STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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Disunited states
GAVIN O’TOOLE explores how US federalism has been exploited by Republicans, but remains the best arena for progressive solutions
Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally enters Emancipation Park in August 2017
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics
by Jacob M Grumbach, Princeton, £25
A reflex apparent in US political science after Reagan saw a reinvigorated federalism as a source of innovation in economics, education, and social policy.
The states, so the argument went, were emerging as “laboratories of democracy” in which creative governors experimenting with ideas that went beyond traditional party politics were harbingers of a new “Progressive Era”.
How times change.
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GAVIN O’TOOLE observes that the call for a new international framework for conflict mediation is fatally marred by a partisan position on the Isreali-Gazan conflict
