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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
THE DISRUPTORS: Frankfurt School regulars in Heidelberg, Apr
Books / 5 January 2025
5 January 2025
RICHARD CLARKE applauds the assertion that Western Marxism represents a withdrawal from action to change the world into the academy
GROOMED TO RULE: Eton College pupils taking part in the ‘P
Books / 5 January 2025
5 January 2025
WILL PODMORE is intrigued by a study the British ruling class that follows statistical analysis with totally inadequate proposals for change
IMPERIALISM CALLS THE SHOTS: Israeli army armored vehicles b
Books / 5 January 2025
5 January 2025
RON JACOBS recommends a timely pamphlet that provides both explanation and historical context for the fall of Assad
FAUSTIAN PACT: AFL-CIO President George Meany, left, and US
Book Review / 20 December 2024
20 December 2024
HELEN MERCER welcomes an account of how US labour leadership collaborated with the state and betrayed their membership
Illustrations Sue Coe
Books / 18 December 2024
18 December 2024
JOHN GREEN debates the potential of a book that explores fascism in US history and its contemporary impact to reach the audience it deserves
NURTURING A BETTER FUTURE: Unity Books in Glasgow
Features / 12 December 2024
12 December 2024
EBEN WILLIAMS introduces the Unity Bookshop in Glasgow, whose launch open day takes place this weekend
Best of 2024: Letters from Latin America / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
RATIONAL FUTURE: Passenger and freight train on the West Coa
Books / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
WILL PODMORE welcomes a demonstration of the incomparable virtues of rail travel, and the political obstacles to realising its potential 
PROFIT BEFORE HUMANITY: Female pigs used for breeding - 'bre
Books / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
RICHARD MURGATROYD is disappointed by an ambitious survey that fails to get to grips with the relationship between human consciousness and nature
READ THE BODY LANGUAGE: Merkel, Macron, Putin and Zelensky f
Books / 6 December 2024
6 December 2024
JOHN GREEN wades through the autobiography of Angela Merkel in search any trace of political vision or historical awareness
Books / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
JOHN GREEN appreciates a stunning record of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London
(L to R) the book cover; Labour Party election poster 1945;
Books / 3 December 2024
3 December 2024
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
Iman Aoun and Edward Muallem in Oranges and Stones
Best of 2024 / 3 December 2024
3 December 2024
A manifesto for change, feminism in the digital age and a wordless play by Palestinians
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Books / 29 November 2024
29 November 2024
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a deceptively short novella that is mysteriously bigger on the inside
THE MIGHT OF ASSOCIATION: Demonstrators in the Netherlands p
Books / 27 November 2024
27 November 2024
STEVEN ANDREW welcomes the third instalment of autobiography by a libertarian socialist whose political work is charged with Gramscian realism
MISUNDERSTOOD BRUTALIST GENIUS: Gordon Benson and Alan Forsy
Books / 27 November 2024
27 November 2024
Despite its anti-socialist bias, JOHN GREEN recommends a new survey of British architecture that seeks to educate and provoke
Letters from Latin America / 26 November 2024
26 November 2024
Short stories by Mexican Guadalupe Nettel, labyrinthine tales by Uruguayan Mario Levrero, and a poetic paranormal investigation by Colombian poet Catalina Vargas Tovar
THE TINTIN OF HIS ERA? WH Auden (R) and novelist Christopher
Books / 26 November 2024
26 November 2024
GORDON PARSONS negotiates an exhaustive biography of WH Auden that explores his growing detachment from England
THE UNACCEPTABLE FACE OF TECHNO-CAPITALISM: Entrepreneur Mar
Books / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
JON BALDWIN recommends a well-informed survey of the ills promoted by AI tech corporations, and the measures needed to stop them exploiting us
AHEAD OF THEIR TIME: Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, deput
Books / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
JOHN GREEN is disappointed by a marred critique of the British establishment by someone who was part of it
Refaat Alareer
Poetry review / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
A remarkable posthumous collection of poetry and other writings is a tragic document of genocide, and a beacon of hope for a Palestinian future, says HENRY BELL
Popular support for the USSR was emphasised by the Arctic co
Books / 8 November 2024
8 November 2024
WILL PODMORE listens keenly to the people’s voice expressing support for the USSR and disdain for the political Establishment and the empire
Pedro Almodovar, 2017
Books / 8 November 2024
8 November 2024
ALAN McGUIRE recommends an autobiography that is an intriguing mix of short stories and personal sketches
Cedric Villani, the French mathematician, speaking at a publ
Books / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
MATTHEW HAWKINS admires a writer with the gumption and wit to extend a transformative experience of autism to the reader
ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM: The original cast of the FTA (F*ck The Ar
Books / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
STEVE JOHNSON recommends the autobiography of the great US singer-songwriter and activist, Barbara Dane
Morenci Mine in Arizona, United States. Morenci represents o
Books / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
SUE TURNER is fascinated to read of another miners’ strike of the 1980s, told through the voices of women
DESPICABLE PASTIMES: John Ferneley, Edward Horner Reynard an
Books / 25 October 2024
25 October 2024
PAUL DONOVAN applauds a highly important book that appears at a crucial time in the present biodiversity and climate crisis
DOOMED: William Simpson’s depiction of the Charge of the L
Books / 16 October 2024
16 October 2024
JOHN GREEN recommends a history of the Black Sea peninsula, situated at a crossroads between Europe and Asia
Pier Paolo Pasolini as Chaucer in his film of The Canterbury
Books / 16 October 2024
16 October 2024
GORDON PARSONS recommends an ideal introduction to the writer who was first to give the English a literary language
Protestors take part in a demonstration, United for Educatio
Book Review / 11 October 2024
11 October 2024
MARTIN GRAHAM recommends an excellent starting point for unions and the wider movement for discussion of the housing crisis
Jacob Jordaens, The Four Evangelists, 1625–1630.
Books / 2 October 2024
2 October 2024
TOM PIERSCIONEK is fascinated by the place of slaves in the creation of Christian scripture
TRENCH HUMOUR: World War I soldiers of 3rd Battalion, New Ze
Books / 9 September 2024
9 September 2024
MARTIN HALL steps gingerly through a fragmentary novel about WWI by one of France’s greatest prose stylists, and most notorious fascist sympathisers
SOLIDARITY: Parents, activists and special needs assistants
Books / 5 September 2024
5 September 2024
JOHN GREEN recommends a useful how-to guide for teaching children with special needs, aimed at those working in education
POACHER TURNED GAMEKEEPER? Jess Phillips MP holds the Sue Gr
Books / 5 September 2024
5 September 2024
FIONA O’CONNOR examines a new book by Labour’s media-savvy MP and new Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls
WHERE ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR: London HQ of HSBC, t
Books / 5 September 2024
5 September 2024
WILL PODMORE is intrigued by an analysis of capital that emphasises the deadening impact of financialisation on the US and UK economies
Books / 26 August 2024
26 August 2024
As good a crime wave as any from southern England to Manhattan, New Orleans and then south London