mstyslavity/zer0-books huggingface dataset:
British State, The
by Chris Nineham

The first attempt since the 1980s to analyse the British state's capacity to block change and derail social movements. A riposte to those who said there could never be a very British coup.

What happens if a radical government gets elected in Britain? How will the banks, the civil servants, the media and the military react? Is the idea of a British coup far-fetched? How can the left prepare?

Chris Nineham addresses these questions by looking behind the myths at the reality of two hundred years of British state rule. He brings us a warning from history. Don’t be fooled again, read this book.

Reviews:
5 out of 5 stars: An excellent eye-opening straight-to-the-point summary of the real history of the British state and how far it differs from the benign narrative we would prefer to believe. If you thought the establishment had attacked Corbyn enough over bad clothes, mixing with terrorists, not bowing low enough to the Queen, being in chronic bad health etc then read this book to prepare for the onslaught of attacks from the establishment should Corbyn get elected. Short, sharp and accessible - it doesn't pull its punches and nor should we! ~ Sofie Mason, Amazon

5 out of 5 stars: The British deep state despises democracy and will act to protect itself against any interference by us. Winning an election is one thing. But then what? This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know. ~ Shaun Wilde, Amazon

5 out of 5 stars: This is really excellent. I really can’t recommend this enough to everyone involved in campaigning and who wishes to change the world for better. Dispels a lot of woolly headed thinking about our essentially sound and benign institutions. The British State is of course neither of those things, and this book explains why brilliantly. Buy yourself and your colleagues a copy. ~ , Amazon

This gripping, fast-paced and provocative book is an alternative history of Britain. It shows how the carefully nurtured image of British fair play and liberalism has in fact concealed the real drama: the raw manipulation of power by and for a small number of people. British capitalism has, historically, actively undermined and suppressed any real change to the balance of power: this book warns that a future progressive government will face the same intransigence. ~ Brian Eno, musician and author of A Year with Swollen Appendices

An outstanding primer about one of the most urgent issues of the day. ~ John Pilger, author of Hidden Agendas

Fascinating and insightful. A timely and important book. ~ Francesca Martinez

A concise, salutary and very valuable history. The state as it really is not how it would like to appear. ~ Mike Wayne

Home Truths deftly told. ~ Danny Dorling
Can The Market Speak?
by Campbell Jones

This book attacks the ideological foundations of capitalism, starting with the mystifications surrounding the idea of ‘the market’.

It is said the market has moods and desires. It is said that we must listen to it and must anticipate how it will respond to our actions. What is the significance of these peculiar forms of speech? This book investigates the conceptual underpinnings of the idea that the market has intentions, consciousness and speech, and identifies the social and political consequences of this attribution to the market of capacities generally thought to be uniquely human. At once a work of philosophy, a cultural and social archaeology and a diagnosis of one of the central ideologies of our times, this book cuts to the heart of the linguistic forms through which our collective futures are decided.

Reviews:
In conclusion, Campbell Jones work raises a number of pertinent questions in regard to concepts such as hegemony, reification and the balance of forces between labour and capital. His book might not have all the answers to those questions but it can allow the kind of discussions which might arrive at them. Having had our tongues cut out by property developers and the priests of high finance, we will need books like Can the Market Speak? that believe in zombies’ ability to speak. ~ The Berlin Review of Books, http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2013/04/can-the-market-speak/

‘This remarkable little book teases apart modern market language, and offers a compelling critical reading of the personification of financial markets. There could have been no better time for its publication than in the midst of the current financial crisis. Through its reflections on the culture and history of the market’s personhood and personality, Campbell Jones offers new modes and avenues for dissent and resistance.’ ~ Professor Marieke de Goede, University of Amsterdam, author of Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance.

‘The wisdom of our age tells us “Shut up and let the market speak”, but market talk betrays a certain mindlessness. In this piercing and piquant book, Campbell Jones invites us to “think the market” when it can’t actually think itself. This book will unleash the critical spirits to keep the beasts at bay and engage the most salient philosophical entailments of our moment along the way.' ~ Professor Randy Martin, New York University, author of Financialization of Daily Life
Chaos Ethics
by Chris Bateman

Facing ethical disaster perhaps what we need isn't moral law but moral chaos.

