mlx-community/zer0-books huggingface dataset:
Education Revolution
by Sam Shain

If the revolution will not be televised, bring it to the classroom

A plea for public education nationwide to teach media literacy, and specifically from the left of the political spectrum.

Within, the author discusses his journalism curriculum, which includes lessons in media literacy, critical thinking, bias, the political spectrum, economics, current events, and more. Additionally, he makes the case that "politics" belong in the classroom as a mechanism to push back on the looming realities of late-stage capitalism and right-wing disinformation; a highly necessary argument given how teaching these sorts of matters in public schools can be met with angst by parents, administrations, school boards, etc. It's time for people to take back power, information, and education.

Reviews:
We live in a deeply unjust and unequal society. High school students are bombarded with propaganda to justify the status quo, from the reassuring fairy tales about capitalism in their economics classes to textbooks in their U.S. History classes that are splattered with more pictures of eagles and slowly waving flags than the signs at a Trump rally. Sam Shain understands how important it is to equip these students with the reasoning tools they can use to think for themselves and see through all the nonsense. We need about 10,000 more of him. ~ Ben Burgis, author of Give Them an Argument and Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left
Sam Shain's book addresses and boldly answers a burning question for our time: how to develop critical political awareness given corporate media and their political biases. As a public high-school teacher, he has long practiced answers to the question. This book contains the wisdom he has acquired. He tells us what needs to be taught and how to generate media literacy. The US left especially needs to read this as an important source for changing the major narratives through which people today make sense of a capitalism in crisis. ~ Richard Wolff, author of Democracy At Work, host of Economic Update podcast
Embrace of Capital, The
by Don Milligan

Capitalism has swallowed us whole. It's a love hate relationship.

The "spectre of communism" which Karl Marx confidently evoked in 1848 is now nothing more than a ghostly and ghastly nightmare, without form or substance. This is because working people have developed a love-hate relationship with capitalism. They hate insecurity, inequality, and greed, and love civic and political freedom. They love mass consumption, and accept the logic of commerce. Barreling along through wars, revolutions, epidemics, and crises of all sorts, working people in their millions have consistently dumfounded and dismayed the left, by their refusal to countenance any alternative to the capitalist mode of life. We have to ask: Is it possible to reverse this reality, and once again talk of the necessity of communism?

Reviews:
Genuinely thought provoking and provocative. A much-needed takedown of what Orwell once called the ‘smelly little orthodoxies’ of the left, and why they are so distant and alienated from the working class they claim to fight for. ~ Ralph Leonard
So refreshing, and joyously subversive, to read a communist's analysis of why communism is so terribly unappetizing. ~ Yanis Varoufakis
Emerald City
by Joseph Grosso

New York's transformation back into a Gilded city and what to do about it.

Joseph Grosso traces the history of New York's transformation back into a gilded city, and asks what can be done about it. He examines New York's deindustrialization and the elite planning and design that followed; New York's financial crisis of the mid-1970s and the policy decisions made in its wake; New York's housing crisis; and the history of public housing across the United States. Making the history of gentrification and deindustrialization widely available and understood is a crucial tool in combating housing crises which continue to spread in cities around the world as more and more houses are left empty, to be used for global investments instead of for living.

Fresh, lively, accessible, Grosso brings the issues of gentrification, deindustrialization, homelessness, and militarized policing, so easily ignored, to the fore.

Reviews:
End of Capitalism, The: The Thought of Henryk Grossman
by Ted Reese

With capitalism entering its worst ever and possibly final crisis, Henryk Grossman, the neglected 20th century Marxist who explained the inevitability of such a 'final breakdown' most convincingly, is more relevant than ever – and must be rehabilitated.

Henryk Grossman is a name most socialists or students of political and social theory - let alone the mass of working people around the world - have probably never heard of. Yet Grossman, a Polish Jew born in 1881, deserves recognition as the most sophisticated defender of Karl Marx's theory of capitalism's inevitable collapse. With capitalism sinking into its deepest ever crisis, Grossman's neglected work must be revisited and popularised. Is capitalism entering its final breakdown?

Reviews:
"Revealing the richness of the Marxist tradition, Reese provides an illuminating introduction into the life and thought of Henryk Grossman, connecting his many insights on the dynamics of capitalism, its contradictions, and its tendency to produce economic crises to present-day developments."

