Book Reviews
Twenty-five years since the first Gulf War
Desert Slaughter: The Imperialist War Against Iraq—an enduring contribution to waging war on war
By Eric London, 21 January 2016
In 1991, the Workers League, forerunner of the SEP, published this valuable compendium of articles and statements providing a Marxist analysis of the imperialist war in Iraq and the breakdown of the postwar international order.
Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency
Obama’s place in history: Permanent war and the breakdown of American democracy
Part two
By Eric London, 14 January 2016
A significant 769-page book from New York Times reporter Charlie Savage provides a chilling, detailed insider view of the Obama administration’s pseudo-legal justifications for war and authoritarianism.
John Heartfield: Laughter Is A Devastating Weapon
David King on the famed German photomontage artist
By Jeff Lusanne, 28 December 2015
Laughter is a Devastating Weapon presents 50 full-page images of John Heartfield’s work, revealing the power, impact and problems of the brilliant German artist’s satirical photomontages.
The fate of Zuckerberg’s “gift” to Newark schools
By Fred Mazelis, 14 December 2015
A new book provides a case study on the nature of the “school reform” movement and the attacks on public education.
From Roma refugee to attorney in Germany: Nizaqete Bislimi’s Durch die Wand (“Through the Wall”)
By Elisabeth Zimmermann, 18 November 2015
Roma author Nizaqete Bislimi describes how she overcame the obstacle of Germany’s inhumane immigration laws after her escape from Kosovo.
Ted Dawe’s Into the River: A compelling portrait of life for a working-class teenager in New Zealand
By Tom Peters, 10 November 2015
The novel has been attacked by fundamentalist Christians, the media and the state because of its realistic depiction of social inequality, racism and class oppression.
The French Republic as killing machine
The Killers of the Republic, by Vincent Nouzille
By Anthony Torres, 9 September 2015
Nouzille’s book lifts the veil on the history of French President François Hollande's “kill list” and the increasing resort to state murder.
Book review
The Devil is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and their Battle for Freedom, by James Green
By Tom Mackaman, 18 August 2015
The book’s most important—and timely—contribution is its revelation of the startling level of violence that characterized class relations in an earlier period.
The covert “selling” of anticommunism
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
By Nancy Hanover, 17 August 2015
The Mighty Wurlitzer is an examination of the CIA’s 1947-67 campaigns against anti-capitalist and socialist thought.
The covert “selling” of anticommunism
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
Part 2
By Nancy Hanover, 12 August 2015
The Mighty Wurlitzer is an examination of the CIA’s 1947-67 campaigns against anti-capitalist and socialist thought.
The covert “selling” of anticommunism
The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
Part 1
By Nancy Hanover, 11 August 2015
The Mighty Wurlitzer is an examination of the CIA’s 1947-67 campaigns against militant, anti-capitalist and particularly socialist thought.
Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman: More of a moneymaking than a literary event?
By Sandy English, 3 August 2015
Harper Lee’s early draft of a novel, Go Set a Watchman, has sold over a million copies in the United States since its release two weeks ago.
Samuel Kassow’s Who Will Write Our History?
By Clara Weiss, 25 July 2015
Kassow’s history of the Oyneg Shabes underground archive in the Warsaw Ghetto combines remarkable objectivity with a deep compassion for the tragic fate of Warsaw’s Jewry during World War II.
Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik: A polemic against racism and identity politics
By Nancy Hanover, 29 June 2015
The WSWS is reposting a 2010 review of Strange Fruit, a book by British journalist and scientist Kenan Malik, who penned a thoughtful look on the complex biological, social and historical issues involved in the notion of race and racism.
A review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928: Part four
By Fred Williams, 4 June 2015
Stephen Kotkin’s first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published by Penguin Press, is a travesty of historical writing.
A review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928: Part two
By Fred Williams, 2 June 2015
Stephen Kotkin’s first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published by Penguin Press, is a travesty of historical writing.
