Verso Books

Book SynopsisThirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class," a strike wave-the first in over four decades-rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics-as-usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizers, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education-and redrawing the political map of the country at large.Trade ReviewComprehensive and excellent -- Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, an education policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University. She is the author of Reign of ErrorIf you've not been reading Eric Blanc's reporting on the teacher strikes, you've been missing out. Far and away the smartest writing out there on the topic. -- Corey Robin, author of the Reactionary Mindhas anyone in American labor history ever covered a strike wave so closely? Has a labor writer ever been on the scene of so many different upsurges in so many geographically far-flight places in such a short amount of time? Has anyone ever covered these conflicts in a way that both captures the incredible sense of possibility that these strikes have put on the table while also remaining sober about what the strikers have achieved and failed to achieve, with both a bird's-eye view as an observer and a commitment to hearing from workers in their own words? Eric's work on these strikes has been superb. -- Micah Uetricht, author of Strike for AmericaBefore 2018, strikes had become so rare in this country that hardly anyone knew what they were. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they began. Not in left-wing cities but in the reddest of red states. Not of white men in factories but of teachers, many of them women, many of them of color. Eric Blanc spent months with the strikers, talking to them on picket lines, listening to them in meetings, sharing with them on Facebook threads, and more. Like Orwell in Barcelona, he's given us a first-hand report from the front lines, making sense of the most improbable political story of an improbable decade. This is exhilarating reading about a movement that will be shaping politics for decades to come. -- Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald TrumpEric Blanc has written the best on-the-ground description and explanation of the red state teachers' revolt. He was there and he understands that what happened is historic. The brave teachers who walked out in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and other red states started a powerful trend. They give hope that the reactionary politics of the past forty years may be reversed by working people who realize that 'enough is enough.' Blanc's enthralling description of their struggles is a chronicle that should be widely read. -- Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School SystemRead this book to understand the many important lessons educators so powerfully taught about what it will take to rebuild a working-class movement, defeat Trumpism, and take on the billionaires. -- Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded AgeEric Blanc's compelling new book, "Red State Revolt", is a thoroughly researched and eloquently written story of one of the most powerful social movements of our time. His incisive reporting shows how teachers, through labor organizing and strategic strikes, are protecting and strengthening public education, the great equalizing force of any democratic society. -- Amy Goodman, Host & Executive Producer, Democracy Now!Read Eric Blanc's book! -- Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA[T]here could be real potential in a national campaign around basic needs like public education. For thinking through how to go about building that movement-how to connect struggles by the workers who provide such public goods to the communities that depend upon them, and above all how to deploy the power of our best weapon, the strike-Red State Revolt is indispensable. -- Samir Sonti * New Labor Forum 2019, Vol. 28(3) 107–119 *

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Book SynopsisSummer 2022 issue of Salvage, featuring Richard Seymour, Stuart Hall, Sita Balani, and Sophie LewisA Ceaseless Storm includes an essay on Stuart Hall by Richard Seymour, and an essay by Stuart Hall on Marxism, Sita Balani on the nuclear family, Anne Rumberger on the evangelical anti-abortion movement, Robert Knox on conservatives selectively venerating institutions, Jamie Allinson on counter-revolution, Nadia Bou Ali on Lebanon, Brendan O’Connor on abolition and the state, Oliver Eagleton on Keir Starmer, and Sophie Lewis on abortion and bodily autonomy.With poetry by Mira Mattar and fiction by Anka Dabrowska.

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Book SynopsisIn 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi"-Water is Life-was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto.Trade ReviewA touching and necessary manifesto and history featuring firsthand accounts of the recent Indigenous uprising against powerful oil companies...With an urgent voice, Estes reminds us that the greed of private corporations must never be allowed to endanger the health of the majority. An important read about Indigenous protesters fighting to protect their ancestral land and uphold their historic values of clean land and water for all humans. * Kirkus Reviews *A powerful blend of personal and historical narrative. A major contribution. -- Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingEmbedded in the centuries-long struggle for Indigenous liberation resides our best hope for a safe and just future for everyone on this planet. Few events embody that truth as clearly as the resistance at Standing Rock, and the many deep currents that converged there. In this powerful blend of personal and historical narrative, Nick Estes skillfully weaves together transformative stories of resistance from these front lines, never losing sight of their enormous stakes. A major contribution. -- Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingReading Our History is the Future is like standing in the middle of camp again. During the Standing Rock uprising, we witnessed what our ancestors always prayed for-making their dreams a reality. -- Bobbi Jean Three Legs, leader of the Standing Rock Youth RunnersIn Our History is the Future historian Nick Estes tells a spellbinding story of the 10 month Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock in 2016, animating the lives and characters of the leaders and organizers, emphasizing the powerful leadership of the women. Alone this would be a brilliant analysis of one of the most significant social movements of this century. But embedded in the story and inseparable from it is the centuries long history of the Oceti Sakowin' resistance to United States' genocidal wars and colonial institutions. And woven into these entwined stories of Indigenous resistance is the true history of the United States as a colonialist state and a global history of European colonialism. This book is a jewel-history and analysis that reads like the best poetry-certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance. -- Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United StatesWhen state violence against peaceful protest at Standing Rock became part of the national consciousness, many noticed Native people for the first time -- again. Our History is necessary reading, documenting how Native resistance is met with settler erasure: an outcome shaped by land, resources, and the juggernaut of capitalism. Estes has written a powerful history of Seven Fires resolve that demonstrates how Standing Rock is the outcome of history and the beginning of the future. -- Louise Erdrich, author of the National Book Award winner The Round HouseA touching and necessary manifesto and history featuring firsthand accounts of the recent Indigenous uprising against powerful oil companies...With an urgent voice, Estes reminds us that the greed of private corporations must never be allowed to endanger the health of the majority. An important read about Indigenous protesters fighting to protect their ancestral land and uphold their historic values of clean land and water for all humans. * Kirkus Reviews *Our History is the Future offers a first draft of history that will serve as the last word for years to come. Combining the literary skill of the poet, the rich contextual knowledge of the historian, and the sharp edge of experience, Nick Estes has crafted a powerful account of the Standing Rock resistance, situating it in a struggle lodged deep in time and across the full reach of global solidarities. -- Philip J. Deloria, author of Playing IndianOur History is the Future brings the history of Native American anti-imperialism to the center of the study of racial capitalism while renewing the focus on political economy in Indigenous Studies; it brings the experience of the camp at Standing Rock to the study of history, and deep learning to the ongoing fight for sovereignty; it is a book by a young scholar that draws brilliantly on the wisdom of centuries of struggle. In short: you should read it. -- Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton KingdomOur History is the Future is a game-changer. In addition to providing a thorough and cogent history of the long tradition of Indigenous resistance, it is also a personal memoir and homage to the Oceti Sakowin; an entreaty to all their relations that demands the "emancipation of the earth." Estes continues in the legacy of his ancestors, from Black Elk to Vine Deloria, he turns Indigenous history right-side up as a story of self-defense against settler invasion. In so doing, he is careful and judicious in his telling, working seamlessly across eras, movements, and scholarly literatures, to forge a collective vision for liberation that takes prophecy and revolutionary theory seriously. The book will be an instant classic and go-to text for students and educators working to understand the "structure" undergirding the "event" of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is what history as Ghost Dance looks like. -- Sandy Grande, author of Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political ThoughtThis extraordinary history of resistance counters the myth of Indigenous disappearance and insignificance while calling into question the very notion that resistance itself is impossible in a world saturated by capital and atrophying inequality. This is a radical Indigenous history in its finest form -- that connects individual lives to global scales of political articulation while remaining attentive to intellectual formation and coalitional politics from the 19th Century to the present. Estes draws from multiple archives and intellectual traditions and seeks to not only connect past to present but also to transform futures and possibilities for justice. -- Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interrupts: Political Life Across the Borders of the Settler StatesNick Estes is a forceful writer whose work reflects the defiant spirit of the #NoDAPL movement. Our History is the Future braids together strands of history, theory, manifesto and memoir into a unique and compelling whole that will provoke activists, scholars and readers alike to think deeper, consider broader possibilities and mobilize for action on stolen land. -- Julian Brave Noisecat, 350.orgFearless and inspiring, Nick Estes delivers a powerful rebuke of Euro-American Manifest Destiny with an Indigenous perspective that is inclusive and ideological precise. This book correctly, if not necessarily, focuses its energy on the natural evolutionary and revolutionary pathway of Oceti Sakowin resistance. Respectful, brilliant, and insightful, This book should be considered a key ingredient to achieve the universal Native construct of balance-something we must all have to ensure our continued existence. -- Marcella Gilbert, Lakota Water Protector, Warrior Women Film ProjectOur History is the Future establishes Nick Estes as one of the leading scholars of our time. This dynamic book offers a careful, deeply researched, and even-handed account of the events at Standing Rock, placing them in a long continuum of Oceti Sakowin resistance. This is a war story that links the #NoDAPL movement in the present to anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggles in the past to demonstrate the possibilities of liberated futures. -- Jordan T. Camp, author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal StateIt is customary to hail a bold young author as the voice of their generation. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes gives voice to many generations, those who've come before and those still to come. The book slips through time, evoking the scent of campfire that once indicted Indigenous people in the 19th century, a smoke that still lingers on 21st century Water Protectors and marks them as enemies of the state. This utterly astonishing book imparts the long history of Indigenous people, their relatives, and their struggle for liberation against capitalist North America's settler colonial violence. The long memory of the people, Estes shows, cannot be clipped by the oblivion of empire. The people do not forget. -- Christina Heatherton, co-editor of Policing the Planet: How the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives MatterA mindful and dynamic text. Nick Estes' narrative power gives dynamism and detailed realism to some of the most formative movements of our time. The book is expansive in its isolation and focus. The book embodies resistance and shows the true effort it takes to maintain it. -- Terese Mailhot, author of HeartberriesWith scrupulous research and urgent prose, [Nick Estes] declares the DAPL protest a flowering of indigenous resistance with roots deep in history and Native sacred land...A powerful work, Estes's condemnation of the United States government is clear and resonant. * Publishers Weekly *This book is a mustread for anyone interested in the #NoDAPL movement. It works as an introduction - and a fearless analysis of - one of the biggest social movements of our times. -- Fiorella Lecoutteux * Peace News *Activist, scholar, and Lower Brule Sioux citizen Estes challenges the power systems that have attacked and disenfranchised Indigenous peoples for centuries with both the story of northern Plains peoples as well as a political philosophy of Indigenous empowerment. The author provides context for contemporary struggles against the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines. * Library Journal *Our History Is The Future traces not just an Indigenous politics of opposition, but a vibrant and omnipresent theory of decolonisation that strives to create and preserve as well as resist...Perhaps the most powerful argument of the book is the conceptualisation of Indigenous resistance as an omnipresent process that runs throughout the course of American history. -- Shelley Angelie Saggar * Hong Kong Review of Books *Nick Estes gives voice to the new wave of indigenous environmental mobilisation. -- Neha Shah * Guardian *Our History Is the Future should be on the reading lists of historians, social scientists, and members of the public interested in grasping the interconnections and continuity among the many efforts of Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism and corporate encroachments onto their lands, waters, and natural resources. -- Simone Poliandri * American Indian Culture and Research Journal *

