Daniel J Leab, Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm (Pennsylvania State University, 2007), £36.50 The Halas and Batchelor animated film of Animal Farm had its world premiere in New York on 29 December 1954. A fortnight… Continue Reading
Robin Archer, Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? (Princeton University, 2007), £19.95 It’s an old question, but despite the academic fashion of dismissing it, it’s a question that returns in both academic and political guise with… Continue Reading
Jonathan Neale, Stop Global Warming: Change the World (Bookmarks, 2008), £11.99 There are already many excellent books on climate change. Indeed, it seems like almost every environmental commentator either has written or is in the process of producing one. Not… Continue Reading
A review of Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin (Reaktion, 2007), £10.95 There has been a growing fascination on the left for the often cryptic work of Walter Benjamin ever since he was first widely published in the 1960s. In 1968 Berlin… Continue Reading
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (Verso, 2007), £24.99 This is one of the most important books of the past decade, although its impact would have been greater had its 600 dense but sometimes repetitive pages… Continue Reading
Niveditya Menon and Aditya Nigam, Power and Contestation: India Since 1989 (Zed, 2007), £12.99 This book, written by two academics who are also campaigners, offers the best survey of recent Indian history that I have seen. It begins with a… Continue Reading
Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History: What’s Left of the Social? (University of Michigan, 2007), £15.95 Geoff Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (University of Michigan, 2006), £14.50 For… Continue Reading
Toby Shelley, Exploited: Migrant Labour in the New Global Economy (Zed, 2007), £14.99 Exploited should be a basic reference for all those concerned with economic, social and political aspects of migration today. This short book contains a mass of information… Continue Reading
Matt Perry, Prisoners of Want: The Experience and Protest of the Unemployed in France, 1921–45 (Ashgate, 2007), £55 The inter-war period was turbulent for the working class movement. In the aftermath of the First World War revolution was in the… Continue Reading
Adam David Morton, Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy (Pluto, 2007), £18.99 Antonio Gramsci used the concept of “passive revolution” to explain the process leading to the unification of Italy in 1861. The relative backwardness of the country… Continue Reading