook, exploring Gamergate to Isis to Trump's Twitter presidency. He recounts horrifying miseries - suicides on YouTube, rapes on Periscope, streamed shootings on Facebook - created by people radicalised, or tormented by online peers, craving celebrity - all pushed to extremes by algorithms and monetised by tech companies. -- Emma Jacobs * Financial Times *The book is a thrilling demonstration of what such resistance can look like, by one of the most clear-sighted and unyielding critics writing today. We should all read it. -- William Davies * Guardian *Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style. Everything he writes is worth reading -- Gary Younge, author of Another Day in the Death of AmericaWhat Susan Sontag did for photography, what Christopher Lasch did for the culture of narcissism, Richard Seymour has done for social media. I read it with a sense of recognition, and alarm. -- Adam Shatz, contributing editor at the London Review of BooksA sophisticated critique of the age of social media. * Kirkus Reviews *Rather than wondering ponderously if this is 'cancel culture' or whatever, we might ask ourselves: Why were all these people tweeting? ... This is not a book with an accompanying TED Talk, a ten-step program, or One Weird Trick to Fix Everything. Seymour's pose here is that of a working analyst, not a confident diagnostician. He draws connections, he sketches notes toward a further diagnosis. -- Max Read * Bookforum *The Twittering Machine understands our world as it is: shaped for better or worse by sophisticated, online, social technologies that developed in the context of a long human history of other technologies. -- Damon Beres * OneZero *Seymour is wide-ranging in his analysis of the destructive effects of the "social industry" on personal and political life...By the end, if you weren't already, you will be on the verge of deleting your Twitter account. And yet Seymour himself is still on there, professionally compelled as a freelance writer to plug into the machine . -- Matthew Sperling * Guardian *A very brilliant deconstruction of social media and our death drive to engage with it. . .What's so useful about the book is that it dispenses with the platitudes we tend to hear about social media, and takes a psychoanalytical approach to social media that feels fresh and freshly horrifying. * Los Angeles Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisWhat if we took sex out of the box marked "special," the contents of which are either the worst or best thing a person can experience, and considered it within the complexity of human life in general? In this extraordinary book, and in defiance of the long-standing media obsessions that turn every sexual topic into a morality tale of monsters and victims, shame and virtue, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski does exactly that.From the criminalization of HIV to the frenzy over "pedophile priests," from unexamined assumptions about the murder of Matthew Shepard to the accusations made against Woody Allen, from Brett Kavanaugh to Abu Ghraib, Wypijewski takes some of the most famous stories of recent decades and turns them inside out. The result is a searing indictment of modern sexual politics. She exposes the myriad ways moral panic and a punitive culture are intertwined, considering along the way the nature of pleasure, censorship, self-deception, memory and much more.What emerges is a picture of a culture in which crude morality plays acted out in the media have contributed to an imprisoning embrace of the repressive power of the state. Politics exists in the mess of life. Sex does too, Wypijewski insists, and so must sexual politics, if it is to make any sense at all.Trade ReviewWhat We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo speaks for many women who resist (sometimes quietly) the peer pressure that has no name, and for women dismayed by the politics of belief infecting our secular conversations about sex. Injustice has become a sustainable resource, and JoAnn Wypijewski has been documenting its variations quite eloquently for 25 years. Her reporting is solid and energetic. Wypijewski knows how to unpack a monster. -- Tracy Quan, author of Diary of a Manhattan Call GirlJust causes, Wypijewski reminds us, have a bad habit of overreaching justice. Revisiting some of the most notorious sex abuse cases of recent times, she shows how little attention the media has given to actual facts and alternative interpretations. These incisive and controversial essays are a tour d'force by a brilliant journalist with unbounded empathy. -- Mike DavisJoAnn Wypijewski stimulates us to think freshly about sex and sexual politics, and she is not afraid to infuriate both those who consider themselves sexual progressives and traditional conservatives. Let's call a town meeting of the whole country to grapple with the insights, the fury, and most of all the wisdom in this essential book. -- Peter Davis, Academy Award winning filmmaker of Hearts and Minds, author of Girl of My DreamsWypijewski lays bare the twisted logics we employ to convince ourselves that there are easy distinctions between love, brutality, sex, and capitalism. Forceful and brilliant analysis, an unrelenting excavation not just of what happened and to whom, but what it means to all of us watching from the sidelines. Wypijewski, like few other writers, provides an archaelogy of sex which is in turn an archaelogy of power. -- Yasmin NairUncomfortable, powerful, and moving; few writers can give us the nitty-gritty of sex and its messiness within the grand sweep of history, and get both the big picture and the details exactly right. -- Jeffrey Escoffier, author of American Homo, Research Associate at the Brooklyn Institute for Social ResearchJoAnn Wypijewski has written steadily and courageously on topics that paralyze other reporters into