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin, one of the foremost cultural commentators and theorists of this century, is perhaps best known for his analyses of the work of art in the modern age and the philosophy of history. Yet it was through his study of the social and cultural history of the late nineteenth-century Paris, examined particularly in relation to the figure of the great Parisian lyric poet Charles Baudelaire, that Benjamin tested and enriched some of his core concepts and themes. Contained within these pages are, amongst other insights, his notion of the flaneur, his theory of memory and remembrance, his assessment of the utopian Fourier and his reading of the modernist movement.Trade ReviewA series of brilliant insights ... a remarkable volume. * Times Educational Supplement *His analyses are inspired. His fragments about with insights. -- George SteinerBenjamin is indispensable as well as brilliant. -- Raymond Williams

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Book Synopsis'ONE OF THE MOST OUTSTANDING, ORIGINAL INTELLECTUALS OF HIS GENERATION', Stuart Hall, author of The Hard Road to RenewalThe work of the pioneering historian Raphael Samuel opened up new vistas of historical enquiry. He was committed to the idea of people's history, in which he excavated the ordinary lives of those often overlooked or discarded by other writers. This 'unofficial knowledge' transformed what history was, who was allowed to do it, and who it was for.Workshop of the World brings the full range and depth of Samuel's historical writing on nineteenth-century Britain to the fore. From his pioneering study of the influence of the Catholic Church on England's Irish population to his expansive and erudite essay on the itinerant labourers of Victorian Britain, the collection captures both the breadth and depth of his learning. Guided by both a political engagement as well as a methodological commitment to uncovering the stories of ordinary people, Workshop of the World will help introduce Raphael Samuel's work to a new generation of readers.Trade ReviewWorkshop of the World reveals how Raphael Samuel dived into the nineteenth century to find just how onions were pickled or the temperature of cheese tested, extending far and wide from rough sleepers in Willesden to Roman Catholic missionaries in Wallasey. John Merrick's collection of Samuel's essays provides the reader with an invaluable introduction to the political and cultural background which inspired this insightful and exploratory radical historian. -- Sheila RowbothamThese essays are works of extraordinary intellectual energy, refusing to identify method with political orientation, luminous in their historiographic clarity, which turn our attention from the commonplaces of history to the exceptions that deny the clichés: to a post- 1800 world driven by seasons, not the clock, a post-industrial revolution world of production dominated not by the factory, but the farm, the workshop, the cottage, where skills are created and work degraded, where the machine does not rule; of peri-urban villages of brickmakers, and much, much more besides. A feast of erudition with purpose. -- David Edgerton, author of The Rise and Fall of the British NationJohn Merrick and Verso should be thanked for giving a new generation of readers the chance to encounter the youngest of the British Marxist historians, and the one closest in time to ourselves. Samuel was a charismatic teacher, an extraordinarily well-read historian, and a generous man - his too-long-forgotten voice greets us from every line. -- David RentonAn excellent selection ... Merrick's smart introduction and deftly chosen texts should revive interest and admiration in a socialist historian whose eye for unconsidered trifles led him beyond the political binaries of his time and ours. -- Michael Ledger-Lomas * Engelsberg Ideas *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Making of a People's Historian, by John MerrickPeople's HistoryHeadington Quarry: Recording a Labouring CommunityComers and GoersWorkshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian BritainA Spiritual Elect? Robert Tressell and the Early SocialistsThe Roman Catholic Church and the Irish PoorNotes

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Book SynopsisA novel is an act, an intervention, which, most often, the naïve reader takes as a representation. The novel intervenes to modify or correct our conventional notions of a situation and, in the best and most intense cases, to propose a wholly new idea of what constitutes an event or of the very experience of living. The most interesting contemporary novels are those which try—and sometimes manage—to awaken our sense of a collectivity behind individual experience, revealing a relationship between the isolated subjectivity and a class or community. But even if this happens (which is rare), one must go on to find traces of collective praxis hidden away within the awakened feeling of inter-connection. And since it is in the sense of the nation and nationality that collectivity is most often expressed, there is an urgent need to disengage the possibilities of genuine action within these areas.This sweeping collection of essays ranges from the elusive politics of Nort

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Book SynopsisDiary of a Crisis explores the past tumultuous and traumatic year in Israel-Palestine. The eminent historian Saul Friedländer began a diary of Israeli politics in January 2023 as the country was convulsed by protests against Netanyahu’s attempt to overhaul the judiciary. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against this threat to democracy. But the protests said nothing about the Palestinian question—the 'elephant in the room,' according to Friedländer, who resumed his diary after Hamas’s 7 October assault on southern Israel. Israel was facing one of the worst crises in its history, he observes, under the worst possible internal conditions.Friedländer weaves together profound reflections on a national history in which he has been an active participant. He describes how Prime Minister Golda Meir once flatly declared to him, 'There is no Palestinian people.' For Friedländer, on the other hand, the fight for democrac

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Book SynopsisNevertheless comprises essays on Machiavelli and on Pascal. The ambivalent connection between the two parts is embodied by the comma (,) in the subtitle: Machiavelli, Pascal. Is this comma a conjunction or a disjunction? In fact, both. Ginzburg approaches Machiavelli's work from the perspective of casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. For as Machiavelli indicated through his repeated use of the adverb nondimanco ("nevertheless"), there is an exception to every rule. Such a perspective may seem to echo the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, "machiavellian" thinker. But a close analysis of Machiavelli the reader, as well as of the ways in which some of Machiavelli's most perceptive readers read his work, throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy inspires the essays on the Provinciales, Pascal's ferocious attack against Jesuitical casuistry. Casuistry vs anti-casuistry; Machiavelli's secular attitude towards religion vs Pascal's deep religiosity. We are confronted, apparently, with two completely different worlds. But Pascal read Machiavelli, and reflected deeply upon his work. A belated, contemporary echo of this reading can unveil the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal - their divergences as well as their unexpected convergences.Trade ReviewA dazzling example of the pleasure of research * Il Foglio *Ginzburg calls for an intricate reading of Machiavelli. He points out that the link between the author of The Prince and the author of the Provincial Letters is justified by the fact that both pertain to the broad constellation of political theology informed by the exception, the miracle, the unique case imposed on the norm * Il Manifesto *A treasure hunt in historical sources, forgeries and the reception of texts * Avvenire *One of world's premier historians. A born detective. * New York Times *Really quite brilliant -- Jan Machielsen * Times Literary Supplement (for Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf) *

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Book SynopsisComrades, This is Madness, the Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Salvage, put together during the pandemicThe Salvage Editorial Collective on the Covid-19 crisis'Mothering Against the World': Sophie Lewis on 'Momrades''The Bushes': new fiction from China Miéville'Hookers and Other Angels': photography from Juno Mac (co-author of Revolting Prostitutes)'Prepared for the Worst': Richard Seymour on Disaster Nationalism'Welfare State Populism and the Left-Behind Left' by Kevin Ochieng Okoth'A Glimmer of a Shell of a Husk' by Maya Osborne'The Phallic Road to Socialism' by Sebastian BudgenA newly translated interview with Daniel Guérin'Nationalism After Coronavirus' by Sivamohan Valluvan'Striking in Striking Times: Capitalism's Coronavirus Crisis' by Gregor Gall'Getting Dressed for a Pandemic' by Camila Valle'Out of the Iron Lung: A Miasma Theory of Coronavirus' by Matthew BroomfieldAnd poetry by Nisha Ramay