A review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928: Part one
By Fred Williams, 1 June 2015
Stephen Kotkin’s first volume of a projected three-volume biography of Stalin, published by Penguin Press, is a travesty of historical writing.
Pro-capitalist “anti-capitalism”
A review of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Naomi Klein
By Evan Winters, 4 May 2015
Klein calls for a coalition of various organizations to pressure national governments to implement protectionist policies and environmental and social reforms.
The role of Australian schools in World War I
Soldier Boys: The Militarisation of Australian and New Zealand Schools for World War I
By Margaret Rees and Linda Levin, 25 April 2015
The vast majority of recruits to the Australian military during WWI were the product of a harsh and punitive system of compulsory military training.
Bleakness without respite: Atticus Lish’s novel Preparation for the Next Life
By Sandy English, 24 March 2015
Atticus Lish’s lengthy novel is a love story between an undocumented Chinese immigrant and an American veteran of the Iraq War.
Berlin professor sees Germany as the “taskmaster” of Europe
By Peter Schwarz, 13 March 2015
In his new book, Power in the Center, political scientist Herfried Münkler, who has close ties to the political establishment, argues openly for German hegemony in Europe.
The twentieth century was lived in vain: Leonardo Padura’s The Man Who Loved Dogs
By Sandy English, 7 February 2015
Padura’s novel takes a pessimistic, cynical view of history as it describes the life of Ramon Mercader, the assassin of Trotsky.
Guantánamo Diary: A book that needs to be read
By Tom Carter, 6 February 2015
Guantánamo Diary, written by a current inmate of the infamous camp and suppressed by the US government for seven years, is a terrifying exposure of the secret US torture program—and much more.
The Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union: Part two
Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization
By Clara Weiss, 13 January 2015
The volume provides insight into the criminal historical antecedents of the current siege of cities in eastern Ukraine by the Western-installed regime in Kiev, spearheaded by Ukrainian fascist forces.
The Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union: Part one
Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization
By Clara Weiss, 12 January 2015
The volume provides insight into the criminal historical antecedents of the current siege of cities in eastern Ukraine by the Western-installed regime in Kiev, spearheaded by Ukrainian fascist forces.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
Radley Balko, 2013, PublicAffairs
By Nick Barrickman, 2 December 2014
While arguing that the US is not yet a totalitarian society, Balko acknowledges that “we have entered a police state writ small.”
James Risen on war and the US financial aristocracy
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014
By Eric London, 19 November 2014
James Risen’s latest book details crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations under the auspices of the “war on terror” and the profits made by corporate interests.
“Give me something to do”
The literary impact and social concerns of American novelist Dave Eggers
By James Brookfield, 3 November 2014
Without wanting to oversimplify, one presumes that the general sympathy with which sufferers are treated in Eggers’ novels is owing in no small measure to his own experiences.
Who Owns Germany? Documenting the widening gulf between rich and poor
By Gustav Kemper, 15 September 2014
Berger’s book reveals startling facts about the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top of German society.
The beginning of modern physics
By Henry Allan and Bryan Dyne, 9 September 2014
David Whitehouse’s Renaissance Genius: Galileo Galilei and His Legacy to Modern Science, provides a human portrait of Galileo, his times and his role in the advancement and popularization of science.
New facts revealed on 2010 ousting of Australian PM
By Nick Beams, 29 August 2014
Paul Kelly’s book effectively demolishes the political fictions manufactured to justify the coup against Kevin Rudd.
Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession
A right-wing critique of Australia’s World War I centenary celebrations
By Richard Phillips, 22 August 2014
A new book calls for increased funds and greater focus on elite military leadership, in order to prepare for new imperialist interventions.
A key moment in the prehistory of the Enlightenment
By Tom Carter, 9 August 2014
Greenblatt’s controversial book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it has also come under attack as an “anti-religious diatribe.”
Interview with Professor Ian Duncan on Sir Walter Scott: The novel “as a kind of total environment of human life”
By David Walsh, 31 July 2014
Ian Duncan is the author of an introduction to a Penguin Classics edition of Waverley and currently teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sting of the Drone: Richard A. Clarke’s reservations about American war crimes
By Sandy English, 16 July 2014
Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism “czar” under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, has written a third novel, about drone warfare.
