Zombies
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Issue:
Subtitled “A Cultural History”, this enjoyable read sets out to understand the origin and the changing cultural meanings of the concept of the zombie in Western popular culture.
Subtitled “A Cultural History”, this enjoyable read sets out to understand the origin and the changing cultural meanings of the concept of the zombie in Western popular culture.
Hugo Slim describes himself as being in the tradition of liberal European Christian philosophy with little knowledge of other traditions of human thought. He nevertheless believes that the human urge to help others is universal.
“Revolutionary Syrians often describe their first protest as an ecstatic event, a kind of rebirth,” explain authors Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami in Burning Country. “At first I was scared to join in. But one day there was a very big demonstration, which came from two directions. When I heard the chanting and the singing, I started crying. Suddenly I was filled with courage, and I picked myself up and walked out to join in. My mother tried to stop me but I went anyway. It was a beautiful experience.
Don’t Mention the Children is only the second anthology of poems Michael Rosen has written for adults.
In his introduction he explains that the poems arise out of three different kinds of impulses: “Wanting to unpick and contradict the ways in which the world is described to us by those in power; to investigate the things that happened to me, my parents and their relatives; to experiment with the world I meet — I see what might happen if I shift some of the personal and circumstances from the real to the unreal.”
This wide-ranging and accessible bestseller is the first popular science book to win the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize. It addresses a question which remains hugely controversial. What is autism?
Venezuela’s state capitalist economy and its political dynamics have been shaped in the past 16 years by the indigenous population. In Venezuela Reframed the author argues that constitutional rights for indigenous people were made a priority through state-led capitalist development. He seeks to assess how successful Chavez’s Bolivarian movement has been in extending these rights.
A Rebel’s Guide to James Connolly is a much needed effort to claim the ideas and struggles of James Connolly as a fighter for the working class — hell bent on sparking the wave of revolution that went on to seize Europe in the latter half of the First World War.
Connolly was a writer, orator, organiser and fighter for the working class, who dedicated his life to fighting capitalism and imperialism. He also gave his life for that fight — executed by the British state in 1916 for his part in the Dublin Easter Rising.
For a decade or more there has been a sustained assault on the need for a political party in order to achieve social change. Many of the great movements of 2011 such as Occupy and 15M in the Spanish state explicitly rejected parties and leadership. This is now changing.
Doug Henwood sets out to challenge the idea that Hillary Clinton represents anything to do with progress or real change. “The case for Hillary boils down to this: she has experience, she’s a woman, and it’s her turn.” Now Bernie Sanders’ challenge has forced her to tack left. Even her feminist claims have been undermined by polls showing women prefer Sanders. Rejecting misogynist attacks on Clinton, Henwood explains he’s not interested in analysing her policies as she’s unlikely to stick to them. It’s her political record that counts, and it’s “not inspiring”.
Egypt’s 25 January revolution in 2011 was a moment in which history flipped upside down. It was a period of momentous events that are far from over. The counter-revolution of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who seized power in May 2013, appears to have put the lid back on the street movements, strikes and protests that were unleashed by the Arab Spring.