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Book SynopsisIn this searching, elegant essay, critically acclaimed writer Katherine Angel examines the place of fathers in contemporary culture with her characteristic mix of boldness and nuance, asking how the mixture of love and hatred we feel towards our fathers-and patriarchal father figures-can be turned into a relationship that is generative rather than destructive.Moving deftly between psychoanalysis from Freud to Winnicott, cultural visions of fathering from King Lear to Ivanka Trump, and issues from incest to #MeToo, Angel probes the fraught bond of daughters and fathers, women and the patriarchal regime. What, she asks, is this discomfiting space of love and hate-and how are we to reckon with both fealty and rebellion?As in her earlier Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, Angel proves herself yet again to be one of the most perceptive feminist writers at work today.Trade ReviewThis is a brave and brilliant book by one of the most insightful and articulate writers at work today. Katherine Angel is unafraid to look head on at the forgotten figure in feminism's critique of patriarchy: the father. All of us, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, are enriched by confronting these libidinal energies, these daddy issues at the centre of all of our lives. -- Lauren Elkin, author of FlâneuseIn this impressive and intelligent examination of the father figure, Angel expertly intersects the subject with feminism, mythology, Donald Winnicott, Brett Kavanaugh and more. Her unstinting eye and intellectual vigour make Daddy Issues an engaging interrogation. It feels utterly vital in the context of #MeToo and the political flux the world currently finds itself in. -- Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations: Reflections from LifeEffortlessly moving from the novels of Virginia Woolf to the theories of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, Angel demonstrates a sharp intellectual acuity in her elucidation of the cultural mythos surrounding "daddies." The result is a valuable contribution to the feminist understanding of fatherhood. * Publishers Weekly *In this cheekily titled feminist analysis, author Katherine Angel dissects the patriarchy with a sharp combination of individual psychology and cultural critique. An exciting follow-up to Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. -- Alison Foreman * AV Club *Katherine Angel's astute observations on the impact of the #MeToo movement, the retrenchment of feminism by younger women, and our current state of gender relations is compelling. -- Roberta E. Winter * New York Journal of Books *An examination of our often prurient fascination with the dynamic, and that fascination's inherent misogyny. [Angel's] thought-provoking approach is to argue that our society has overlooked the place of daddies in 'daddy issues.' To prove the point, she dexterously analyzes a variety of literary works, historical figures like Virginia Woolf's father, Leslie Stephen, and contemporary tabloid examples, like Meghan Markle and Ivanka Trump. -- Annie Hamilton * New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisThe Argentine-born writer Adolfo Gilly has directly observed many of Latin America's most dramatic events, from the Bolivian Revolution of the 1950s and Cuba during the Missile Crisis to the guerrilla wars of Central America and Mexico's Zapatista uprising. Paths of Revolution presents the first representative selection from across his extensive body of work, collecting close-quarters reportage, sharp political analyses and reflections on art and letters.A living link between the New Left of the 1960s and the Pink Tide of recent decades, Gilly once described the twentieth century as a series of lightning flashes which can illuminate our present-day predicament. The essay form is where he fully comes into his own, covering a truly impressive range of topics and places. This collection draws out the continuities within one of the world's more vibrant and politically successful left traditions. In the Introduction, Tony Wood (author of Russia Without Putin) offer an overall portrait of Gilly's life and work.Trade ReviewA long-awaited assemblage of the writings of one of Latin America's most important revolutionary intellectuals. -- Greg Grandin, author of The End of the MythCaptures the long arc of Gilly's political commitments and his rare combination of revolutionary principle and strategic agility. -- Jeffery R. Webber, co-author of The Impasse of the Latin American LeftGilly is a gifted journalist, deep thinker, and brilliant writer-activist. This rich selection begins to fill a lacuna in the Anglophone world. -- Suzi Weissman, biographer of Victor SergeA revolutionary militant whose commitments took him all the way across Latin America and to Europe, into clandestinity, exile and the Mexican jail where his classic study La revolución interrumpida was conceived and written. * New Left Review *Adolfo Gilly shows that intelligent criticism requires passion . . . and that the vision of struggle between heroes and villains belongs to a rudimentary and scholastic version of the events. -- Carlos Monsiváis, writer and cultural critic

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Book Synopsis"Dazzling. A novel that holds up to scrutiny a world of claustrophobic war zones, virulent social media and cities collapsing upon themselves, and then sets it down again, transformed by the grace of storytelling." - Siddartha Deb, author of The Point of ReturnAnita lives in Karachi's biggest slum. Her mother is a maalish wali, paid to massage the tired bones of rich women. But Anita's life will change forever when she meets her elderly neighbour, a man whose shelves of books promise an escape to a different world.On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, whose father owns half the city and expects great things of him. But when a beautiful and rebellious girl joins his school, Monty will find his life going in a very different direction. Sunny's father left India and went to England to give his son the opportunities he never had. Yet Sunny doesn't fit in anywhere. It's only when his charismatic cousin comes back into his life that he realises his life could hold more possibilities than he ever imagined. These three lives will cross in the desert, a place where life and death walk hand in hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.Trade ReviewFatima Bhutto vividly renders the seductions of Islamic radicalization in such a way that we understand both its historical specificity and its universal roots in idealism and desire, rage and romance, youth and rebellion. Drawn from the headlines but plunging much deeper, The Runaways is a novel for our difficult times. -- Viet Thanh NguyenAn astute and searing take on anomie and radicalization. * Kirkus Reviews *Stunning ... Bhutto's descriptions trade between stark beauty and restrained horrors, encompassing the damp of a rain-soaked slum, the wonder of self-caging birds, and the pure brightness of moonshine over the desert ... Her pages are brutal and surprising, and their revelations stand to unmake and rebuild their audiences. -- Michelle Anne Schingler * Foreword Reviews (Starred Review) *Dramatic. ... With poetic writing, Bhutto slowly reveals the characters' connections as well as some compelling twists, and makes a convincing case that extremism, especially for young people, is driven more by feelings of alienation than religion. -- Kathy Sexton * Booklist *Told in alternate chapters from the points of view of all three protagonists, the book moves forward and backward, explaining their motivations in spare, almost jaunty prose that elicits empathy for the troubled teens and stands in stark contrast to the seriousness of the plot. Bhutto's penetrating character study convinces all the way to the inevitable bloody end. * Publishers Weekly *The Runaways is an extraordinary novel by an author whose attention to detail [and] exceptionally effective narrative storytelling style has created the kind of book that will linger in the mind and memory long after it has been finished. * Midwest Book Review *A meticulous psychological study of who turns to radicalism and why. ... A provocative investigation of courage, and how it can foment either salvation or damnation. -- Anjali Enjeti * Minneapolis Star Tribune *The Runaways, with its complex fusion of ideas-personal, national, and transnational identity; the relationship between fervor and self-destruction; and the nature of the matrix within which we live-generates a complex fictional topography. The sensibilities of the novel's protagonists suggest a new dynamic of power relations in which politics and selfhood, empire and psychology prove to be profoundly interrelated. -- Nyla Ali Khan * World Literature Today *The Runaways is a finely wrought novel. ... Both thought-provoking and humane. -- Ron Jacobs * CounterPunch *[The characters'] alternating voices give a kaleidoscopic feel to the plot, and yield a panoramic look at the roots of radicalism. -- Adeel Hassan * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisBeing environmentally conscious is not nearly as modern as we imagine. As a mode of thinking it goes back hundreds of years. Yet we typically imagine ourselves among the first to grasp the impact humanity has on the environment. Hence there is a fashion for green confessions and mea culpas.But the notion of a contemporary ecological awakening leads to political impasse. It erases a long history of environmental destruction. Furthermore, by focusing on our present virtues, it overlooks the struggles from which our perspective arose.In response, Happy Apocalypse plunges us into the heart of controversies that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries around factories, machines, vaccines and railways. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz demonstrates how risk was conceived, managed, distributed and erased to facilitate industrialization. He explores how clinical expertise around 1800 allowed vaccination to be presented as completely benign, how the polluter-pays pr

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Book SynopsisWinter 2020 issue of Salvage, featuring Andreas Malm, Helen Charman, James Meadway, Tessa McWatt, and many others.That Hideous Strength includes a major essay from James Meadway on the late David Graeber's political economy and the lessons in it for today's left, Tessa McWatt on the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020, Benjamin Kunkel on the 2020 US Presidential election, Judy Thorne on femme excess and its necessity for planetary liberation, Ben Davis on the politics of online, James Foley on Scotland's Covid-19 response, and Alex Billet on contemporary Los Angeles. Richard Seymour is in conversation with Andreas Malm about his latest book, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and poetry editor Caitlín Doherty interviews this issue's featured poet, Helen Charman. The artist of this issue is Stephanie Monohan, and the volume concludes with a haunting short story from Davinia Hamilton. 

