Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman(Zero Books),£7.99 Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman is an important contribution to the latest string of books on feminism and women’s liberation, most importantly Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy and Sexism and the System by… Continue Reading
Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African–American Politics (Verso, 2009), £12.99 “Although it seems heaven-sent we ain’t ready to see a black President.” Tupac Shakur, the author of these lines, was one of the most iconic and outspoken representatives… Continue Reading
A review of Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920–24: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite (Routledge, 2008), £20.00 Readers of this journal who have not had the unpleasant experience of wading through liberal studies of the Soviet… Continue Reading
A review of Alex Callinicos, Imperialism and Global Political Economy (Polity, 2009), £17.99 “Knowing Empire is part of fighting it”: this short statement concludes this remarkable 280-page book. It is certainly one of the most outstanding works in Alex Callinicos’s… Continue Reading
William Hurst, The Chinese Worker After Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2009), £55 In July 2009 a mass demonstration by steel workers, members of their families and other local inhabitants erupted in the north eastern Chinese city of Tonghua. They were… Continue Reading
Istvan Meszaros, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time—Socialism in the Twenty First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2008), £16.95 Istvan Meszaros’s latest treatise is a mixture of extended essays, lectures and occasional pieces. The analysis ranges from structural unemployment and… Continue Reading
Charles Upchurch, Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform (University of California Press, 2009), £30.95 This fascinating and important book focuses on the history of sex between men in the first half of the 19th century. Upchurch… Continue Reading
John Foran, David Lane, and Andreja Zivkovic (eds), Revolution in the Making of the Modern World (Routledge, 2008), £21.99 The idea of revolution today, whether it is possible and, if so, what forces can bring it about and with what… Continue Reading
John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution (Monthly Review Press, 2009), £13.95 The conclusion of John Bellamy Foster’s latest book is one that may not strike a chord with many traditional environmentalists—”today, the transition to socialism and the transition to an… Continue Reading
Talat Ahmed, Literature and politics in the Age of Nationalism, The Progressive Episode in South Asia, 1932–56 (Routledge, 2009), £50 Talat Ahmed has written a fine account of the All-India Progressive Writers Association which flourished between 1936 and 1956. In… Continue Reading