Edlef Köppen’s Higher Command: An important novel on the First World War
By Clara Weiss, 8 July 2014
The semi-documentary character of this novel largely succeeds in making comprehensible the shattering impact of the war on the consciousness of millions.
A damning exposure of the assault on public education in the US
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools
By Nancy Hanover, 19 June 2014
Diane Ravitch’s bestseller powerfully indicts the government and corporate interests attacking public education.
The diary of Lena Mukhina: An important document on the Leningrad blockade
Lenas Tagebuch, translated by Lena Gorelik and Gero Fedtke, Munich, 2013
By Clara Weiss, 11 June 2014
Lena’s Diary is an important historical document relating to one of most horrific, although often forgotten, war crimes of German imperialism.
A crude celebration of Australian militarism
By Laura Tiernan, 9 June 2014
Carlton’s account is not based on any serious historical reconstruction and amounts to a glorification of the Australian military in World War I.
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
By Philip Guelpa, 31 May 2014
Human-induced climate change and environmental degradation threaten to cause a sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.
Government-produced book describes WWI as “successful and profitable”
New Zealand and the First World War 1914–1919
By Tom Peters, 24 April 2014
Fenton’s book is part of the government’s WWI centenary program, which is designed to revive militarism and prepare public opinion for future wars.
A Permanent Member of the Family: Responses to trying and frustrating times—short stories by Russell Banks
By Sandy English, 9 April 2014
In recent years, novelist Russell Banks has shifted his focus to upstate New York, where he lives, making it the locale of many of the stories in this interesting new volume.
A review of David Walsh’s The Sky Between the Leaves from Uruguay
“The Permanent Revolution in film criticism”
By Marcelo Arias Souto, 19 February 2014
A comment on WSWS arts editor David Walsh’s The Sky Between the Leaves, written by Marcelo Arias Souto from Uruguay.
Book review
James Cuno’s Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encyclopedic Museum
By Nancy Hanover, 12 February 2014
The book polemicizes against the postmodern view that museums are mere institutions of ideological control imposing Western and state supremacy.
Murdoch’s Politics—An ex-Stalinist in awe of Rupert Murdoch, Part II
By Dave Hyland, 3 February 2014
A two-part review of Murdoch’s Politics—How one man’s thirst for wealth and power shapes our world, David McKnight, Pluto Press.
Murdoch’s Politics—An ex-Stalinist in awe of Rupert Murdoch, Part I
By Dave Hyland, 1 February 2014
A two-part review of Murdoch’s Politics—How one man’s thirst for wealth and power shapes our world, David McKnight, Pluto Press.
Lives of the Scientists and U.S. Presidents
By Christine Schofelt, 16 October 2013
Two collective biographies released this year aimed at children between the ages of 9 and 15 miss the mark in many ways.
The politics of cultural destruction: The Rape of Europa
By Nancy Hanover, 27 September 2013
The attempt to sell the masterworks of the Detroit Institute of Art makes The Rape of Europa, an account of the systematic looting of the art of conquered Europe by the Nazis, a timely read.
War, fascism and the fate of music in the 20th century
By Fred Mazelis, 25 September 2013
An important new book explores the period of musical history brought to an end by fascist barbarism.
Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts: A remarkable glimpse into cultural history
By David Walsh, 26 July 2013
The new book looks at the relationship between film director Orson Welles and his longtime mentor and friend, Roger Hill, based on conversations and correspondence the pair conducted in the 1980s.
An interview with Todd Tarbox, author of Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts
By David Walsh, 26 July 2013
David Walsh interviews the grandson of Orson Welles’ life-long friend and mentor, Roger Hill.
Daniel Pinkwater’s Bushman Lives: To become an artist
By Christine Schofelt, 25 June 2013
With this earnest and often hilarious novel for young adults, Daniel Pinkwater encourages exploration, of various kinds.