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Book SynopsisIn this brilliant introduction to trans politics, journalist Shon Faye gives an incisive overview of systemic transphobia and argues that the struggle for trans rights is necessary to any struggle for social justice.So often, Faye argues, trans people are understood as a "side issue," the subjects of a toxic and increasingly polarized debate which generates reliable controversy for newspapers and talk shows. This media frenzy conceals a simple fact: that we are having the wrong conversation, a conversation in which trans people themselves are reduced to a talking point and denied a meaningful voice.With skill, rigor, and heart, Faye uncovers the reality of what it means to be trans in a transphobic society. In this compellingly readable study, she explores issues of class, family, housing, healthcare, sex work, the prison system, and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities. What she finds, ultimately, is that when we fight for trans liberation, we fight for a better world for us all.Trade ReviewA clear, intelligent, experience-based explanation of why the scapegoating of trans people must stop, while enthusiastically encouraging more trans people to join feminist, anti-racist movements for economic and social change. -- Sarah SchulmanShon Faye has written a book that models clarity in its writing and its moral vision... One learns here how to distinguish between arguments that merit a response and those which should be refused because they are either cruel or stupid. This is a monumental work and utterly convincing - crystal clear in its understanding of how the world should be. -- Judith ButlerA powerful new call for trans liberation. -- Amia Srinivasan * The New Yorker *A cold, hard, and, most importantly, convincing look into the facts surrounding trans rights both past and present, as well as a moving and impressively comprehensive overview of trans life... As well as being a manifesto of sorts, arguing for the benefits of trans liberation to society at large, The Transgender Issue is a vital resource for readers outside of the U.K. to understand just what is happening there in terms of trans rights-and how to bring about a long-overdue change to the conversation. * Vogue *An inspiring call for coalition ... Shon Faye shows with courage and clarity that the struggle of trans people is the struggle of us all. This book is a game-changer. -- Owen JonesFrom the very first words... it is clear the reader is in the hands of someone with absolute clarity about the world we live in, and the one we deserve. Shon refutes those who seek to turn trans people's lives into a subject of debate. Instead, she shows us that liberation for trans people is intimately tied to the struggle for workers' rights, an end to the violent systems of policing and prisons, and bodily autonomy through universal healthcare. Refusing to water down the radicalism and urgency of her demands, Shon's argument for justice is both a heartfelt outcry against injustice, and an utterly convincing vision for change rooted in analysis and research. -- Florence Welch * @BetweenTwoBooks *Shon Faye makes a compelling case that transgender issues are inexorably linked with other social justice causes. The result is a bold and pragmatic guide for challenging societal transphobia comprehensively and intersectionally. -- Julia Serano, author of Sexed UpMy god, this book couldn't be more timely here in the USA. I hope that all of my trans family come to understand from this book that no matter how hard others try to make us an issue, we are first and always people, individuals, and brave ones at that. -- Kate Bornstein, author of Gender OutlawWriting with astonishing patience, clarity, and ethical force, Shon Faye has gifted us an essential primer for our times. The Transgender Issue calls us into a much-needed solidarity, and makes the project of constructing and inhabiting a more free and just world for everyone feel urgent, possible, and exhilarating. -- Maggie Nelson, author of On FreedomFaye writes with admirable clarity, and, accordingly, her book is accessible to general readers....It sheds essential light on a subject that is widely misunderstood-driven, unfortunately, by too many people's ignorance, which, one hopes, this volume will help correct. * Booklist *

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Book SynopsisCOVID-19 exposed the pre-existing conditions of the current global crisis. Many Western states failed to protect their populations, while others were able to suppress the virus only with sweeping social restrictions. In contrast, many Asian countries were able to make much more precise interventions. Everywhere, lockdown transformed everyday life, introducing an epidemiological view of society based on sensing, modeling, and filtering. What lessons are to be learned? The Revenge of the Real envisions a new positive biopolitics that recognizes that governance is literally a matter of life and death. We are grappling with multiple interconnected dilemmas-climate change, pandemics, the tensions between the individual and society-all of which have to be addressed on a planetary scale. Even when separated, we are still enmeshed. Can the world govern itself differently? What models and philosophies are needed? Bratton argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on a new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention.Trade ReviewBenjamin Bratton shows, with brilliant insight and imagination, what the world is coming to look like in an era of planetary-scale computing. He cuts through many received ideas about technology, globalization, and so forth and presents a fresh vision of the architecture of the world. -- McKenzie Wark, [on The Stack]Endlessly thought-provoking, this amazing book is both cognitive mapping and a projective geometry of the new dimensions of technological reality we live in -- Kim Stanley Robinson, [on The Stack]Imagines a design brief for the whole world while floating or falling through all the ever-efflorescent plasmas and atmospheres of digital information. -- Keller Easterling, [on The Stack]Breaks more new ground than a carpet bombing. The Stack itself may or may not exist, but it's left everything that came before it in a state of rubble. -- Bruce Sterling [on The Stack]A major achievement. It is more than just philosophy of technology, software studies, or design criticism; it analyzes and guides our thinking in a baffling Anthropocenic era when computation works at the planetary scale and constitutes governance -- Natalie Jeremijenko [on The Stack]If you've emerged from the past year disoriented, you may find it exactly the right time to read Bratton's book. From quarantine urbanism, to 5G conspiracy theorists and technological refusal, to incisive philosophical analysis of mask-rejecting Karens and the West's shambolic response to covid writ large, Bratton is a ruthless guide to what has unfolded. But this book is soundly concerned with the future, through and beyond post-pandemic politics. Its pressing questions - can the world govern itself differently? how do we direct emergent technological capacities towards competent planetary governance? - will continue to be more and more relevant as the ecological crises deepen. There will be manifold books on the "lessons" of the pandemic, but Bratton uniquely grasps what is at stake. -- Holly Jean Buck, author of After GeoengineeringBratton is one of our best global systems thinkers, adding to theory and philosophy a sophisticated understanding of infrastructures, design, AI, and governance: what this adds up to is a rare and valuable insight into civilization and its match, or mismatch, with Earth's biosphere. In the wake of the Covid pandemic he has given us a swift and propulsive reorientation to the situation we find ourselves in, a species in a single biosphere, ruled by an ad hoc nation-state system. What can we do now to help sort things out and dodge the mass extinction event we are initiating? Read on and learn. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry of the FutureA provocative skewering of dogmatic Western political culture, Bratton's book is a crucial contribution to thinking through what planetary governance could and should look like post-pandemic. -- Nick Srnicek, co-author of Inventing the FutureThe pandemic has laid bare the frailties, failures, and fissures of the contemporary world. The Revenge of the Real offers a clarion call for organising ourselves differently. It is forceful, engaging, and thought provoking, and I expect it to prove immediately influential. -- Helen Hester, author of XenofeminismWhen anti-lockdown stances such as the one espoused by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, QAnon's conspiracies, anti-vaxxer propaganda, and a return to an innocent relation between the humans and the planet are a match made in hell, the rise of crypto-fascism variants is the least of our concerns. We are indeed witnessing a fundamental erosion of the contemporary left's capacity to respond to planetary-scale emergencies. This inability to systematically think about and act upon the plights brought upon this planet is what Benjamin Bratton calls the lack of planetary competency. Bratton's The Revenge of the Real is a sober yet enthusiastic analysis of how and why some strains of the left continue to be appropriated by individualistic libertarianism if not by crypto-fascism. Yet Bratton's work is more than that, it sets a way out for the left by mapping the scale of planetary events and what it means to think and intervene at that scale. -- Reza Negarestani, author of Intelligence and SpiritBratton's is an incisive intervention: at once polemic and productive. A counter to the self-imposed ineffectuality of certain strands of theory, The Revenge of the Real provides buoyant and zesty rebuttal to the suspicious mode in philosophizing, all whilst in search of more pragmatic alternatives. -- Thomas Moynihan, author of X-RiskSharp as a tungsten needle, Bratton reveals the paradoxes of the pandemic at atomic resolution and etches a positive outline of how planetary biopolitics could be otherwise. Vital reading. -- Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AIEvery moment has a theorist native to its strangeness, a singular voice that can uniquely navigate its impossible truths and unfathomable realities. At the end of the end of the world it is Benjamin Bratton's running commentary that cuts swathes, like a megastructure through mountains. -- Liam Young, architect and filmmaker[Bratton's] call for a global shift in priorities is galvanizing. * Publishers Weekly *Fascinating. -- Pat Kane * The National *Enjoyable, nourishing ... [Bratton's] views are often far-sighted, which helps make sense of some of the bewildering side effects of this pandemic. -- Alex Mair * On Magazine *

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Book SynopsisSince Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society. The transformative power of language, the medium of equality, is the key to any new communist revolution.Trade ReviewOne of the most astute commentators on the art scene today. * New Left Review *Groys combines revelatory analysis with philosophical questions that go to the heart of cultural production today. -- Iwona BlazwickA timely intervention in present debates about the legacy of communism [and] a provocative addition to Groys' brilliantly paradoxical body of work. * Art Review *Groys has claimed a defining role in the reception of the Russian avant-garde ... The Communist Postscript presents Groys's attempt to advocate the communist idea against its own historic assumptions. * Radical Philosophy *

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Book SynopsisOne of the most influential intellectuals in the English-speaking world, Michael Ignatieff's story is generally understood to be that of an ambitious, accomplished progressive politician and writer, whose work and thought fit within an enlightened political tradition valuing human rights and diversity. Here, journalist Derrick O'Keefe argues otherwise. In this scrupulous assessment of Ignatieff's life and politics, he reveals that Ignatieff's human rights discourse has served to mask his identification with political and economic elites.Tracing the course of his career over the last thirty years, from his involvement with the battles between Thatcher and the coal miners in the 1980s to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza, O'Keefe proposes that Ignatieff and his political tradition have in fact stood in opposition to the extension of democracy and the pursuit of economic equality. Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil? is a timely assessment of the Ignatieff phenomenon, and of what it tells us about the politics of the English-speaking West today. About the series: Counterblasts is a new Verso series that aims to revive the tradition of polemical writing inaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century, when in the words of one of them, Gerard Winstanley, the old world was "running up like parchment in the fire." From 1640 to 1663, a leading bookseller and publisher, George Thomason, recorded that his collection alone contained over twenty thousand pamphlets. Such polemics reappeared both before and during the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century. In a period of conformity where politicians, media barons and their ideological hirelings rarely challenge the basis of existing society, it's time to revive the tradition. Verso's Counterblasts will challenge the apologists of Empire and Capital.Trade ReviewHighly readable book ... a useful contribution to the public's understanding of the former Liberal leader ... -- Charlie Smith * The Georgia Straight *This is an important book that anyone who cares about Canada's political future should own and read. * The Columbia Journal *[A]n impressive and accessible call for a real alternative to the 'lesser evil' -- Ian Sinclair * The Morning Star *A fascinating look at the politics and history of Ignatieff; quite a few surprises with great quotes from the man himself. -- Libby Davies, NPD Member of Parliament (Vancouver East) * Montreal Gazette *O'Keefe's intellectual biography ... can be read not just as an account of the slippery and self-serving contortions of Ignatieff's thinking, but of the bankruptcy of both Canada's political aristocracy and of the strange beast that passes as North American liberalism. Other lesser evils deserve a similar treatment. * The Public Archive *