silence or lukewarm compromise. She knows that our horror of crime springs from the same root as our need for scapegoats. Her essays are always perceptive, and always worth reading -- David Bromwich, author of American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell UsFrom Woody Allen to Matthew Shepherd to monster priests and Harvey Weinsteins, today's high sex scandals are media and courtroom myths of total innocence versus total guilt-larded with very real, globalized rage. They're postmodern passion plays whose buy-in, not just from patriarchs but also from feminists, has rendered these narratives chillingly sterile-and dead in their sterility. For years, JoAnn Wypijewski has been packing her bags and visiting the venues of civic libido behind the scandals. And then, with beautiful prose and complex analysis, she reports back to us the true messiness: of sex, life, late capitalism, fear, and yet the hope that still breathes in the mess. Her work is a national treasure. -- Debbie Nathan, journalist, co-author of Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch HuntJoAnn Wypijewski is the finest and most fearless literary journalist writing today, and in these crucial and stunningly beautiful essays she brings into bracing focus the deepest politics of desire. No other writer is telling these stories; maybe no other writer could with such generosity of spirit. 'Mercy is the scandal now,' she writes of the the ways in which too many have come to prefer the counting of sins to the dream of liberation, but this is no book of lamentations. Through a series of moments intimately observed, Wypijewski summons us again to consider the possibilities for pleasure, eros as ally, in any struggle to get free. Hers is a prophetic voice. -- Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family and This Brilliant DarknessWypijewski is an original thinker as well as a careful reporter, and this collection offers exemplary exercises in narrative journalism. -- Wendy Kaminer * Spiked *What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo consists of 16 deep dives into events we thought we understood, revealing "the mess of life" in all its glorious refusal to be squeezed into convenient boxes. A tireless investigative journalist, Wypijewski travels to cities, small towns, and courtrooms to give us the full stories that "exist in the region of raw emotion, the region of danger and fury. Here be demons. -- Dr. Carol Tavris * Skeptic *Wypijewski is perhaps at her most exciting when she models the "sensual intelligence" she calls for - namely, in her short celebrations of Madonna and David Wojnarowicz. The mark of her humanity is her ability to sympathize even with those she ends up condemning. She begins by gesturing at a sexual politics that passes beyond vengeance; I hope someday she envisions one that takes us all the way to pleasure. -- Becca Rothfeld * Times Literary Supplement *[An] invaluable collection. -- David Rosen * New York Journal of Books *Wypijewski's strength is in restoring a sense of profundity and nuance - the factors left out when polarising victim vs monster and the contradictions alive in human relations, with human sexuality, and therefore vulnerability, at its centre. * Morning Star *Wise, compassionate, and refreshingly sex-positive. ... With courage and a veteran journalist's attention to detail, [Wypijewski] investigates and explores the stories of the real human beings behind the sex panicked headlines of our times. -- Susan Block * CounterPunch *Not only diagnoses what's wrong with mainstream, carceral feminism but also helps us plot a way forward. -- Maia Hibbett * The Baffler *Wypijewski is part of a very brave group of critical thinkers who oppose the culture of punishment that has found a media-driven home in feminism today. -- Richard Goldstein * Medium *A dauntless, provocatively ethical book that asks moral questions. -- Susie Day * Gay City News *

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Book SynopsisDemocracy means rule by the people, but in practice even the most robust democracies delegate most rule making to a political class. The gap between the public and its public officials might seem unbridgeable in the modern world, but Legislature by Lot presents a close examination of an inspiring solution: a legislature chosen through "sortition"-the random selection of lay citizens. It's a concept that has come to the attention of democratic reformers across the globe. Proposals for such bodies are being debated in Australia, Belgium, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and many other countries. Sortition promises to reduce corruption and create a truly representative legislature in one fell swoop. In Legislature by Lot, John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright make the case for pairing a sortition body with an elected chamber within a bicameral legislature. Gastil is a leading deliberative democracy scholar, and Wright a distinguished sociologist and series editor of the Real Utopias books, of which this is a part. In this volume, they bring together critics and advocates of sortition who studied ancient Athens, deliberative polling, political theory, social movements, and civic innovation. The constellation of voices in this book lays out a wide variety of ideas for how to implement sortition, without obscuring its limitations, and examine its potential for reshaping modern politics.Legislature by Lot includes sixteen essays that respond to Gastil and Wright's detailed proposal. Essays comparing it to contemporary reforms see it as a dramatic extension of deliberative "minipublics," which gather random samples of citizens to weight public policy dilemmas without being empowered to enact legislation. Another set of essays explores the democratic principles underlying sortition and elections and