A review of Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (Oxford, 2005), £85 The period from the 5th to the 11th centuries in Europe has traditionally been treated in Britain as the ‘Dark Ages’—of little… Continue Reading
bq. A review of Steven Rose, The 21st Century Brain (Jonathan Cape, 2005), £25, and Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species (Norton, 1998), £8.99 Understanding how the human brain works is one of the biggest unsolved questions in biology, and it… Continue Reading
bq. A review of Gregor Gall, The Political Economy of Scotland: Red Scotland? Radical Scotland? (University of Wales Press, 2005), £19.99 Macduff: Stands Scotland where it did? Ross: Alas, poor country, almost afraid to know itself! (Macbeth, act 4, scene… Continue Reading
bq. A review of Andrew Simms, Ecological Debt: The Health of the Planet and the Wealth of Nations (Pluto Press, 2005), £12.99; Steven P McGiffen, Biotechnology: Corporate Power Versus Public Interest (Pluto Press, 2005), £15.99 What is to be done… Continue Reading
bq. A review of James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and State Power: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador (Pluto Press, 2005), £17.99 Latin America is in turmoil. What is written today will be obsolete tomorrow. People’s struggles to shift the… Continue Reading
bq. A review of Romila Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History (Verso, 2005), £17 On 6 December 1992 the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, north India, was demolished by a mob organised by the Bharati Janata… Continue Reading
bq. A review of V G Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism—From White Settlement to World Hegemony with a preface by E J Hobsbawm and an epilogue by J Trumpbour (Verso, 2005), £15, and Neil Smith, The Endgame of Globalization (Routledge… Continue Reading
Recent writing on North Korea from South Korea’s internationalist left North Korea is often in the news these days, albeit relegated to the inside pages of the papers, while English-language books on the country have proliferated in the last few… Continue Reading
The last few years have not been kind to Antonio Negri. Empire,1 his most famous book, produced in collaboration with Michael Hardt, heralded the death of imperialism. The authors claimed that the old logic of warring nation-states had been replaced… Continue Reading
Bush explains he is engaged in a ‘crusade’ for freedom. Osama bin Laden calls for a ‘jihad’ against the new crusaders. Saddam Hussein portrayed himself as a latter-day Saladin. Maybe Blair thinks he is Richard the Lionheart. The debate about… Continue Reading