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Book SynopsisAmericans see the Democratic Party as the anti-war party: vacillating flipfloppers in the eyes of conservatives; or, in the liberal view, restrained, measured wagers of war as "last resort." In November 2006, voters put the Democrats into Congress to bring an end to the Iraq war. Yet the Democrats supported the "surge," giving Bush more money than he himself requested, and voted through the next $459.6 billion defense budget.In this hard-hitting examination of their role in the War on Terror, political analyst and satirist Dennis Perrin shatters the myth of the reluctant-warrior Democrats. He explores Democrat collusion in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and support for Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, while revealing their overlooked appetite for planning wars and selling them to the electorate. Compelling and bleakly humorous, Savage Mules shows a party at odds with its public image on this key issue in the race for the White House.Trade Review"Michael O'Donoghue was the most innovative satirist of his generation. Thankfully, this book forsakes the tabloid sensationalism of so many less show-business biographies, and honestly captures its subject and his unique creativity. I loved it." Chevy Chase "Laughter is a faculty that supposedly separates us from the beasts. But there is such a thing as a comedy animal, and Dennis Perrin has netted him with great aplomb. Humor, in the right hands, is no laughing matter." Christopher Hitchens "A humorous yet unsparing look at us - the sporting public." USA Today "Fascinating." New York Times Book Review"

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Book SynopsisIn 1944, the International Labour Organization laid out its "Declaration of Philadelphia," a full-fledged social bill of rights in the same spirit as FDR's State of the Union address of the same year. The welfarist spirit was then at its apex-but Supiot argues that with neoliberalism still rampant, even following the economic crash, the Declaration remains an important baseline. Then as now, social ties had been compromised in favor of market values; now, as then, the law must be reorganized to uphold social values and the spirit of solidarity.Short, punchy and often rousing, The Spirit of Philadelphia describes the worldwide triumph of neoliberalism as once-communist elites turn towards market dogma and the privatization of welfare states. Arguing against the return to social Darwinism, and the bureaucratic embrace of numbers and statistics as ends, Supiot champions the social democratic spirit, hoping for its revival in the wake of the recent crash.Trade ReviewFrance's most incisive jurist, Alain Supiot ... [whose work] has renewed the idea that all significant belief-systems require a dogmatic foundation by focusing its beam sharply, to the discomfort of their devotees, on the two most cherished creeds of our time: the cults of the free markets and of human rights. -- Perry Anderson * London Review of Books *As a tonic in a grim time, Alain Supiot's The Spirit of Philadelphia recalls the now forgotten wartime apex of commitment to welfarist solidarity. If that mid-twentieth-century commitment now seems a distant memory, Supiot offers both intellectual and practical reasons to cherish its flame and light it again, after a return to the very economic beliefs about the powers of the untrammeled free market that were once repudiated-and could be again. -- Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Columbia University and author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

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Book SynopsisFrom colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America's racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country's media system, just as the media has contributed to-and every so often, combated-racial oppression. This acclaimed book-called a "masterpiece" by the esteemed scholar Robert W. McChesney and chosen as one of 2011's best books by the Progressive-reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans have received, even as it depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press.Written in an exciting, story-driven style and replete with memorable portraits of journalists, both famous and obscure, News for All the People is destined to become the standard history of the American media.Trade ReviewJuan González and Joseph Torres have rendered a splendid public service with this highly readable and engrossing story of how the press sees-and doesn't see-who we are as a people. Race and ethnicity, power and privilege, the visible and the invisible are at the core of our democratic crisis today, and it's hard to imagine a better way to face the challenge than to be armed with the story this book tells so well. -- Bill Moyers, Public Affairs TelevisionNews for All the People is truly a masterpiece; I could not put it down. After years of research, Juan González and Joseph Torres have produced a book that will be nothing short of mandatory reading for all who care about the media or democracy. It will change how you think about media and American history. -- Robert W. McChesney, coauthor of The Death and Life of American JournalismA 'first-of-its-kind' rendering of the causes, contexts, and consequences of the American media system across the fault line of race. Haunting and prophetic, this is a must-read for all the people. -- Malkia Amala Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media JusticeWith clarity, exquisite detail and strong scholarship, the authors show us how the neglect of the mainstream press over the years still haunts the nation's identity about who is an American. -- Arlene Notoro Morgan, associate dean at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, coeditor of The Authentic Voice: Best Reporting on Race and EthnicityThe historic inability of marginalized communities to control their own images has been devastating. News for All the People illustrates that this lack of control hasn't been by accident. It's a part of a greater story of media control and ownership that traces back to the creation of the United States. An essential read. -- James Rucker, founder of ColorOfChange.orgThis is journalism history from an entirely fresh perspective, one that challenges the old heroes and shines a sharp light on the role of the media in revealing social inequities in a democratic society. * Booklist (starred review) *Meticulously researched, adeptly written, and most important, historically significant ... an important work. * Buffalo News *With vivid detail, González and Torres trace the history of minority journalism in the United States from Colonial newspapers to today's blogs. This important text should be required reading in journalism schools. -- Donna Marie Smith * Library Journal (starred review) *Examines some of the news media's dirtiest laundry-the media's active roles in lynching Blacks, exterminating Native Americans and brutally harassing Hispanics and Asian-Americans ... insightful [and] awareness-expanding. -- Linn Washington Jr. * The Philadelphia Tribune *When journalists write history, there is always the danger of that history being shallow, surface-level. This remarkable book is one of the rare instances of such a problem being a positive, due to its great, realized ambition. For this narrative successfully weaves the history of Black media, Native American media, Hispanic media and Asian media within the context of the history of America's capitalistic media development. As 2011 ends, Gonzalez and Torres provide not just a clear understanding of how the enemy built the empire, but merge historical ideas on how to use the new/old tools at our disposal to resist it. -- Dr Todd S. Burroughs * Whose Media/Drums in the Global Village *[This] groundbreaking book takes the reader on a 400-year journey from the past transgressions to today's democratic crisis, one largely created by the deeds of those controlling the media and the narratives our citizens are actually 'consuming.' It delves deeply into why those narratives are slanted, misrepresented or scrubbed altogether by the so-called liberal media. -- Paul K. Haeder * Real Change News *Offers constant reminders that this conflict has been a true civil war with serious casualties, lasting through many decades and perhaps yet ended. The journalists portrayed here recognized that journalism was a weapon of resistance. If there have been advances, it is in good part because such journalism, bravely wielded, can fight the good fight. -- James Boylan * Columbia Journalism Review *[An] acclaimed history of race and the US media, which will be a core book for readers in journalism and US history. * Book News *

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Book SynopsisErnest Gellner was a multilingual polymath who set the agenda in the study of nationalism and the sociology of Islam for an entire generation of academics and students. This definitive biography follows his trajectory from his early years in Prague, Paris and England to international success as a philosopher and public intellectual. Known both for his highly integrated philosophy of modernity and for combining a respect for nationalism with an appreciation for science, Gellner was passionate in his defence of reason against every for of relativism.Trade ReviewThe cumulative effect is monumental-and a monument does seem overdue. -- Scott McLemee * National *Gellner has been brought back to life-alongside his combative ideas and his maverick approach to intellectual combat-in a sympathetic but by no means reverential biography by his former pupil John A. Hall. * Wall Street Journal *Few books have more successfully combined the study of personal life and intellectual development in the turbulent setting of the twentieth century. -- Eric Hobsbawn * Observer Books of the Year *John A. Hall concludes his account of Ernest Gellner by observing that his outlook on the world was austere. "But therein lies its attraction," he goes on. "Not much real comfort for our woes is on offer; the consolations peddled in the market are indeed worthless. What Gellner offered was something more mature and demanding: cold intellectual honesty." Brief personal impressions are rarely conclusive, especially when recalled after many years; but that Gellner was an exceptionally honest thinker is beyond reasonable doubt. -- John Gray * New Republic *Outstanding. -- Stefan Collini * London Review of Books *The theory of nationalism itself was Gellner's life. John A. Hall's admirable biography helps us to see how this is so, by providing essential biographical information and locating Gellner's arguments within those of his interlocutors, friendly and otherwise ... Hall, more than learned enough to follow Gellner's very broad references, is also patient with his categorical opinions. * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisMost countries face the future with an ageing population, yet most governments are cutting back on pensions and the care services needed by the elderly. Robin Blackburn exposes the perverse reasoning and special interests which have combined to produce this nonsensical state of affairs. This updated paperback edition of Age Shock includes a new preface explaining why the credit crunch and eurozone crisis have had such a devastating impact and outlining a way to guarantee decent pensions and care provision.Trade ReviewA serious and finely argued attack on contemporary market fundamentalism in a vivid phrasemaking style, which is even entertaining when it is not depressing you with the facts. * The Guardian *An ambitious recasting of pensions strategy for an aging society. -- Göran Therborn * New Left Review *An impressive book ... Blackburn argues that the hard-won state systems and the private pensions that supplement them have come under threat. * New York Review of Books *Blackburn's book is a serious and finely argued attack on contemporary market fundamentalism in a vivid phrasemaking style. -- Steven Poole * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisConfronting the major debates in the world today-about national alternatives and alternative globalizations-Unger shows that there is a set of initiatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand. Fully updated with a new preface, The Left Alternative equips the Left with the ideas that it needs to overthrow the dictatorship of no alternatives.Trade ReviewA good book to stir up leftists. -- Tyler Cowen * Bloomberg Business Week *Roberto Mangabeira Unger's book may someday make possible a new national romance ... a hitherto undreamt-of national future. -- Richard RortyA restless visionary. * New York Times *A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning tables, to become a synoptist and seer of the First. -- Perry AndersonBrazil's answer to John Stuart Mill ... a political philosopher extraordinaire. * Chronicle of Higher Education *This book has influenced how I think and what I do. It sets out the principles for a future Left and crucially challenges us to think not just about how we spend revenues but how we might create them. -- Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass

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Book SynopsisIn the spring of 2011, Wisconsinites took to the streets in what became the largest and liveliest labor demonstrations in modern American history. Protesters in the Middle East sent greetings-and pizzas-to the thousands occupying the Capitol building in Madison, and 150,000 demonstrators converged on the city.In a year that has seen a revival of protest in America, here is a riveting account of the first great wave of grassroots resistance to the corporate restructuring of the Great Recession.It Started in Wisconsin includes eyewitness reports by striking teachers, students, and others (such as Wisconsin-born musician Tom Morello), as well as essays explaining Wisconsin's progressive legacy by acclaimed historians. The book lays bare the national corporate campaign that crafted Wisconsin's anti-union legislation and similar laws across the country, and it conveys the infectious esprit de corps that pervaded the protests with original pictures and comics.Trade Review[A] collection of stories from those that participated in one of the most inspiring movements to erupt in the US heartland in decades. Those stories provide the observer from afar with a fairly universal and nuanced look at the daily lives of those involved in organizing, occupying, reporting and otherwise participating in those weeks of popular democracy. Interspersed between the tales of the workers, students, farmers and other protesters are a number of photographs and comics. The inclusion of these graphics truly enhances the overall effect ... .worthwhile and provocative. -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *These essays delve into the historical, political, and ideological underpinnings of the 2011 events. [L]ater chapters are meatier, with events set against the backdrop of early-20th-century Wisconsin progressive politics when Governor Robert 'Fighting Bob' LaFollette began the crusade against the dominance of corporate America (at that time, railroads) over government. The book exposes how that same dominance continues today. [W]ill help readers, regardless of their own stance, to understand much of what's at stake in the country's current labor and political battles. -- Carol J. Elsen * Library Journal *Midwest pride of place animates much of the writing, along with awareness of Wisconsin's progressive history, the global context for the Madison protests and a genuine outrage that transcends the particular grievances of public sector union members. If anything, Walker has reawakened a dormant spirit of solidarity. The harvest of the extremism he sowed may be his own undoing. -- David Luhrssen * Express Milwaukee *Convey[s] some deeper understanding and offer[s] important lessons valuable for struggles to come ... will stand as a future reference point for those wishing to get some later handle on what happened in the 'Badger State.' Importantly, several of the key essays provide a deeper backdrop for an understanding of what happened. The massive show of solidarity with those directly affected by the 'budget repair bill' did not come just from police and firefighters exempted from the assault, or from private sector trade union hands. It came from a broader public not directly tied to organized labor. [C]ontains several important perspectives on the state of Wisconsin labor, key for understanding the uprising. -- Allen Ruff * Against the Current *

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Book SynopsisFrom plasma screens to smartphones, today moving images are everywhere. How have films adapted to this new environment? And how has the experience of the spectator changed because of this proliferation? In Broad Daylight investigates one of the decisive shifts in the history of Western aesthetics, exploring the metamorphosis of films in the age of individual media, when the public is increasingly free but also increasingly resistant to the emotive force of the pictures flashing around us. Moving deftly from philosophy of mind to film theory, from architectural practice to ethics, from Leon Battista Alberti to Orson Welles, Gabriele Pedullà examines the revolution that is reshaping the entire system of the arts and creativity in all its manifestations.Trade ReviewCharming and highly readable ... the book is well observed and gives a concise sense of what may be at stake in the current technological transformations of film viewing. * Artforum *Insights abound, and the author's facility with so many different disciplines-from ancient Greek philosophy to 20th century semiotics-will ensure that casual filmgoers and academics alike find something salient to ponder in Pedullà's treatise. * Publishers Weekly *Technical reproducibility of the work of art and anatomy of the society of the spectacle: Pedullà's book is the first to take a real step forward from the analyses of Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord. -- Paolo Virno, author of A Grammar of the MultitudeA welcome shift in focus ... A compelling archeology of the darkened spectatorial space, ranging back to Greek antiquity and the Renaissance. -- Jonathan Crary, Columbia UniversityA novel film theory ... Thanks to the reasoned revelations of Pedullà we see just how challenged-if not endangered-audiovision has become in the century before us. -- Thomas Harrison, UCLAA surprising journey between present and past, theory and history, places and narratives, Pedullà's book casts new light (daylight?) to show where post-cinema stands today. -- Francesco Casetti, Yale UniversityFascinating ... A lucid analysis that considers everybody, from the pure cinephile to the household consumer, to understand who we were, who we are today, and above all where we are likely to end up. -- Tiberia De Matteis * Il Temp *An intelligent and penetrating book. -- Marco Belpoliti * La Stampa *A courageous book, which through an exacting analysis demolishes the fetishism of the work of art. -- Andrea Di Consoli * L’Unità *A book both lovely and useful ... an example of engaged criticism that aims to explode the inveterate stereotypes of cinephilia. -- Massimo Raffaeli * Il manifesto-Alias *A Copernican Revolution. -- Franco Cordelli * Il Corriere della Sera *Going to the cinema used to be the only way you could watch a film. Now you can do it anywhere. Pedullà's interesting little book announces that the age of the cinema theatre as the form's primary 'aesthetic device' is over. -- Steven Poole * Guardian *[Pedulla's] concise, surprising essay... is worked up to via a careful engagement with Stanley Cavell on tragedy and Serge Daney on the question of the ethical position available to the post-cinematic viewer. * Sight & Sound *

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Book SynopsisUnder the incurious gaze of the major media, the political establishment and the financial sector have become increasingly deceitful and dangerous in recent years. At the same time, journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News International and elsewhere have been breaking the law on an industrial scale. Now we are expected to stay quiet while those who presided over the shambles judge their own conduct.In The Return of the Public, Dan Hind argues for reform of the media as a necessary prelude to wider social transformation. A former commissioning editor, Hind urges us to focus on the powers of the media to instigate investigations and to publicize the results, powers that editors and owners are desperate to keep from general deliberation.Hind describes a programme of reform that is modest, simple and informed by years of experience. It is a programme that much of the media cannot bring themselves even to acknowledge, precisely because it threatens their private power. It is time the public had their say.Trade ReviewA superb analysis of the way in which citizens have lost power in a political and economic system built around the free market. -- Roy Greenslade * Guardian *A book marked by a somber and scathing rhetoric that recalls the Frankfurt School critique of thinkers such as Adorno and Marcuse. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *In his ingenious and quietly passionate argument, Dan Hind shows how we could take democracy into the media so that it becomes something regular people can shape-a part of how we rule ourselves instead of stealing democracy from us. -- Anthony Barnett, founder, openDemocracyDrawing on history and democratic theory, this book offers a powerful indictment of public exclusion. It is also original, breaking with standard corporatist approaches to reform. Well written, eloquent and very well worth reading. -- James Curran, co-author of Power Without ResponsibilityA persuasive and vital analysis. -- David Cromwell, co-editor of Media Lens * Times Higher Education Supplement *Winner, 2011 Best Book of Ideas * Bristol Festival of Ideas *