-- Asatar Bair, Associate Professor of Economics, Riverside City College, author of Prison Labor in the US: An Economic Analysis ~ Asatar Bair, Asatar Bair, Associate Professor of Economics, Riverside City College, author of Prison Labor in the US: An Economic Analysis
"The End of Capitalism couldn’t be more urgent for socialists. In outlining the looming inevitability of capitalist breakdown, Reese makes a compelling case for Grossman’s work to be considered required reading alongside Marxist giants like Engels, Lenin and Trotsky." - Stephen Radecki, The Swoletariat ~ Stephen Radecki, The Swoletariat
"Reese navigates what could easily be a series of complicated economic theories with his typical aptitude, making them accessible to amateur economists and laymen alike. He clearly demonstrates the significant value of Grossman's contribution to Marxist economics. Indeed, Grossman's writings now seem stunningly prescient." -- wielisc, The Next Left ~ wielisc, The Next Left
"The rescuing of Henryk Grossman from obscurity is indispensable for any attempt to understand and overcome the crises confronting us today. Reese has written an inspiring and electrifying book." - James Bell, Prolekult ~ James Bell, Prolekult
"Reese offers a fresh perspective on an underrated figure in the Marxist canon and shows how much fresher our perspectives could be if we gave Grossman the attention he has wrongly been denied." - Kali Koba, Desperate Times Blog ~ Kali Koba, Desperate Times https://desperatetimes914496456.wordpress.com/
End of Oulipo?, The
by Lauren Elkin, Veronica Esposito

As this experiment in literary patterns enters its sixth decade, its members, fans and critics are wondering: where can it go from here?

As this experiment in literary patterns enters its sixth decade, its members, fans and critics are wondering: where can it go from here?

The Oulipo, founded in 1960s, is a group of writers and mathematicians which seeks to create literature using constrained experimental writing techniques such as palindromes, lipograms and snowballs. A lipogram is writing that excludes one or more letters. A snowball is a poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.

The Oulipo group celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2010, and as it enters its sixth decade, its members, fans and critics are all wondering: where can it go from here? In two long essays Veronica Esposito and Lauren Elkin consider Oulipo's strengths, weaknesses, and impact on today's experimental literature.

Reviews:
The End of Oulipo? is effective, informative, highly entertaining, and essential reading.

http://www.winnipegreview.com/

~ Jeff Bursey, The Winnipeg Review
...effective, informative, highly entertaining, and essential reading. ~ Jeff Bursey, The Winnipeg Review
Expanding World, The
by Michael Cronin

The world gets bigger not smaller all the time and this is very good news for humanity.

Are we really living in a shrinking world? Is it true that diversity is on the decline everywhere? Are we condemned to live on a planet without difference or hope? The Expanding World challenges the basic notion of a shrinking world in current debates around globalization and argues that it informs ways of thinking and doing which are deeply damaging to the emergence of a progressive politics. The work proposes instead a new kind of politics based on a notion of an expanding rather than a shrinking world. This implies a different way of looking at the world and a different way of doing politics. The Expanding World is fundamentally about looking more closely at what is around us and acting on that knowledge. It is about considering what it means to have whole worlds reflected in the looking glass of local inquiry. Cronin challenges the prevailing culture of disenchantment by highlighting the inexhaustible variety and richness of the planet and how that variety and richness can become the basis of new forms of emancipatory politics.

Reviews:
Failure, A Writer's Life
by Joe Milutis

Failure is a catalogue of literary monstrosities, a philosophy for the unreadable, and a map for new literary worlds.

Failure, A Writer’s Life is a catalogue of literary monstrosities. Its loosely organized vignettes and convolutes provide the intrepid reader with a philosophy for the unreadable, a consolation for the ignored, and a map for new literary worlds.

Reviews:
"The unfinished, unreadable, unpublishable — the scribbled and illegible, the too slowly published, the countless unpublished, all that does not seem to count at all. . . . here lie all manner of ruins. From Marguerite Duras to Google Maps, Henri Bergson to H.P. Lovecraft, Orson Welles to Walter Benjamin to a host of literary ambulance drivers (not to mention the FBI, UFOs, and UbuWeb), _Failure, A Writer's Life_ charts empty spaces and occupied libraries, searches databases bereft of filters, files spam and porn and weather reports into their respective _konvoluts_, and realizes the full potential of cultural inscription. In a series of snapshots concatenated in the best surrealist mode, Milutis has curated a catalogue of curiosities as essential to understanding our current cultural condition as they are eccentric. With Nietzschean _witz_ and self-reflexive bravura, he teases out the occult links between heterogeneities in the tradition of Allen S. Weiss and Greil Marcus. In the process, Milutis redefines the 'virtual' as something much broader and more interesting than digital simulacra: as the unmanageable storehouse of memory and the inevitable expanse of forgetfulness. Here, in all its glamorous success, is the horizon of failure." ~ Craig Dworkin
“Milutis is a skilled ringmaster of difficult ideas that might otherwise bite.” ~ Gregory Whitehead
Farewell to Democracy?
by Jack Luzkow