Balance has no meaning for a politics that is merely the continuation of war by other means. Both religious zealots and defenders of scientific fact declare a monopoly on truth and the moral law, while radicals are powerless to resist since they have lost faith that ethics can be anything but arbitrary. Meanwhile, insane bureaucracy devastates life while nations fall into dishonor as they abandon their promises of justice. If the moral law cannot save us, perhaps it is time to try moral chaos.

Chaos Ethics collides philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Levinas, Mary Midgley, Alasdair MacInytre, Alain Badiou, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour with everything from cyberpunk science fiction and the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock to Google, gay marriage, drone assassinations, and the ethics of cats and dogs. A strange and wondrous journey through morality viewed as a facet of imagination that offers a new perspective in which the diversity of ethics is a strength not a weakness, hesitation is more noble than certainty, and virtue can be expressed in both law and chaos.

Reviews:
A revelatory reading of both my own and other's work - a genuine philosophy for the 21st century. ~ Michael Moorcock, award-winning fantasy and literary author

Provocative, lively, engaging and erudite. ~ Allen W. Wood, Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford University

An elegant yet passionate defence of ethics, the book carefully considers various conflicting accounts of what it means to live a good life before settling on imagination and narrative as chaotic and transient foundations of ethical thinking. Ethics for Bateman is both necessary and necessarily tumultuous; it is also a story which we should try and tell as best we can. Thought-provoking, engaging even if at times controversial, Chaos Ethics is a pleasure to read - and to agree and disagree with. ~ Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media, Goldsmiths, and author of Bioethics in the Age of New Media and and The Ethics of Cultural Studies
Cold World
by Dominic Fox

A scintillating critical survey of the "cold worlds" of Romantic poetry, black metal, teenage angst and terrorism.

To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy it: to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. In this book, the dark serenity of dejection is examined through a study of the poetry of Hopkins and Coleridge, and the music of "depressive" black metal artists such as Burzum and Xasthur.

The author then develops a theory of "militant dysphoria" via an analysis of the writings of the Red Army Fraction’s activist-theoretician, Ulrike Meinhof. The book argues that the "cold world" of dejection is one in which new creative and political possibilities, as well as dangers, can arise. It is not enough to live well in the world: one must also be able to affirm that another world is possible.

Reviews:
Dominic Fox discusses different types of rebellion in his scholarly Cold World: The Aesthetics of Rejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria (out from the fantastic Zer0 Books).

~ Devin King, http://makemag.com/reviews-online

We have been told by the living that the idea of a vital world is that of comfort and warmth. Dominic Fox assures us that this is not the case. With an unparalleled militant efficiency, Cold World blackens the lines between poetics and politics, music and negative resistance. It is a haunting sermon from the world of the dead exhorting the living to revolt in the name of a life whose vitality has been disenchanted by coldness and whose sacredness has been profaned by nigredo. ~ Reza Negarestani, Author of Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials

Dominic Fox's timely and important Cold World pinpoints the fundamental issue underlying contemporary debate about the possibility of revolutionary politics in a culture suffused by paralysing despondency. Drawing on a remarkable array of sources from Coleridge and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Xasthur and Ulrike Meinhof, Fox explores the necessary yet apparently contradictory link between refusal and revolution. While refusal without revolution perpetuates the very condition it would negate, revolution without refusal quickly lapses into phantasmatic utopianism. The quandaries of this particular dialectic have never been as lucidly charted as they are here. ~ Ray Brassier, Author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
Colloquium: Sound Art and Music
by Thomas Gardner

Salomé Voegelin

Declares the relationship between sound art and music “colloquial”: spoken and accessible, rather than locked behind disciplinary boundaries.

In 2012, Thomas Gardner and Salomé Voegelin hosted a colloquium, entitled "Music - Sound Art: Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures", at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This colloquium dealt with the current fervent debate concerning the relationship between sound art and music.

