MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
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Book Review: Civilisation by Regis Debray
Chauvinism infects a tedious attempt to investigate US cultural domination in Europe
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
New releases from Paul Weller, Wet Leg, and Dino Saluzzi
PAUL DONOVAN relishes the spectacle of a 1950s detective in pursuit of a 500-year-old murder mystery
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
Civilisation
by Regis Debray
(Verso, £16.99)
MARX’S maxim that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force,” will almost certainly be familiar to readers of the Morning Star.
At first sight in his book, Regis Debray appears to be fleshing out that maxim in offering the reader an analysis of US cultural dominance in Europe as being a direct consequence of its economic power. Yet while Civilisation promises much, it actually delivers little beyond further tarnishing the reputation of its author.
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