considers, for example, how a sortition body holds itself accountable to a public that did not elect it. The third set of essays consider alternative paths to democratic reform, which limit the powers of a sortition chamber or more quickly establish a pure sortition body.Trade ReviewPraise for Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright: "[Wright] builds a strong case for an emancipatory social science." - Choice "A benchmark contribution to necessary radical thinking." - G ran Therborn "Encyclopedic in its breadth, daunting in its ambition, this is the culmination of Erik Olin Wright's revamping of Marxism ... Only a thinker of Wright's genius could sustain such a badly needed political imagination without losing analytical clarity and precision." - Michael Burawoy, UC Berkeley "Hugely rich and stimulating ... An incisive diagnosis of the harms done by capitalism; a masterful synthesis of the best work in political sociology and political economy over the past thirty years; and innovative theoretical framework for conceptualizing both the goals of progressive change and the strategies for their achievement; and inspiring survey of actually existing challenges to capitalism that have arisen within capitalism itself; and a compelling essay on the relation between the desirable, the viable and the achievable. Anyone interested in the future of leftist politics has to read this book." - Adam Swift, Balliol College, Oxford "This book is both a manifesto and a guidebook: an argument for taking institutional design seriously, and a guide to how to do that. It's a book that sociologists will want to read, but also, frankly, that everyone in political theory and philosophy should be reading too." - Crooked Timber "A fascinating book." - openDemocracy

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Book SynopsisOld Gods, New Enigmas is the highly-anticipated book by the best-selling author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums. Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler before his profile as one of the world's leading urbanists emerged with the publication of his sober, if dystopian survey of Los Angeles. Since then, he's developed a reputation not only for his caustic analysis of ecological catastrophe and colonial history, but as a stylist without peer.Old Gods, New Enigmas is Davis's book-length engagement with Karl Marx, marking the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth and exploring Davis's thinking on history, labor, capitalism, and revolution - themes ever present the early work from this leading radical thinker. This will be his first book on Marxism itself.In a time of ubiquitous disgust with political and economic elites, explores the question of revolutionary agency-what social forces and conditions do we need to transform the current order?-and the situation of the world's working classes from the US to Europe to China. Even the most preliminary tasks are daunting. A new theory of revolution needs to return to the big issues in classical socialist thought, such as clarifying "proletarian agency", before turning to the urgent questions of our time: global warming, the social and economic gutting of the rustbelt, and the city's demographic eclipse of the countryside. What does revolution look like after the end of history?Trade ReviewIn this collection of essays, Davis searches Karl Marx's ouvre for a revolutionary paradigm capable of addressing present-day economic inequality and climate change...While the esoteric case studies and historical summaries will appeal primarily to readers already familiar with Marx, the book also offers the simple pleasure of watching Davis's nimble mind at work. * New Yorker *Davis resuscitates myriad overlooked works of political and environmental history and theory in this insightful collection. * Publishers Weekly *The heterogeneity of Davis's latest book Old Gods, New Enigmas reflects his decades of accumulated interests...a formidable intellectual, and this collection contains many gems. -- Troy Vettese * Boston Review *

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Book SynopsisRethinking the open cityPlanners, privatisation, and police surveillance are laying siege to urban public spaces. The streets are becoming ever more regimented as life and character are sapped from our cities. What is to be done? Is it possible to maintain the public realm as a flexible space that adapts over time? Can disorder be designed? Fifty years ago, Richard Sennett wrote his groundbreaking work The Uses of Disorder, arguing that the ideal of a planned and ordered city was flawed, likely to produce a fragile, restrictive urban environment. The need for the Open City, the alternative, is now more urgent that ever. In this provocative essay, Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett propose a reorganisation of how we think and plan the life of our cities. What the authors call 'infrastructures for disorder' combine architecture, politics, urban planning and activism in order to develop places that nurture rather than stifle, bring together rather than divide,

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Book SynopsisIn 2011, Myanmar embarked in a democratic transition from a brutal military rule that culminated four years later, when the first free election in decades saw a landslide for the party of celebrated Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, even as the international community was celebrating a new dawn, old wars were raging in the northern borderlands. A crisis was emerging in western Arakan state where the regime intensified its oppression of the vulnerable Muslim Rohingya community. By 2017, the conflict had escalated into a military onslaught against the Rohingya that provoked the most desperate refugee crisis of our times, as over 750,000 of them fled their homes to neighbouring Bangladesh.In The Burmese Labyrinth, journalist Carlos Sardiña Galache gives the in depth story of the country. Burma has always been an uneasy balance between multiple ethnic groups and religions. He examines the deep roots behind the ethnic divisions that go back prior to the colonial period, and so shockingly exploded in recent times. This is a powerful portrait of a nation in perpetual conflict with itself.Trade ReviewAnyone attempting to understand why mass violence against the Rohingya occurred should seek out first this exemplary study by the Spanish journalist Carlos Sardiña Galache. * Mekong Review *