America’s revolutionary founding document
For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence
By Tom Mackaman, 4 May 2013
A book that seriously considers the impact the Declaration of Independence is most welcome reading in 2013, a year which has seen an intensifying assault on the most basic principles of America’s founding document.
The Green Corn Rebellion: 1935 novel about an episode in the American class struggle
By Vince Ostroweicz, 28 January 2013
William Cunningham’s The Green Corn Rebellion offers a fictionalized account of an August 1917 uprising in Oklahoma against conscription during the First World War.
An exercise in myth-making
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History by Jenny Hocking
By Nick Beams, 26 November 2012
Whitlam's demise is presented as the downfall of a social reformer, almost totally ignoring the global context in which the 1975 Canberra Coup took place.
Book review
Wolfgang Brenner’s Hubert in Wonderland: A life in the shadow of Stalinism
By Sybille Fuchs, 29 October 2012
The well-documented story of a boy from a small village in Germany’s Saar region, who travels to Moscow at the age of ten in late 1933. He is destined never again to see his homeland or most of his family.
A guest review
Bento’s Sketchbook—John Berger’s “Way of Seeing” Spinoza
By Kamilla Vaski, 20 September 2012
Bento’s Sketchbook is a collection of stories, some of them simply vignettes, always connected to a drawing, either as the source of the story or the result of it. The “Bento” of the book’s title is Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza, the seventeenth century philosopher.
A brief for racial politics
The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
By Helen Halyard and Fred Mazelis, 18 September 2012
For Alexander, the driving force of American society is racial “caste” oppression, not the class struggle.
College Leadership Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair—a satire of contemporary American community colleges
By Charles Bogle, 22 August 2012
College Leadership Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair is largely successful in satirizing the corporate model so prevalent on American college campuses.
Book review:
A hard life, then Hurricane Katrina: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones
By Sandy English, 13 August 2012
Jesmyn Ward’s second novel, Salvage the Bones, is an organic and spontaneous portrait of a family living in Mississippi before, during and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
A portrait of a “people smuggler”
By Mike Head, 21 July 2012
The People Smuggler puts a human face on those involved in refugee boat voyages, and exposes myths peddled by Australian governments.
The reactionary politics of Grace Lee Boggs
By Shannon Jones, 2 July 2012
In The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century, Detroit’s Grace Lee Boggs advances a political perspective thoroughly hostile to the interests of the working class.
Book Review:
Canadian imperialism’s intervention in the Russian Civil War
By Vic Neufeld, 30 June 2012
Benjamin Isitt has excavated an important, but long-buried historical chapter—the story of the Canadian ruling class’ intervention in the Russian Civil War and the fierce opposition it provoked among Canadian workers, including among the conscript soldiers sent to fight alongside the counter-revolutionary White armies.
Film critic Andrew Sarris 1928-2012: An appreciation
Andrew Sarris and American filmmaking
By David Walsh, 26 June 2012
The World Socialist Web Site is reposting here an article originally published on July 1, 1998. See also the accompanying interview with Andrew Sarris, also from 1998, with a new introduction following his death June 20.
Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman: A valuable, passionate portrait of a great actress
By Charles Bogle, 18 May 2012
Biographer Dan Callahan makes a convincing case for finding the source of Barbara Stanwyck’s acting style and depth in her childhood and adolescence. His analyses of her performances are highly observant and passionately written.
Daniel Woodrell’s The Outlaw Album: Short, honest, brutal and beautiful stories
By Christine Schofelt, 9 March 2012
Set in the small towns and rural areas of Woodrell’s native Missouri and Arkansas, the stories in The Outlaw Album depict troubles of a universal nature.
Jack London’s The Iron Heel: An enduring classic
By Jack Hood, 8 March 2012
In his futuristic novel, The Iron Heel (1908), American author and socialist Jack London chronicled a revolutionary struggle beginning a century ago this year, in 1912.
