Victoria Brittain reviews Dispatches from the Dark Side for the Institute of Race Relations website.
Reading her litany of horror, delivered in cool legal language, any government lawyer, or MP, or official in the Ministry of Justice, might feel the need to resign in order to keep their self-respect.
The fully updated new edition of Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed was launched at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 26 October. Listen to Paul Mason's illuminating and entertaining conversation about the crash, capitalist ideology and politics with the acclaimed playwright Sir David Hare:
Graeme Neill, reporting for The Bookseller, meets André Schiffrin, author of Words & Money and The Business of Books. They talk (book)shop about what can be done to save the book trade:
The timing of my meeting with André Schiffrin, long-standing critic of corporate publishing, legendary Pantheon publisher of old and independent firebrand of now with the not-for-profit house the New Press, could not have been better. It came just days after the bonfire of the quangos and Chancellor George Osborne's Comprehensive Spending Review, which cut a swathe through the public sector ...
Bookforum recently ran a short piece in praise of some "snazzy" new websites coming out of the publishing world. Verso featured prominently, flagged up alongside FSG and Phaidon. In short, Verso provides "the best radical political reading on the web."
Not long ago, book publisher's websites were mostly bland promotional fare: author photos, catalog copy, and—if you were lucky—perhaps a reading group guide. But lately, we've been spending more time on the snazzy websites of publishers like FSG, Phaidon, and Verso, which include interviews, multimedia, and blogs ... The indie publisher Verso's site has some of the best radical political reading on the web, with its books, authors, and events presented in an engaging format, as well as a blog and discussion forum.
Visit Bookforum to read the post in full—because the Bookforum website is excellent, too.
Following a screening of Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein at the Tate Modern on Friday 22 October, Tariq Ali discussed the work of Jarman and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the writing and making of Ali's series of filmic philosophers' lives with Jonathan Derbyshire, culture editor of the New Statesman. This event, celebrating Verso's 40th year of publishing, was the first in the In Defense of Philosophy Series hosted by the Tate Modern.
In Defense of Philosophy Part 2 will take place in February 2011 with a screening of Tariq Ali's Spinoza: The Apostle of Reason with a very special surprise guest ...