This book proposes the opening of the colloquium to a wider readership through the publication of a decisive range of the material that defined the event.

Reviews:
“The act of listening is a complex web of interconnected behaviour and mental manoeuvring between music, pure sound and historical context. This book is an important tool to negotiate the gap between the history of music and the wider panorama of sonic art.” ~ Anne Hilde Neset, writer, broadcaster and artistic director, nyMusikk, Oslo

“Of course we need this book! Why? Because we take too much for granted about the relationship between sound art and music. Because we need incisive, creative thinkers, like the ones gathered in these pages, to help us separate the conjoined twins of sonic practice, such that they might – via their independence – contrive a more salubrious kinship.” ~ Seth Kim-Cohen, Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Combined and Uneven Apocalypse
by Evan Calder Williams

From salvagepunk to zombie hordes, wastelands to plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era.

From the repurposed rubble of salvagepunk to undead hordes banging on shopping mall doors, from empty waste zones to teeming plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era. Moving through the films, political tendencies, and recurrent crises of late capitalism, Evan Calder Williams paints a black toned portrait of the dream and nightmare images of a global order gone very, very wrong. Situating itself in the defaulting financial markets of the present, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse glances back toward a messy history of zombies, car wrecks, tidal waves, extinction, trash heaps, labour, pandemics, wolves, cannibalism, and general nastiness that populate the underside of our cultural imagination. Every age may dream the end of the world to follow, but these scattered nightmare figures are a skewed refraction of the normal hell of capitalism. The apocalypse isn't something that will happen one day: it's just the slow unveiling of the catastrophe we've been living through for centuries. Against any fantasies of progress, return, or reconciliation, Williams launches a loathing critique of the bleak present and offers a graveside smile for our necessary battles to come.

Reviews:
More than a blueprint for liberation, Williams’s limpid and creative dissection of these cultural artefacts is an exemplary illustration of the serious scrutiny we should apply to our imaginative lives.

~ The Oxonian Review

Yes, another book about zombies and the end of the world. But this is not just another book about zombies and the end of the world. Like one of the junk-suturing recusants whose philosophy he has been central to constructing, Evan Calder Williams builds something rageful and compelling and quite new out of all this fucking wreckage.

~ China MiÃ©ville
Coming From Nothing
by Matthew McKeever

A tragi-comic philosophical novella about how the internet is reshaping our notions of personal identity.

Coming From Nothing is a tragi-comic love story concerned with notions of identity, such as Judith Butler's idea that sexual identity isn't determined by the body, and John Locke's that personal identity is a question of memory.

The first novella in Zero Books new series of Thought Experiment Novellas, these are books that work out philosophical arguments in their plots. Whether focusing on William James' determinism, Descartes' mind/body dualism, or Judith Butler's argument for gender performativity, these short books attempt to flesh out philosophical problems. They are stories wherein philosophical ideas have consequences, at least in the lives of the characters.

Reviews:
The first novella in Zero Books new series of 'Thought Experiment Novellas', "Coming From Nothing" works out philosophical arguments in it's plot. Successfully fleshing out philosophical problems, "Coming From Nothing" is a deftly crafted story where philosophical ideas have consequences in the lives of its characters.

Deftly crafted, entertainingly thoughtful and thought-provoking, "Coming From Nothing" is an ideal vehicle for launching the new Zero Books 'Thought Experiment' series of novellas and will prove to be a welcome and enduringly popular addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections. ~ Julie's Bookshelf, Midwest Book Review

Coming from Nothing is a literary beignet sweetened by a rich powdering of philosophical speculation. The metaphysics of gender, the nature of personal identity, the relations among mind, body, information, and society - all of these contribute to a central philosophical enigma. Are Carrie’s and Jules’s driftingly intersecting lives governed by the causal powers of absences, or by the absence of causal powers? ~ Josh Dever, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Continental Realism
by Paul J. Ennis

In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy.

In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy. Pitted against the dominant antirealist and transcendental continental hegemony Ennis argues that continental thinking must establish an alliance between metaphysics, speculation, and realism if we are to truly get back to the things themselves.

Reviews:
Aan excellent introduction to a fascinating new development in philosophical thinking.

~ Emmet Oâ€™Cuana, abookadaytillicanstay

Paul J. Ennis has given us the first general overview of the theses of After Finitude , and of their reception in the Anglo-American philosophical field. The theses in question - speculative and correlationist - are here exposed with clarity and fidelity. An indispensable introduction to speculative realism.

~ Professor Quentin Meillassoux, Le DÃ©partement de philosophie, Ã‰cole normale supÃ©rieure

In its brief compass Ennis’s book gives a lively, sympathetic though critical account of a newly emergent movement of thought - speculative realism - that looks set to transform received ideas of what counts as “continental” philosophy.

~ Professor Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University
Corona Generation, The
by Jennie Bristow and Emma Gilland

How teenagers' experiences of lockdown will impact on their future.

It is already clear that the COVID-19 crisis will have huge social and economic implications. The Corona Generation considers its effect on the generation currently coming of age: the demographic currently known as ‘Generation Z’. A generation that was already considered to be teetering on the brink of an uncertain political, economic, and environmental future now finds itself entering an adulthood in which nothing can be taken for granted; where continuous crisis management is already presented as the ‘new normal’.

Reviews:
"One of the UK's leading sociologists of generation uses both her scholarship and her ability to write beautifully to give meaning to the experience of Spring and Summer 2020. Together her daughter Emma, whose insights display maturity well beyond her years, Bristow helps us think and reflect on what social crisis means, and how we move forwards." ~ Professor Ellie Lee, Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent

"As a teacher who watched her Year 6 class lose a special end of primary school time, and the mother to a 16-year-old who lost the rite of passage given by GCSEs, this book chimed with me and raised some important issues for the future that we should all be discussing." ~ Josephine Hussey, teacher and parent

Given its timely and responsive quality, this proposed book is very much of the moment. It deals with a theme that is widely discussed and in which there is widespread interest. Its generational angle will provide a much needed and original take on the politics of a pandemic. ~ Professor Frank Furedi, University of Kent

The proposed book promises to read wide audience, responding intelligently to the present situation, with a focus on an aspect of social life that touches everyone. The issues and problems identified for the future of interactions between generations are critical ones, about which the author already has a well-established track record of writing (both academic and popular). This track record also includes publication based around writing high quality text at speed, making this proposal ideal for the requirements of this point in time. It is to be expected that the book can sell well, appealing to a diverse audience. ~ Professor Ellie Lee, Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent
Cyber Disobedience
by Jeff Shantz

Jordon Tomblin

Few activities have captured the contemporary popular imagination as hacking and online activism, from Anonymous and beyond. Few political ideas have gained more notoriety recently than anarchism. Yet both remain misunderstood and much maligned.

Few activities have captured the contemporary popular imagination as hacking and online activism, from Anonymous and beyond. Few political ideas have gained more notoriety recently than anarchism. Yet both remain misunderstood and much maligned. /Cyber Disobedience/ provides the most engaging and detailed analysis of online civil disobedience and anarchism today.

Reviews:
One thing is clear: the Internet is likely the largest decentralized project in all of human history. Shantz and Tomblin hone in on the Internet’s renegades and radicals, who utilize the Internet’s unprecedented power for the purposes of resisting authority, creating international solidarity, and spreading the meme of anarchy. /Cyber Disobedience/ describes hacktivists, the free software and anti-copyright movements, digital whistleblowing, and other efforts to create a freer and more just future, both online and offline. This book truly captures the rebel spirit at the heart of the Internet Age. ~ Dana M. Williams, California State University, Chico.

Beyond the restrictive and narrow politics-as-usual from both left and right, the authors demonstrate the passionate and creative forces of contemporary anarchism that fly in the face of both corporate media and traditional academic accounts alike that perpetrate the mythical popular image of anarchism as utopic and disorderly. Providing discussions on everything from the rise of Anonymous, the Arab Spring, and demonization of whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, to the coining of the term “hacktivism” in 1998, Cyber Disobedience explores the role of social media in information-sharing and movement-building possibilities. Activists, students, scholars - anyone interested in anti-capitalist social movements and digital resistance from below - will benefit from reading Shantz and Tomblin’s arguments that are theoretically sophisticated, empirically rigorous and historically significant. A lucid, compelling and provocative account of the potential of the digital revolutionary spirit, the text sets a very high standard for debates in the social studies of power, knowledge and technology. Overall, Cyber Disobedience constitutes a significant and timely contribution - a must-read for anyone concerned with freedom, technology, social justice and state repression in the twenty-first century. ~ Dr. Heidi M. Rimke, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Winnipeg.
Daniel Defoe and the Bank of England
by Val Hamilton

Martin Parker

Why is a novel like a corporation? How is Daniel Defoe connected to the Bank of England?

This little book tells the truthful story of how the Bank of England actually came into being. It is a story of pirates, treasure, random good fortune and sheer determination. This is an institution founded on risk, daring and imagination. The tale is entangled with that of the early novel, in particular the fortunes of one Moll Flanders, an entrepreneur of sexual relations in the growing London market for capital in the early eighteenth century.

These accounts are woven together with the life-stories of Daniel Defoe and William Paterson, founders of two of the key institutions of our modern age, the novel and the corporation. This reveals connections which are nowadays forgotten, and which the fractured specialisms of ‘Literature’, ‘History’ and ‘Business’ can rarely see.

These tales are set against the backdrop of the long eighteenth century - fervent years of inventiveness, high risk gambling, and political revolution. The authors show that the dark arts of deceit, and the credibility of fictions, are requirements for any creative enterprise, and that all organizations are fictions.

Listen to Mark Watson's BBC Radio 4 documentary featuring 'Daniel Defoe and the Bank of England': http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07k01bf

Reviews:
Though whisper it quietly, much of research in business would bore the bum off a buffalo. This on the other hand is an interdisciplinary masterpiece standing between English literature and Management which is an exciting tale of risk, danger, piratical endeavour, plunder, deceit and daring-do in the Age of Projects. It is a beautifully realised narrative interweaving the rise of the Bank of England with the economy of Scotland, Daniel Defoe’s biography and the story of Moll Flanders. It provides literary enjoyment and real insight into the contemporary world in equal measure. It’s a treasure. ~ Professor Gibson Burrell, Management, University of Leicester

This is an engaging and distinctive book about the links between the history of the novel and the Bank of England. Hamilton and Parker's work is an original contribution to our growing critical understanding of the fictional dimensions of finance and financial institutions. ~ Professor Nicholas Royle, Literature, University of Sussex

A bold and exciting fusion of literary and financial history, this provocative organisational study takes us to the very heart of the modern. ~ David Kynaston, Author and Social Historian
Dark Futures
by Nick Dunn

We dream in darkness. Yet light is everywhere, blazing its way through our lives and thoughts. We urgently need new ways to think of futures to save the planet, other species, and ourselves. What might happen when the lights go down?

Dark Futures provides a new way of thinking about the world. Light is everywhere, often uninvited as a by-product of our contemporary lives. Darkness meanwhile appears unwanted, yet is essential to our wellbeing, other species, and our planet.

When we consider what futures are possible, they tend to direct us to visions of either a shiny, frictionless world which is light and bright, or at the other end of the spectrum they are fearsome, shadowy dystopias. This book reclaims darkness to think through alternative futures which are neither environmentally catastrophic nor technologically evangelical.

Dark Futures proposes a new philosophy, in which darkness is embraced as an emancipatory space for positive thought and creative expression. By revealing fresh ideologies that can empower sustainable and ethical relationships with our ecologies and our technologies, this book sets out a new vision for the futures of collective life.