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Book SynopsisNone of Us Were Like This Before recounts the dark journey of a tank battalion as its focus switched from conventional military duties to guerilla warfare and prisoner detention. Author Joshua E. S. Phillips tells a story of ordinary soldiers, ill trained for the responsibilities foisted upon them, who descended into a cycle of degradation that led to the abuse of detainees. The book illustrates that the damaging legacy of torture is borne not only by the detainees, but also by American soldiers and the country to which they have returned.Trade ReviewThe stories contained in this book reveal how brave American service members tried to stop torture and abuse-often at the expense of their careers and their lives. Their sacrifice and the losses that they incurred are absorbed by all of us as a nation. -- Daniel EllsbergThis is an important book showing the damage abuse does to the torturers as well as to their victims ... Phillips's message is that we most need the rules banning torture when we most want to break them. -- Oliver Bullough * Independent *A serious, comprehensive effort to examine how torture and abuse, once embarked upon, damage the torturer and abuser as well as the tortured and abused. -- Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin PowellA deeply personal story of a generation of American soldiers plunged into conflict after September 11. Joshua Phillips tells these brave Americans' stories with compassion and vivid detail. -- Senator John F. KerryJoshua Phillips brings much needed close reporting to the question of American torture. He reveals much about the interaction of 'lower down' and 'higher up' behavior, always including permission or encouragement from above. The book also suggests the psychological toll on those who torture, and is an important contribution to American reckoning with a dark moment in our history. -- Robert Jay Lifton * Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir *Joshua Phillips's incredible work in documenting the experience of soldiers who detained and interrogated detainees reflects the huge dilemma and consequences of their actions. His book is about accountability where senior leaders in the military and in the highest level of government failed to account for their actions, failed to protect soldiers who expected clear instructions, and failed the nation in preventing torture and abuse of the enemy. This led to Abu Ghraib-an epic tragedy in American history. -- Major General Antonio Taguba, author of the Taguba ReportA shocking read about a hidden chapter of the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. -- Deborah Amos * NPR *Basing his work on extensive interviews, [Phillips] details how ordinary American troops participated in the torture of enemy soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. * San Francisco Chronicle *A masterwork of narrative nonfiction. -- Chris Lombardi * Guernica *Phillips shows that the recourse to blaming a 'few bad apples' should be recognised as a disgraceful, face-saving fiction. -- David Simpson * London Review of Books *A tour de force of investigative journalism. -- Eamonn McCann * Belfast Telegraph *This shattering book is a journey into the heart of American darkness. What Joshua Phillips makes shockingly clear is that the misbehavior of some of our best soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan came about because of a failure of military leadership and because political leaders lacked the courage to admit the word 'torture.' -- Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of AmericaThose who authorized torture and defend it don't want to talk about this. They took honorable, patriotic young soldiers and convinced them to sacrifice the very principles that they had signed up to defend. That paradox is what Phillips investigates and brings to light. And he does it with the utmost respect for the soldiers. * Huffington Post *Phillips' book remains the first and best heartbreaking tale not only of the abuses taking place within our military prisons, but also the negative, long term and in many cases fatal psychological affects it is having on both interrogating soldiers and interrogated enemy prisoners of war ... [An] outstanding book [and] a necessary read for all. -- Kristina Brown and Paul Sullivan * Veterans for Common Sense *None of Us Were Like This Before is a model of conscientious reporting on a volatile subject-the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. His ethical and compassionate approach is an act of citizenship. -- Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams and Crossing Open GroundThere are many things in this book that are fascinating and generally unknown. One is that these soldiers were afraid to report what they had seen and done ... but without reporting it they couldn't receive any medical help for their trauma. -- Darius Rejali, author of Torture and DemocracyThe causes and consequences of systematic abuse and torture are all explored by Joshua Phillips through a careful but searing narrative. -- Dominic Alexander * Counterfire *A fascinating yet distressing account of how the use of torture and abusive techniques on prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan affected the lives of American soldiers who found themselves caught up in it. Far from neglecting the suffering of the victims, Phillips, through meticulous research, also brings home the full horror of the war crimes inflicted upon the citizens of the occupied nations. -- Craig Hawes * Gulf News *Joshua Phillips' book shows that America's leaders were wrong. * National *None of Us Were Like This Before ... is an important [book]. * Foreign Policy *

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Book SynopsisNo one was more surprised than cynical former academic George Timmins when his old friend and property magnate David Adler contacted him out of the blue. Adler had news: not only did he have plans to pull down the centre of their childhood town, Trowbridge Spa, to make way for a new, modern shopping mall; he had also met someone. Maureen was the first woman he had fallen for and just happened to be the wife of successful Trowbridge grocer Ted Hardin, the one man standing in the way of Adler's dreams. The businessman can't get her out of his mind, and Timmins, soon unable to stand on the sidelines, is forced to step between two dangerous rivals. As big business faces the determination of a local tradesman, Adler's seemingly limitless greed threatens to destroy all around him. Tycoonery tells a gripping tale of speculation and reckless power in the 1970s that still resonates today.Trade ReviewRoger Smith writes with a frankness and honesty that I find both compelling and deeply moving. -- Hanif KureshiWitty and full of surprises, a realist fable for our times. -- Jenny DiskiA witty, sharply observed story of aspiration, self-delusion and lust. -- Ken LoachEverything you could ask for in a book ... grace, pace and good taste and is thrilling from one end to the other. -- Andrew O’HaganIronic, intelligent and grimly funny voices from the past remind us what a mess we are in today. -- Stephen Frears

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Book SynopsisLeonid Eitingon was a KGB assassin who dedicated his life to the Soviet regime. He was in China in the early 1920s, in Turkey in the late 1920s, in Spain during the Civil War, and, crucially, in Mexico, helping to organize the assassination of Trotsky. "As long as I live," Stalin said, "not a hair of his head shall be touched." It did not work out like that.Max Eitingon was a psychoanalyst, a colleague, friend and protégé of Freud's. He was rich, secretive and-through his friendship with a famous Russian singer- implicated in the abduction of a white Russian general in Paris in 1937. Motty Eitingon was a New York fur dealer whose connections with the Soviet Union made him the largest trader in the world. Imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, questioned by the FBI. Was Motty everybody's friend or everybody's enemy?Mary-Kay Wilmers, best known as the editor of the London Review of Books, began looking into aspects of her remarkable family twenty years ago. The result is a book of astonishing scope and thrilling originality that throws light into some of the darkest corners of the last century. At the center of the story stands the author herself-ironic, precise, searching, and stylish-wondering not only about where she is from, but about what she's entitled to know.Trade ReviewUnlike the hordes of amateur historians who have mobbed the world's libraries over the past decade on the theory that reconstructing lineage equates to personal discovery, Wilmers is up to something that commands general attention. -- Christopher Glazek * New Yorker *Wilmers' adventures in digging through [the Eitingons'] lost world makes Mary-Kay one of the book's most intriguing characters. * Harper’s *Like characters in some Russian Jewish Stalinist Freudian capitalist 20th-century fairy tale, the Eitingons are larger than life, their fates bitter and all too human. * New York Times *A superbly written book, The Eitingons is much more than a family history, for the author has a deep knowledge of the cultural and political context, whether of twentieth-century America or the Soviet Union, in which they lived. It stands as an intimate portrait of a world that seems far removed from our own. * The Observer *The Eitingons is a riveting history of the twentieth century. It deals with war, displacement, murder, espionage, the Jewish diaspora and psychoanalysis. It explains Trotsky's assassination, the growth of Freud's teachings, the importance of the fur trade, the uses of money and the lure of the past. There is a lightness and a truthfulness in the narrative that makes you turn every page with pure fascination. -- Colm TóibínWilmers pieces together what she can of the shadowy life of Leonid Eitingon, a high-level KGB killer ... and looks for clues that her grandfather's cousin Max, a protégé of Freud in Berlin, and Motty, a New York fur trader, were also working for Stalin. What emerges is a fascinating story of family secrets and silences. * New Statesman *Well researched, bold, and revealing, Wilmers's book transforms a series of dark family secrets into an illuminating experience for anybody brave enough to delve into the enigma of family history. * Publishers Weekly *Compelling... [Wilmers] has produced a deeply-researched family chronicle, which bears only a trace resemblance to the memoirs that dominate the book industry. * Barnes and Noble Review *

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Book SynopsisGomorrah, Roberto Saviano's 2006 exposé of Naples's Camorra mafia, was an international bestseller and became an award-winning film. But the death threats that followed forced the author into hiding. Saviano was ostracized by his countrymen and went on the run, changing his location every few months and compelled to keep perpetual company with his bodyguards. To this day, he lives in an undisclosed location.The loneliness of the fugitive life informs all the essays in Beauty and the Inferno, Saviano's first book since Gomorrah. Among other subjects, he writes about the legendary South African jazz singer Miriam Makeba, his meeting with the real-life Donnie Brasco, sharing the Nobel Academy platform with Salman Rushdie, and the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Present throughout the book is a sense of Saviano's peculiar isolation, which infuses his words with anger, exceptional insight and tragedy.Trade ReviewIt is good to be reminded of the raw bravery of the Savianos of this world and to salute them for sacrifices they have made in their challenges to power. -- Duncan Campbell * Guardian *I feel humble, almost insignificant, faced with the dignity and the courage of the writer and journalist Roberto Saviano, the man who has mastered the art of living. -- José SaramagoWe must thank Roberto Saviano for having returned to literature the ability to open eyes and minds. -- Mario Vargas LlosaIts tone is angry and urgent ... the essays in Beauty and the Inferno are in some sense a celebration of bravery and an expression of rage against corruption and cowardice. -- Caroline Moorehead * Times Literary Supplement *A perceptive and sympathetic critic and reader ... Saviano writes very well ... what he has to say demands to be read. Like Primo Levi, his testimony pricks our conscience, tests our resolve, makes us examine ourselves ... At once deeply disturbing and illuminating. -- Alan Taylor * Scottish Sunday Herald *He never pulls his punches, his message is incredibly important, and the facts he includes-such as the increase in cancer rates due to the illegal dumping of toxic waste-are like bombshells. -- Tobias Jones * Sunday Times *In his essay about [Anna] Politkovskaya, he writes: 'I do not care about beautiful stories that cannot be bothered with the blood of our times. I want to smell the rot of politics and the stench of business.' He achieves that and more in his own work. -- Patrick Freyne * Sunday Business Post *A beautiful object, from the surface through to its depths....Saviano's confidence and sheer bulldozing coherence could serve as inspiration to all writers, both of fiction and journalism, as the path around weak speechifying and dutiful responses. Read Saviano and feel hope. -- David Hammerschlag * Bookslut *Always passionate...Saviano's commitment to his subjects draws the reader in...This is a strong collection from a brave and keen-eyed reporter. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisAllegations that America is in decline have become commonplace in the years since the Cold War ended in victory for the United States: Washington, it is said, is doomed to founder in decadence, like an imperial Rome collapsing under the weight of its armies. This thesis is energetically refuted by Alfredo Valladao. America, he believes, will dominate the twenty-first century because it alone has the means - and the will - to do so. It alone possesses the three qualities needed for supreme power: unequalled military force, the biggest and most dynamic economy on the planet, and a culture with universal ambitions. The author traces the course of history from the proclamation of Independence to the present-day metamorphosis into World-America. The prophets of decline, argues Valladao, are a century or two adrift: if a historical analogy must be made, it should be with Rome in triumph after its total victory over Carthage-the Roman Republic pregnant with an empire.Trade ReviewAn imaginative, iconoclastic, persuasive and very perceptive assessment both of America itself and of america's unique global role. -- Zbigniew BrzezinskiFor Americans, viewing their history through Valladao's Brazilian lens may prove particularly enlightening, offering a new perspective on familiar events. Whether your interest is business or politics, add this one to your library. * Executive Book Summaries *One might expect a Brazilian living in Paris to treat 'the great mutation' with a certain reserved scepticism. Not so. Valladao is optimistic about the ability of the empire, if properly managed, to win the consent of the peoples making up 'the federation for free nations'. This imaginative and thought-provoking study is well worth attention. * Foreign Affairs *This striking, original, and thoughtful essay on the changing nature of America's global dominance is something of a landmark on the long pilgrimage of the New Left towards accepting, understanding, and finally appreciating the country they once patronised and despised. * The Tribune *