If you think you are living in an era of post-truth, you likely are. Farewell to Democracy? shows us what happens when we speak truth to power. It details the strength of mass protest. It pulls back the veil on post-truth.

If you think you are living in an era of post-truth, you likely are. If something sounds like magical thinking, it is. Nationalism makes no country great; it often leads to war, genocide, terror, destroyed economies and the turning of cities into rubble. Technology will not get us to paradise. It has made us more unequal than ever, polluted democracy, heightened job risk (displacement), created ever more billionaires, continued the rapid pace of the destruction of the planet, and transformed us from citizens into consumers, often with our active support. The free market is not free; too often it isn’t even a market (because we live in an age of monopoly). The road to serfdom is paved by demagogues, not the state; the state and its institutions are all we have. Trust expertise. Truth does not come from he who shouts the loudest. You are approaching a one-party-state when facts are relativized, science is denied, experts are mocked and threatened, alternative facts are embraced, minorities are criminalized, and lying is normalized.

Farewell to Democracy? reminds us that we have been here before. It tells us that we can avoid a repetition of the past, but we must first know what that past was (and is). Farewell to Democracy? insists that nothing is inevitable. That we are not powerless. That we have institutions to help protect us, which we must protect in turn. It shows us what happens when we speak truth to power. It details the strength of mass protest. It pulls back the veil on Post-Truth. It urges all of us to bear witness and to "show up."

Reviews:
......It’s a little book (only a hundred pages) but it has a big message: that in the twenty-first century we are facing threats similar to the totalitarianism that emerged in the twentieth century. Luzkow writes from a US standpoint, but his book has relevance worldwide, raising as it does issues and questions of vital importance to every citizen. Positioned on the political left, he naturally sees the threats posed in the opposite quarter, but one has to say that they are as much present today on the left as on the right.......

https://geoffjward.medium.com/democracy-in-decline-too-late-to-save-it-86d42e791a6b ~ Geoff Ward, Medium.com
Fear of Music (2nd Edition)
by David Stubbs

An examination of why modern art can be easier to appreciate than modern music.

Modern art is a mass phenomenon. Conceptual artists like Damien Hirst enjoy celebrity status. Works by 20th century abstract artists like Mark Rothko are selling for record breaking sums, while the millions commanded by works by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon make headline news. However, while the general public has no trouble embracing avant garde and experimental art, there is, by contrast, mass resistance to avant garde and experimental music, although both were born at the same time under similar circumstances - and despite the fact that from Schoenberg and Kandinsky onwards, musicians and artists have made repeated efforts to establish a "synaesthesia" between their two media. Fear of Music examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed. It draws on interviews and often highly amusing anecdotal evidence in order to find answers to the question: Why do people get Rothko and not Stockhausen?

Reviews:
Praise for the 1st edition of this title released in 2009: The title belies the fact that the main thrust of the content is a parallel history of contemporary art and music with a conclusion that attempts to answer the question inherent in the title, but, of course, fails. That's not a criticism as the content is informative and thought provoking and there never was going to be a clear answer. The author crams in a great deal in this short space and does it with an intense, evocative style, not difficult to read and absorb. If you are interested in contemporary music, particularly the kind that challenges the norm, this will prove to be a good investment. ~ Bill Anderton, www.newentorchestra.org/reviews
Feminism's Founding Fathers
by Kaevan Gazdar

The first book to tell the untold story of the male pioneers and fellow-travellers of Women's Lib.

Why have so many remarkable men fought for women's rights, often risking their careers and ruining their health? Who were these men, what were their backgrounds, above all: what kind of relationships did they have with women? Finally, if there have been so many deviations from the male-oppressor/female-victim cliché, doesn't this stereotype need to be relativized or indeed rejected?

Feminism's Founding Fathers is the first book to tell the untold story of the "traitors" to the men's cause - the pioneers and fellow-travellers of female emancipation. It challenges accepted wisdom and reveals the vital role that men have played in making Women's Lib happen.