Chuck Palahniuk’s Damned: Damned if you do
By Christine Schofelt, 4 January 2012
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) has made a career of trying to be the literary equivalent of a “shock jock.” His latest novel, Damned, takes us on a journey characterized by contrived and banal disgust.
Poetry review: Carol Ann Duffy’s The Christmas Truce
By Jackie Warren, 27 December 2011
The latest work by Carol Ann Duffy, the UK’s Poet Laureate, is a book-length children’s poem that reflects on the moments, during World War One, leading up to the “Christmas Truce” of December 24 and 25, 1914.
That Deadman Dance—an imaginative story about indigenous Australians and European settlers
By Gabriela Zabala, 22 December 2011
Kim Scott’s novel uses poetic and creative lyrical prose, cleverly shifting between the ‘voices’ and consciousness of the European settlers and the Noongar.
Exciting and engaging: Richard Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True
By Christine Schofelt, 12 November 2011
In his latest book, written for young people, evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins shows how—and why—to fall in love with reality.
Woman as animal: Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River
By Janel Flechsig, 21 October 2011
Bonnie Jo Campbell came to national attention in 2009 with her short story collection, American Salvage, which became a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent novel, Once Upon a River, was released in July.
Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour Leader
A transparent attempt to rebrand Labour
By Dave Hyland, 13 September 2011
Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour Leader (Biteback Publishing, ISBN: 978-1-84954-102-2) is less a biography than an extended memo, written by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre from the standpoint of explaining to disappointed supporters of David Miliband how his younger brother, Ed, won last year’s Labour Party leadership election.
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director—a new biography of a major American filmmaker
By Charles Bogle, 12 September 2011
In writing Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director, biographer Patrick McGilligan has performed the valuable service of tracing the fitful arc of a great and troubled director’s life and career.
Correspondence
A letter: Some thoughts on author Stan Barstow (1928-2011) and postwar British social realism
29 August 2011
Stan Barstow, who died August 1, was best known for his 1960 novel A Kind of Loving.
Book Review
Guantanamo: My Journey—David Hicks exposes torture and government criminality
By Richard Phillips, 19 May 2011
Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks has written a valuable exposure of the barbarities perpetrated against him by the US military and Canberra’s role in his illegal detention.
Inside WikiLeaks—an attack from a former supporter
By Johann Müller, 1 April 2011
Domscheit-Berg, a former employee of WikiLeaks has written a book which seeks to discredit the whistle blowers’ web site.
A remarkable glimpse at art and politics in Depression America
A review of American Letters 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock & Family
By David Walsh, 24 March 2011
American Letters 1927-1947 is a fascinating volume that sheds light in particular on the Depression years in the US and some of the intellectual and artistic trends that emerged during that harsh era.
An interview with Sylvia Winter Pollock
By David Walsh, 24 March 2011
A conversation with the co-editor of American Letters 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock & Family
The Guardian’s hatchet job on Julian Assange
By Robert Stevens, 10 March 2011
WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published by the Guardian newspaper, is a politically-motivated hatchet job aimed at discrediting Assange and facilitating his persecution.
Detroit Disassembled by Andrew Moore: The devastation of a major American city
By Tim Tower, 5 January 2011
Detroit was once synonymous with automobile manufacturing and the dominance of American industry. Today’s cityscape is rife with images of decay. Andrew Moore’s photographs in his Detroit Disassembled give expression to the city’s historical tragedy.
The legacy of Leonard Bernstein: a book review
By Fred Mazelis, 24 November 2010
A recent book by Barry Seldes adds something important to the study of Leonard Bernstein’s life and work. Seldes, a professor at Ryder University in New Jersey, is the first biographer to have studied the conductor-composer’s massive FBI dossier.
The Stieg Larsson phenomenon
By David Walsh, 8 September 2010
The three novels by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, published in the US as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, have attracted much attention around the world.
Photo book of the month: Red Star Over Russia
A visual history by David King of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the death of Joseph Stalin
By Adelbert Reif, 19 August 2010
David King’s Red Star Over Russia is a truly superlative photo book!
