Lois Orr, Gerd–Rainer Horn (ed), Letters from Barcelona: An American Woman in Revolution and Civil War (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2009), £45 Lois Orr, a 19 year old student and sympathiser of the American Socialist Party, arrived in Barcelona in September 1936.… Continue Reading
Louise Raw, Striking a Light: The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in Labour History (Continuum, 2009), £70 In 1888 roughly 1,400 mainly young women match workers went on strike at the Bryant and May factories in east London.… Continue Reading
Dennis Broe, Film Noir, American Workers and Postwar Hollywood (University Press of Florida, 2009), £62.95 Film noir is a sub-genre that has attracted a lot of popular attention and commentary in the mainstream media. Although its classic black and white… Continue Reading
A review of John Crabtree and Laurence Whitehead (eds), Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present (University of Pittsburgh, 2008), £24.50 Bolivia has long been marginalised from mainstream international political discussion and affairs. Even the rest of South America has often… Continue Reading
A review of Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, 2009), £18.99 and Avi Shlaim, Israel and Palestine (Verso, 2009), £16.99 I’ll risk a prediction. Shlomo Sand’s book, already a best seller in Israel and France, will accelerate… Continue Reading
This is the second in a series of responses to Chris Harman’s last book, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. It was written shortly before Chris’s death. The great merit of Zombie Capitalism is that it outlines… Continue Reading
A review of Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour of Theory (Haymarket Books, 2009), £19.99 The economic crisis of the last two years has provided an extra impetus to the revival of interest in Marxism. A new generation is beginning to… Continue Reading
Joseph Mensah (ed), Neoliberalism and Globalisation in Africa: Contestations from the Embattled Continent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), £40 This collection examines Africa’s special place in globalisation. Africa south of the Sahara often appears in cheery UN and World Bank reports after… Continue Reading
Ian McKay, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada 1890–1920 (Between the Lines, 2008), £26.87 Ian McKay begins Reasoning Otherwise with the frank acknowledgement that there exists little published scholarship relating to the development of the Canadian left… Continue Reading
Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis (eds), George Padmore: Pan–African Revolutionary (Ian Randle, 2009), £14.95 This collection of essays on the Trinidadian Pan-Africanist George Padmore (1902-59), appearing on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, is a timely tribute to the life… Continue Reading