Reviews:
This book gave me a whole new perspective about the history of the feminist movement. I hope that a lot of men read this book, and see why everyone (not just women) need feminism.

~ Justine Kraemer, Librarian, NetGalley
Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief
by Darren Ambrose

This book explores the possibility that cinema can challenge our contemporary nihilism and restore belief in new transformative possibilities for life.

Despite the clichés which govern much of its current forms, the cinema continues to have a vital political and aesthetic significance. Our commitment to, and our sincerity towards, our ways of being in the world have become catastrophically eroded. Nihilism and despair have taken hold. We must find a way to renew our faith in our capacity to transform the world, a faith that will give us back the reality of a world eroded by the restrictive capitalist ontology of modernity. How can we restore belief in the reality of a world when scepticism and universal pessimism have taken hold? Is it possible to find alternative ways of living, being and thinking? This book will discuss the means by which some filmmakers have grasped the vocation of resisting and transforming the present, of cultivating new forms of belief in the world when total alienation seems inevitable.

Reviews:
‘In our time of economic misery, war and conflict, and general lethargy, it has been easy for nihilism and discontent to become widespread. To lose faith in humanity has become acceptable within our society. However, the culture of alienation is reaching a tipping point, we must begin to think, act and enact towards a different objective, if we are to begin to dig ourselves out of a very deep hole. Darren Ambrose’s book offers us some consolation. If film can offer us a transformative experience, that changes our personal perception, then can we use it to create changes in a larger context? Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief is perhaps one of the most original and important books in the subject of cinema and its effects on our collective conscience.” ~ Stephen Lee Naish, Author of U.ESS.AY: Politics and Humanity in American Film
Fire Hides Everywhere
by Julian Feeld

Technology failed, most died. On an abandoned farm in the middle of France, an old man cares for a group of survivors: all children. Then he suffers a stroke, which comes to end their world for a second time.

Fire Hides Everywhere is a speculative fiction novel exploring a question central to identity: do we exist beyond our subject positions?

Following an apocalypse in which all except those just born or about to die disappeared, Julian Feeld's novel sets out to explore the eternal Buddhist question: "Who is born? Who dies?" As the young are left to define their 'selves' untethered, an old man begins to enlist them as placeholders for those no longer present. When he suffers a violent stroke and loses his capacities as a caregiver, he continues to operate structurally in the lives of the young people left to fend for themselves, begging the question: do structures live on beyond the lives of those inhabiting them?

Reviews:
A rich, haunting and haunted, fever dream of a novel. ~ Tom Lutz, novelist and editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books
Fire Hides Everywhere is gripping fiction by way of fascinating literary experimentation. Instead of simply dramatizing existing ideas on the subject, it defies subjectivity itself. ~ Alfie Bown, writer and editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong Review of Books
Flatline Constructs
by Mark Fisher

Mark Fisher's doctoral thesis - a metaphysics of cybernetic realism's anti-representation - more than a blur between between fiction and reality.

Completed in 1999 during his time with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, Mark Fisher’s PhD thesis, Flatline Constructs, invents a fusion of culture, critique, and radical philosophy that would define his signature style from Capitalist Realism to Acid Communism. Drawing on sources from David Cronenberg to Gilles Deleuze and William Gibson, Fisher presents a Gothic vision of cyberpunk reality, in which Man and media are drawn ever closer together, and life and death are never truly far apart.

Reviews:
Flatline Constructs is Mark Fisher’s piercing précis of the metaphysics of cybernetics, whose herald is Spinoza. Fisher’s ‘gothic flatline’ annuls the difference between fiction and reality, obliterating representation with circuitry, the mirror with the screen, and law with code. If Flatline Constructs’ principal tropes — machinic animism and agency without subjectivity — have become theoretical commonplaces in the 25 years since its composition, its publication now retrospectively illuminates the political debility of a cybernetic realism that snuffs out every alternative to the present. Flatline Constructs diagnoses the paralyzing predicament which Fisher’s subsequent work would struggle to overcome. ~ Ray Brassier, British philosopher and author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
Among many other things, Mark Fisher was one of the most gifted prose writers of his generation. His early death deprived us of an unknowable number of unsettling new ideas. Flatline Constructs, originally Fisher's doctoral thesis at Warwick University, is a precious gift from the other world, where he now resides. ~ Graham Harman, American philosopher and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles