Are Islamist movements ‘radical’ or ‘ultra-conservative’? A so-called “Islamic” party has just been elected with nearly 50% of the vote in Turkey. It is in no way “ultra-conservative”. It is, of course, conservative on such issues as the economy, the… Continue Reading
Mark Twain once quipped, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Replace the word “lie” with the phrase “ideologically motivated myth” and it sums up what has happened to the commonsense… Continue Reading
Archie Brown, Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2007), £25 Archie Brown is credited with being the first person to advise Margaret Thatcher about the likely accession of Mikhail Gorbachev as a radical reformer… Continue Reading
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (Verso, 2005), £14.99 As its title insists, Archaeologies of the Future represents a self-conscious, and triumphantly self-confident, attempt to find traces of an alternative future that… Continue Reading
Jim House and Neil McMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror and Memory (Oxford University, 2006), £60 Leaving aside situations of insurrection, revolution or civil war, the massacre of Algerian demonstrators that took place from 17 to 20 October 1961 in… Continue Reading
Ramzy Baroud, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto, 2006), £15.99 The unique strength of Ramzy Baroud’s book lies in its masterful weaving of personal experience and feelings into a meticulous and powerful account of the… Continue Reading
Jamil Hilal (ed), Where now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution (Zed Books, 2007), £17.99 This collection of essays by a variety of academics is a significant development in the debate over the possibility of a “one_state” (or… Continue Reading
Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis and Slavoj Zizek (eds), Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth (Duke University, 2007), £12.99 “The name ‘Lenin’ is of urgent necessity for us precisely now, at a time when very few people seriously consider possible… Continue Reading
Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow, the Hidden Life of Garbage (New Press, 2005), £8_._99 On average each American produces almost 4.2 pounds (2 kg) of rubbish a day. Almost a third of this is packaging. This staggering statistic starts Heather Rogers’… Continue Reading
Beverly J Silver, Forces of Labour: Workers$7_$ _Movements and Globalisation since 1870 (Cambridge University, 2003), £16.99 Beverly Silver has written an important, accessible and I think excellent book that contributes significantly to our understanding of workers’ bargaining power under global… Continue Reading