Marc Lynch named Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil to Foreign Policy's Best Books on the Middle East, 2011 list. Placing the story of the rise of petrol-based economies at the center of the history of Western democracy, imperialism and empire, Mitchell's book, says Lynch, is
a challenging, sophisticated, and important book that undermines expectations in the best kind of intellectual provocation.
Visit Foreign Policy to read the article in full.
TIME Magazine has announced its much-anticipated person of the year, the protestor, and has included Verso's Intern Nation by Ross Perlin and Welcome to the Desert of the Real by Slavoj Žižek on their list of the movement's "canonical titles." Intern Nation is Perlin's brand-new exposé on the ballooning arena of unpaid internships, while Desert of the Real is Žižek's assessment of 9/11 and the fiasco of the predominant leftist response to the events leading up to, and after.
Other books that made TIME's list: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and bell hooks' Ain't I a Woman.
From Tunisia to Egypt, Wisconsin, Spain and New York City, the article profiles the viral spread of international activism in the heart of empire and beyond. Add this to the growing list of insightful mainstream media pieces on the new global protest movements.
And check out TIME to read the article in full.
Verso had a very, very good weekend, kicked off Friday by our party with n +1 to celebrate the publication of Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, the book based on n+1's broadsheet the Occupied Gazette on the movement that has changed the radical landscape and inspired a generation.
Rachel Hurn of The Millions reported on the festivities on the literary site's blog.
The Gazette trilogy was laid out on a side table, distinguished by primary colors — red for the first issue, blue for the second, and green for the third. Scenes from Zucotti Park projected against a white wall. The Occupy! book lay on a different table, on sale for $5 a copy.
Hal Foster's new book comes off as a litlle bit menacing, according to Jason Farrago, reviewing The Art-Architecture Complex for the Barnes and Noble Review. With the allusion to Roosevelt's well-known phrase leading the charge, Foster menaces and critiques his way to a convincing argument that "'image-making and space-shaping' have become part of one continuous field ... and that might not be such a good thing."
Film critic and historian Richard Porton, author of Film and the Anarchist Imagination, will be introducing selected screenings from Anarchism on Film, a new series presented by Anthology Film Archives and Cineaste magazine, featuring "historical films that excavate a submerged anarchist history and films that synthesize an anti-authoritarian political impetus with innovative formal strategies."
The series will run December 16th to the 23rd. Screenings will be held at Anthology Film Archives, on 32 2nd Ave in Manhattan.
For more information on this series, visit Anthology Film Archives.