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Book SynopsisEleanor Marx is one of the most tragically overlooked feminist intellectuals in history, usually overshadowed by her father, Karl Marx. But not only did she edit, translate, transcribe and collaborate with her father, she also spent her extraordinary life putting his ideas into practice as a labour organizer, feminist radical, and Marxist theorist.The outstanding exception to the omission of Eleanor Marx from history is Yvonne Kapp's highly acclaimed biography. First published at the height of feminist organizing in the 1970s, Kapp's work brilliantly succeeds in capturing Eleanor's spirit, from a lively child opining on the world's affairs, to the new woman, aspiring to the stage, earning her living as a free intellectual, and helping to lead England's unskilled workers at the height of the new unionism; being always more than, yet at the same time inescapably, Karl Marx's daughter. It is also, inevitably, an unrivalled biography of the Marx household in Victorian London, of the Marx circle, and of Friedrich Engels, the family's extraordinary mentor.During today's resurgence of feminist writing, organizing, and protesting, Kapp's foundational single-volume biography serves as a crucial corrective to a narrative that puts feminists and marxists on opposing sides of radical history.Trade ReviewOne of the few unquestionable masterpieces of 20th-century biography. * Guardian *A work of scholarship but also a work of art. -- Michael FootA work of vitality and of scholarship. -- E P ThompsonDoes full justice to both [public and private]aspects of Eleanor's difficult life. * New York Times *The 1,000 pages of Eleanor Marx rest onexhaustive and flawless research. -- Eric HobsbawmMasterful. -- Tristram Hunt, author of the Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life od Friedrich Engels

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Book SynopsisWarriors and Scribes opens and closes using the prism of biography to question the framing of Latin American political life from both a northern, Cold War perspective and from the trivializations of postmodernism. An investigation of Jorge Castaneda's Utopia Disarmed reveals that Latin American politics are eminently transformable beyond the failed nostrums of multilateral organizations and collapsed dictatorships of the 1980s.In surveying regional relations with the USA since 1800, and taking a wry look at Hollywood's treatment of Central America under Reagan, Dunkerley points out that Anglo-America has possessed neither a uniform imperialist vocation, nor the consistent capacity to impose it. Two pieces written in the late 1990s - a reappraisal of Latin American Studies since the Cuban Revolution and a survey of the contemporary politics of Bolivia - reflect the author's concerns with a place that was 'American' for half a millennium before the 'Americanization through globalization' became a watchword.

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Book SynopsisWhy the British Museum should hand back the Elgin Marbles

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Book SynopsisHis ideas captured the imagination of audiences, intellectuals and activists across the globe . Wright reinvented the meaning of socialism.-New York TimesA foundational work of twentieth-century socialist thought

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Book SynopsisA provocative, beautiful and defiant essay highlighting the pitfalls of integration in France by a talented young writer with North African roots

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Book SynopsisWhen eighty-seven passengers and crew died in the shipwreck of the Royal Mail ship Egypt in 1922, the accident gave rise to a racist international press campaign against the employment of Indian seafarers, such as those who made up most of the ship’s crew. This was not unusual at a time when a fifth of the British mercantile marine’s workforce was recruited from the subcontinent. Ravi Ahuja explains the business logic behind a labour regime steeped in racist irrationalism and examines the scope for solidarity among a divided workforce in an age of imperialism - an issue that is no less relevant in our own time.

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Book SynopsisWhy do we think of social struggles as movements? Have struggles been practiced otherwise, not as motion but as interruption, occupation, disturbance, arrest? Looking at three hundred years of Atlantic social struggle kinetically, Mehmet Dösemeci questions the axiomatic association that academics and activists have made between modern social struggles and the category of movement. Dösemeci argues that this movement politics has privileged some forms of historical struggle while obscuring others and, perhaps more damningly, reveals the complicity of social movements in the very forces they oppose.Dösemeci’s story begins with the eighteenth-century establishment of a transatlantic regime of movement that coerced goods and bodies into violent and ceaseless motion. He then details the long history of resistance to this regime, interweaving disparate social struggles such as food riots, Caribbean maroon communities, Atlantic pirates, secret societies and syndica

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Book SynopsisThe revolutionary upsurge of 1968-1975 jump-hopped continents with ease but finally petered out. What happened after is the subject of You Can’t Please All. Tariq Ali recounts a life committed to writing and cultural interventions. An eyewitness in Moscow to the fall of the Soviet Union, he was caught up in the intellectual excitement that had gripped the country. In Porto Alegre, Hugo Chávez invited him to visit Caracas, and the two men developed a striking friendship.Post-2001, as a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition, he became a fierce critic of the War on Terror, visiting many US cities with surprising regularity to engage in debate and discussion, inaugurating a new phase of political activism. Evident in his work is the integral part politics plays in his life. He is one of the most sought-after socialist and anti-imperialist public intellectuals on most continents.Underlying the narrative is a chain of anecdotes, reflections, jottings

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Book SynopsisThis momentous study of Benjamin’s critical practice marks a sea change in Eagleton’s thought. Its goal is not merely to contemplate Benjamin’s approach to language, history, and art but to chart a dynamic new course for contemporary socialist criticism. To do this, Eagleton brushes Benjamin’s Trauerspiel against seventeenth-century British literature, tests his concept of the ‘aura’ against Freud and Lacan, and undertakes his most sustained engagement with Derrida and the political crossroads of deconstruction.

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Book SynopsisThe Empire of Civil Society rejects outright the goal of theorising geopolitical systems in isolation from wider social structures. In a series of case studies - including Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and the Portuguese and Spanish empires - Justin Rosenberg shows how his historical-materialist analysis is a surer guide to understanding geopolitical systems than the supposedly timeless verities of realism. Rosenberg demonstrates that the distinctive properties of the sovereign-state system are best understood as corresponding to the framework of capitalist society. In this light, realism emerges as incapable of explaining what it has always insisted is the central feature of the interstate order - the balance of power.Winner of the 1994 Deutscher Memorial Prize

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Book SynopsisThe 1960s were a time of tumult and radicalism. Street Fighting Years captures the era’s mood and energy, its hope and its passion. In this, the first of his memoirs, Tariq Ali tracks the growing significance of the protest movements of the time alongside his own formation as a leading political activist from Pakistan, where he defied the military regime to lead a demonstration against Patrice Lumumba’s murder. His political odyssey is unique. Ali witnessed the imperialist brutalities of the Vietnam War—torture, bombing, the killing of children—the aftermath of the revolutionary insurgencies led by Che Guevara in Bolivia, the jubilation of the Prague Spring, and the student protests on the streets of Europe and America. It is a story that takes him from Paris and Prague to Hanoi and La Paz. Along the way, Ali encounters allies and enemies, including Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, John Lennon and M

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Book SynopsisMalm unearths the shared roots of colonial adventurism in Palestine and fossil fuelled warfare.Israel’s pulverization of Gaza since October 7, 2023 is not only a humanitarian crisis, but an environmental catastrophe. Far from the first event of its kind, the devastation Israel has inflicted on Palestine since October 2023 has merely ushered in a new phase in a long history of colonization and extraction that reaches back to the nineteenth century. In this urgent pamphlet, Andreas Malm argues that a true understanding of the present crisis requires a longue durée analysis of Palestine's subjugation to fossil empire. Returning to the British empire’s first use of steam-power in war, in which it destroyed the Palestinian city of Akka, Malm traces the development of Britain’s fossil empire and shows how this enduring commitment to fossil energy continues to drive Western support for the destruction of Palestine today.

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