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beautiful
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world

hot
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

ELIZABETH SHORT recommends a bracing study of energy intensive AI and the race of such technology towards war profits

barbarism
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery

future
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come

tucker
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington

miners
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves

shosty
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

JONATHAN TAYLOR is intrigued by an account of the struggle of Soviet-era musicians to adapt to the strictures of social realism

nazi nightmares
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin

rainbow
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity

The global average in 2021 was 50,000 kilocalories per head,
Culture / 13 April 2025
13 April 2025
MARTIN GRAHAM recommends a book that makes a critique of neoclassical economics and attempts to envision a sustainable global future
Kathe Kollwitz, Charge, sheet 5 of the cycle Peasants War, 1
Culture / 13 April 2025
13 April 2025
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
The Palisades Fire that started in the City of Los Angeles,
Books / 1 April 2025
1 April 2025
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
A LAN party at the 2004 DreamHack with hundreds of players
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
LABORATORY OF BULLYING: A scene from Ken Loach's Kes
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
JOHN GREEN recommends an entertaining, if harsh and instructive, study of bullying, discipline and power dynamics in schools and at work
HONORABLE TRADITION OF PROTEST: Junior doctors on a picket l
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
American flags representing the 200,000 dead from COVID-19 p
Book Review / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective
Literature / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang
A homeless man in New York
Book Review / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
JOHN HAWKINS is moved by an oral history that examines five black families pushed into homelessness in the US
UNITED WE’LL NEVER BE DEFEATED: A lantern parade in Liverp
Books / 14 March 2025
14 March 2025
MARJORIE MAYO recommends a punchy demonstration of the the way class politics are being fragmented by the right
THE POLITICS OF FOOD PRODUCTION: Landless Workers' Movement
Books / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
STEVE ANDREW welcomes a political interrogation of the contradiction between ecological awareness and a dietary crisis in today’s food consumption
IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES: A victim of starvation in besieged Lenin
Books / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
HENRY BELL is moved by the account of scientists under seige in Leningrad who preferred to starve rather than sacrifice their life-saving work
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: (L to R) Church of St Mary Magdalene
Books / 13 March 2025
13 March 2025
WILL PODMORE recommends an excellent and useful introduction to a lesser-known giant of the scientific revolution in Britain
BLING: Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, with gold-infuse
Books / 11 March 2025
11 March 2025
SETH SANDRONSKY appreciates a fresh take on a 100-year-old novel that helps to contextualise the current moment of conspicuous wealth, waste and climate chaos
AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Transition town are grassroot community
Books / 6 March 2025
6 March 2025
IAN SINCLAIR welcomes the first word on Transformative Adaptation, a new group that has grown out of Extinction Rebellion
PILED UP DESPAIR: Poverty and unemployment define Rio de Jan
Books / 6 March 2025
6 March 2025
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a masterful study of gang behaviour in the favelas of Sao Paulo
Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents of th
Books / 6 March 2025
6 March 2025
ANDREW MURRAY is compelled by the moment of revolution in British history when Parliament had political intimacy with society
COMPASSION: Nurses at Oak Ridge Hospital in the 1940s
Book Review / 27 February 2025
27 February 2025
MARJORIE MAYO recommends a remarkable book that restores another of history’s racially biased omissions
THE GOOD FIGHT: Librarian Amanda Jones showing her article o
Books / 21 February 2025
21 February 2025
SUE TURNER is inspired by the example of a librarian’s struggle to confront the book-banning movement
A GREAT TEACHER: Fredric Jameson speaking at the Brazilian c
Books / 18 February 2025
18 February 2025
FIONA O’CONNOR recommends an accessible and entertaining survey of post-war French philosophy and its relation to contemporary capitalism
A freed Palestinian prisoner, center, is greeted by a crowd
Books / 7 February 2025
7 February 2025
RON JACOBS welcomes a Palestinian account of being subject to a brutal occupation supported by the most powerful governments in the world
UNDESERVEDLY OVERLOOKED: Abd el-Krim, Moroccan political and
Book Review / 6 February 2025
6 February 2025
JOE GILL welcomes a helpful, if incomplete, guide to the the native and Islamic struggles against imperial and colonial powers in north Africa
Andree Blouin, centre, Patrice Lumumba’s adviser and speec
Book Review / 5 February 2025
5 February 2025
ROGER MCKENZIE recommends an insider's view of the fight for African independence, as experienced by an important and neglected woman
EVOLUTION OF GOTHIC FROM ISLAMIC: Arches of the former mosqu
Books / 5 February 2025
5 February 2025
WILL PODMORE is enthralled by the convincing case that guilds of Islamic craftsmen were responsible for the European gothic style
A Fuxing high-speed train running near the Beijing Central B
Books / 29 January 2025
29 January 2025
GABRIEL ROCKHILL recommends a perfect primer on contemporary China
KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL: Wycliffe's Bible in the British Library -
Books / 29 January 2025
29 January 2025
JOHN GREEN is dissatisfied with a book that fails to address the promotion of ignorance as a ruling-class strategy to maintain control
REALITY DENIED: Concert in the foyer of the Palast der Repub
Books / 28 January 2025
28 January 2025
JOHN GREEN takes issue with a mainstream novel designed to denigrate the GDR
Literature / 28 January 2025
28 January 2025
LEO BOIX reviews Cuban poet Carlos Pintado; Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas; Mexican American writer and critic Rigoberto Gonzalez; and Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos
MECHANICAL SHORTCUTS TO FUTURE: The Stepped Reckoner, a mech
Books / 23 January 2025
23 January 2025
WILL PODMORE is enlightened by the achievements of a 17th century scientist whose work anticipates computer programming as well as Marx’s materialism
HERALDING THE UNKNOWN: Declaration of Independence by John T
Books / 23 January 2025
23 January 2025
GORDON PARSONS recommends the biography of the German polymath whose life provides an interesting take on a revolutionary age
THE BOLSONARO EFFECT: Illegal logging at the Gurupi Biologic
Books / 22 January 2025
22 January 2025
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes an analysis of the radical right in Latin America as polarising ‘influencers’ who ignore material values 
IDEOLOGICAL CLARITY: East German propaganda against former N
Books / 22 January 2025
22 January 2025
JOHN GREEN advises caution when reading a highly informative account of the way thousands of top Nazis escaped justice and found employment in the West
COGITO, ERGO SUM: The Gates of Hell (with The Thinker at its
Books / 16 January 2025
16 January 2025
ANDY HEDGECOCK is inspired by accessible insights into the theory, function and psychological impact of our digital tools
NO MINCING WORDS: Anti-Nato graffiti on a wall during the bo
Books / 16 January 2025
16 January 2025
STEVEN ANDREW recommends an informed and personable work that contains as many ommisions as it does analyses
NO PRISONERS TAKEN: Virginie Despentes
Literature / 14 January 2025
14 January 2025
RON JACOBS relishes a riotous epistolary novel of revenge against sexual harassment and patriarchy
BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: Cardiologist Juan Manuel Romero at a ho
Books / 10 January 2025
10 January 2025
JONATHAN TAYLOR is moved by the plea to replace mechanistic medicine with a ‘narrative’ approach based on imagination and humanity
TASKED: The newly elected National Domestic Workers Council
Books / 10 January 2025
10 January 2025
JOHN GRAVERSGAARD recommends a study of trade union organising that brings together exemplary lessons from the Uk and Kenya
Crime Fiction / 7 January 2025
7 January 2025
A late Christmas cornucopia, a Canadian wolf, a dodgy motel and Peter Diamond’s last bow