The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARTIN HALL, MICHAL BONCZA, ANGUS REID reviews Holy Cow, One to One: John and Yoko, King of Kings, Panda Bear in Africa
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A uniquely incisive take on reality
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a book that analyses current affairs in an accessible way that speaks to readers without fancy abstraction, just blunt common sense
ukraine
PATRICK JONES recommends a vital anthology from Afghan and Iranian poets where the political and personal fuse into witness-bearing and manifesto-making
WILL STONE is impressed by Hania Rani who is already making a name for herself in the male-dominated world of modern classical music
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
New releases from Ibex Band, Lucy Dacus, and Various Artists
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by characters so un-nuanced as to be unreal, a stereotypical plot and a conceptual vampire
WILL STONE appreciates an artist who can swerve from industrial noise to clubby trance pop without missing a step
Living the American Nightmare
Ron Jacobs
Hanian Media £8.50
IF YOU want to understand US imperialism in the here and now, you could do worse than to read the work of Ron Jacobs.
A serial contributor to Counterpunch, essayist and novelist, Jacobs is one of those veteran activist-journalists steeped in the defiant critiques of US counter-culture that equip him with a uniquely incisive take on reality.
The radical pen that he wields as a result, and the consistency of his observations about US foreign policy and its domestic reverberations in a deeply divided society, put him into a category of writers to whom we should all listen.
This collection of essays written from 2018–22, mostly culled from Counterpunch, offers a dyed-in-the-wool critique of Washington’s deadly imperial hypocrisy.
More from this author
GAVIN O’TOOLE explores the resistance expressed by central American artists to their own erasure by US imperialist policies
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GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds an analysis of culture that explains why political conflicts today are focused more on values and identity than the economy and social questions
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