German journalist Götz Aly denounces pension system
By Stefan Steinberg, 13 August 2010
In his attack on the German welfare state the journalist Götz Aly speaks on behalf of an increasingly unstable petit-bourgeois social layer that tossed aside its youthful radicalism a long time ago and has been able to forge a lucrative career during the past three decades.
A sense of unease: Tobias Wolff’s recent fiction collected in Our Story Begins
By Sandy English, 10 August 2010
Over the past thirty years, Tobias Wolff has produced several collections of short stories, novels, and popular memoirs, especially This Boy’s Life, as well as In Pharaoh’s Army, about his experiences during the Vietnam War.
Confessions of a scoundrel
The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, by Peter Mandelson
By Dave Hyland, 5 August 2010
Peter Mandelson played a central role in the transformation of the reformist Labour Party into an openly right-wing capitalist party.
Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System
An insider’s critique of education “reform”
By Walter Gilberti and Jerry White, 27 July 2010
Diane Ravitch’s book presents a summary on the attack on public education, from its origins during the Reagan era to Obama’s Race to the Top.
Present historic: Carlyle, Robespierre and the French Revolution
By Ann Talbot, 17 July 2010
Ruth Scurr has done an enormous service by producing a collection of extracts from Thomas Carlyle’s powerful narrative The French Revolution to add to her earlier biography of Robespierre in which she uncovers something of the character and motivations of a man who is more usually hidden in the “blood red mist” of the Terror.
Present historic: Carlyle, Robespierre, and the French Revolution
Part two
By Ann Talbot, 16 July 2010
Ruth Scurr has done an enormous service by producing a collection of extracts from Thomas Carlyle’s powerful narrative The French Revolution to add to her earlier biography of Robespierre, in which she uncovers something of the character and motivations of a man who is more usually hidden in the “blood red mist” of the Terror.
Present historic: Carlyle, Robespierre and the French Revolution
Part one
By Ann Talbot, 15 July 2010
Ruth Scurr has done an enormous service by producing a collection of extracts from Thomas Carlyle’s powerful narrative The French Revolution to add to her earlier biography of Robespierre in which she uncovers something of the character and motivations of a man who is more usually hidden in the “blood red mist” of the Terror.
Letters on Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik
11 May 2010
The following letters were sent to the WSWS in response to Nancy Hanover’s review, “‘Strange Fruit’ by Kenan Malik: A polemic against racism and identity politics”
“Strange Fruit” by Kenan Malik: A polemic against racism and identity politics
By Nancy Hanover, 8 May 2010
Kenan Malik has situated himself in the crosshairs of the dispute over the nature of race, arguing from the standpoint of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific objectivity.
An American liberal looks at health care systems around the globe
By Fred Mazelis, 29 March 2010
The Healing of America, by longtime Washington Post journalist T.R. Reid, a proponent of health care reform, raises some important issues, despite the severe inadequacy of both its analysis and its prescriptions for change.
The Lacuna, or what’s missing
By Sandy English, 27 March 2010
In The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver recounts the life of a fictional writer named Harrison Shepherd, mixing his story in with those of such historical figures as the Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Successful launch of In Defence of Leon Trotsky at Sydney’s Gleebooks
By our correspondent, 4 February 2010
An appreciative audience of 150 filled the upstairs auditorium of Sydney’s Gleebooks bookstore last night to hear David North launch his In Defence of Leon Trotsky: A Reply to the Falsifications of Robert Service.
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010): An appreciation
By James Brookfield, 2 February 2010
American author J.D. Salinger, best known for his 1951 classic The Catcher in the Rye, died Wednesday, January 27. He was 91.
What does particle physics tell us about the nature of matter?
By Chris Talbot, 20 January 2010
Frank Wilczek’s book can be recommended as an attempt to explain to a lay person the implications of more than 50 years of particle physics. Wilczek is a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist.
A letter on George Eliot’s Adam Bede
16 January 2010
The following letter was sent to the World Socialist Web Site in response to “In praise of George Eliot’s Adam Bede on its 150th anniversary”.
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