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Book SynopsisFeminist City is an ongoing experiment in living differently, living better, and living more justly in an urban world. We live in the city of men. Our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. There is little consideration for woman as mothers, workers or carers. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community. Gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. What would a metropolis for working women look like? A city of friendships beyond Sex and the City. A transit system that accommodates mothers with strollers on the school run. A public space with enough toilets. A place where women can walk without harassment. In The Feminist City, through history, personal experience and popular culture Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities are built into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. And offers an alternative vision of the feminist city.Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out a feminist intersectional approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together.Trade ReviewA damning stab at the subtle and overt manipulation of women in urban spaces. Kern's interwoven references to her personal experience through childhood, adulthood, and motherhood make her deeply researched and whip-smart work infinitely readable. Kern shows that the ability of all women to exploit the city fully is a valuable, necessary gauge for city worth -- Lezlie Lowe, author of No Place To GoThis original study of the gendering processes occurring in the neoliberal city is a significant addition to scholarly debate on cities and gender. Empirically grounded in the intricacies of the condo market in Toronto, it both adds to, and updates, the pathbreaking work around gendered critical urban analysis. An accessible and incisive text that will no doubt instigate future discussions -- Loretta Lees, Cities Group, Department of Geography, King’s College, London * [for Sex and the Revitalised City] *How do we begin to reckon with and ultimately reimagine our public realm in the #MeToo era? We can start by lifting up a greater diversity of experiences and voices that influence our thinking about what makes a place equitable, fun, accessible, safe, and dynamic for all. Kern's exploration is honest, timely, and intentional in acknowledging the work of women-fellow urbanists and others-in advancing the feminist city -- Lynn M. Ross, AICP, urban planner and feministThe next-generation urbanism book I've been waiting for! Leslie lays out a comprehensive guide to feminist world-building that our cities so desperately need. A must-read for all city officials and budding urbanists alike as we move into the female future of our urban environments. -- Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman, Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel UniversityCities aren't built to accommodate female bodies, female needs, female desires. In this rich, engaging book the feminist geographer Leslie Kern envisions how we might transform the "city of men" into a city for everyone. Let's all move there immediately.' Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse -- Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse[An] insightful scholarly work ... This provocative analysis will resonate with theoretically minded feminists. * Publishers Weekly *This book totally opened my eyes! Feminist City is an incredibly incisive look at cities and urban design through the lens of gender, while also inspecting how acts of claiming urban space affect other marginalized groups. Combining academic and lived experience, Leslie Kern's intersectional approach clearly lays out just how cities are failing and what it might mean to imagine a more just urban life. Feminist City made me see my own experiences in a whole new light, and Kern makes the field of feminist geography completely accessible and exciting to the average city slicker. Anyone who considers themselves a feminist or activist should read this book! -- Julia DeVarti * Literati Bookstore *Approachable and based in thorough research ... In eye-opening detail, [Feminist City] argues that the privatization of security and heightened police presences endanger women of certain demographic groups, while marketers, who present condo living as the safest way to exist in a city, ironically turn women into accomplices in gentrification, forcing low-income women out of safer areas and into environments that are more dangerous. -- Tanisha Rule * Foreword Reviews *An optimistic, pragmatic book, which points to already extant solutions and looks forward to a more just, joyous urban future. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * Tribune *In Feminist City, Kern imagines a world where public spaces are designed with women and equity in mind. * Bitch *Kern resists drawing a blueprint for a new master-planned feminist city. Instead, she believes we ought to take a closer look at how cities perpetuate inequality from the perspective of race, gender, ability, and class. -- Diana Budds * Curbed *An intersectional analysis of our urban environments through a combination of personal narrative, theory, and pop culture analysis. -- Leilah Stone * Metropolis Magazine *[Feminist City] examines the city's paradoxical ability to oppress and emancipate-how an environment teeming with gendered inconvenience, racial discrimination, and sexual violence can also be a locus of queer independence, community care, and emancipatory feminist world-making. ... Heavily researched but accessibly written, the book is a dynamic mix of high and low, facts and feelings, research and reality. * Hazlitt *Kern delves into the interlocking inequalities and systems of oppression that take concrete shape in cities, using an intersectional feminist approach to explore the gendered aspects of urban space...an enjoyable and accessible book that not only contributes to urban feminist geography, but to urban planning and policy more broadly * LSE Review of Books *Feminist City is brilliant because of the ways it lays out, quite clearly, the fact that cities are designed to discriminate in both overt and hidden ways and that it's possible to imagine something new-something that is more inclusive of different bodies and experiences. -- Evette Dionne * Bitch *[Feminist City is] a small but provocative book. It is both an introduction to feminist geography and to modern feminism, with its multiple meanings and numerous contradictions. ... In a world where the male gaze is so often the only gaze considered, so much so [that] most people don't even think of it as being gendered in any way, Feminist City is revelatory. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *Charting the physical aspects of the city that work against women, from inefficient public transport to a lack of supportive care networks for working mothers, Kern argues that there are ways to transform the city that would advance the liberation of women and marginalized people. ... Kern's analysis seems especially timely as we debate the role of police in our society and how we can better protect marginalized people. -- Nicole Froio * Bitch Media *Looking through the lens of geography, pop culture and public and personal history, the book exposes how female bodies are ostracised in urban spaces. * Refinery29 *Feminist City balances descriptions of our environment with the internal conversations or anxieties we feel as we wait for the bus, rush to pick up our child before daycare closes, and navigate space that's designed to keep us inside. -- Elizabeth Whitton * Greater Greater Washington *A joy to dip into * The Developer *There should be more books like this...Feminist City is wide-ranging and sophisticated, brief and engaging. * ICON Magazine *[Kern's] message is that thoughtful planners can and, eventually will, arrive at the feminist city as long as women's voices get the attention they deserve. -- Josh Stephens * California Planning & Development Report *A wide-ranging survey of social inequalities exacerbated by one-size-fits-all urban planning-inequalities ripe for improvement. -- Britta Shoot * KQED *Kern [wants] to envi­sion a more inclu­sive city that con­sid­ers the phys­i­cal and cul­tur­al needs of its most mar­gin­al­ized mem­bers. -- Apoorva Tadepalli * In These Times *[Kern] introduces readers to a number of different ways the city is at once emancipatory and endangering. She deploys an intersectional lens to explore such themes as mobility, protest, adolescence, and friendship, weaving together an impressive array of sources from academic writings and popular culture (Doreen Massey appears alongside Two Dope Queens). -- Sophie Gonick * Public Books *Feminist City presents a comprehensive analysis of how people of color are the folks that make our cities work, and yet, they are not the folks our cities were designed for. -- Audrey Kalman * The Daily Emerald *Reminds us that our cities are moulded by male fantasies and designed to serve gender-based structures. * New Welsh Review *A good introduction to reading the city from a feminist perspective. * Urban Design Group *So much to digest here - cities old and new, politics old and new. -- Rosita Sweetman * Irish Times *Feminist City is a call for gender equity in planning (and for intersectionality), and it's one that planners of all genders should heed. * Planetizen (The Top Urban Planning Books of 2020) *Kern works to identify what a feminist city actually is as she pushes readers to thinkbigger, to think more radically, to think in terms of proactive world- and community-building ratherthan reactionary, incrementalist, or singularly policy-based world-adjusting. ... Feminist City provides a fundamental critique of contemporary society through a feminist and urbanist lens. Itshould be considered a significant contribution to both fields of study. -- Anna Parnigoni * Journal of Urban Affairs *An excellent contribution ... Leslie Kern's clear laying out of feminist urban theory and empirical work generates both a personal and critical understanding of the city. * Gender & Development *I was hooked by this deep dive into how women's freedom is curtailed by the design and culture of man-made cities - and how we can reclaim space -- Moya Crockett * Stylist Loves *[Feminist City] encourages people to look around their community and ask: Who are these spaces meant for? Who feels included and safe and welcome, and who might feel excluded, unsafe or even pushed out of the city? -- Vawn Himmelsbach * Wheels.ca *Importantly, Kern shows how sexism in cities is also inextricably linked to other systems of privilege and oppression, particularly racism, classism, homophobia and ableism ... a noteworthy book for our times * The F-Word *Essential . Kern an excellent example of a writer who wants to amplify marginalised voices . Feminist City urges women to take up space in their environments and not to be afraid of the unknown. -- Becky Little * Bright Green *

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