Reviews:
This bold vision questions the outdated view of darkness as something to be feared and designed against and, by doing so, proposes a reconnection of humans within the wider world – a true multispecies coexistence that is in tune with our body clocks and nature’s rhythms. ~ , Eurasia Review

Professor Nick Dunn of Lancaster University proposes a different path – one that invites darkness back into our lives. His idea may sound strange in a world obsessed with visibility and brightness. But at its heart lies a radical rethinking of what it means to live well, together, on a shared Earth.

This is not a plea for darkness out of nostalgia. It is a vision grounded in science, architecture, health, ecology, and culture. It suggests that turning down the lights might brighten our future in unexpected ways.

Dark Futures blends personal story with architectural insight. It explores how embracing darkness shaped Professor Dunn’s own thinking. And it shows how we might use design to imagine new, hopeful possibilities. ~ Sanjana Gajbhiye, Earth.com

Praise for Dark Matters: A brilliant book. Dark Matters is an adventure into the heart of the city at night - the time when the true nature of the beast reveals itself. ~ John Robb, Louder Than War
Dead Man Working
by Peter Fleming

Carl Cederstrom

An analysis of the dead man working and the way in which capital is now colonizing life itself.

Capitalism has become strange. Ironically, while the ‘age of work’ seems to have come to an end, working has assumed a total presence – a ‘worker’s society’ in the worst sense of the term – where everyone finds themselves obsessed with it. So what does the worker tell us today? "I feel drained, empty… dead." This book tells the story of the dead man working. It follows this figure through the daily tedium of the office, to the humiliating mandatory team building exercise, to awkward encounters with the funky boss who pretends to hate capitalism and tells you to be authentic. In this society, the experience of work is not of dying...but neither of living. It is one of a living death. And yet, the dead man working is nevertheless compelled to wear the exterior signs of life, to throw a pretty smile, feign enthusiasm and make a half-baked joke. When the corporation has colonized life itself, even our dreams, the question of escape becomes ever more pressing, ever more desperate.

Reviews:
A bracing thesis to consider on your tightly regulated lunchbreak.....

Gathering examples from Žižek to Woody Allen or film adaptations of Stephen King, the book is mordantly entertaining.

~ Stephen Poole, The Guardian

Cederström and Fleming, like a present day Virgil, bravely venture into an underworld full of shades whose entire lives have been put to work, who throw themselves heart and soul into the job, and who are constantly implored by management gurus to “be themselves,” “feel free,” and “have fun” in the office. This fascinating and dark little book is an excellent and disturbing introduction to what increasingly large realms of the world of work have become.

~ Michael Hardt, Co-author of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

What has work done to us? Cederström and Fleming’s brilliant dark and witty book tells us the truth. Working in our sleep? Dressing up as infants? Deprivation tank addiction? Fitness centrers? Suicide? Email? If you didn’t already know what work has made you become then this book might have a devastating effect on your life. Read it!

~ Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, New School for Social Research
Debunking the Myth of America's Poodle
by Nu'man Abd al-Wahid

True understanding of contemporary British militaristic foreign policy begins with a rejection of perceived subservience to the United States.

Most writing today by activists and opponents of foreign policy is rooted in the 1960s. Underpinning many of these books is the unquestioned assumption that contemporary British imperialism is an adjunct to American foreign policy. Wherever the United States invades and bombs, Great Britain lays out the carpet and obediently follows. This subservience is jubilantly referred to as a “special relationship” by its supporters; by its detractors it is disparagingly depicted as “America’s poodle”. This book argues that a true understanding of contemporary British militaristic foreign policy begins with a rejection and a historical unpacking of this perceived subservience to the United States.

Reviews:
This illuminating, scalding and scorching takedown of British Imperialism is simultaneously a cautionary reminder that post-Brexit London should be pressured relentlessly in order to avoid a replication of its multiple sins and transgressions of the recent past. ~ Gerald Horne, author, 'White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anticommunism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa, from Rhodes to Mandela.', Private correspondence.

Nu'man Abd al-Wahid’s Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle: Great Britain Wants War serves as a useful reminder that Britain's foreign policy is driven by a distinct imperialist dynamic that continues to the present day, especially in the Middle East. ~ Arun Kundnani, author of 'The Muslims are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror'

An important book that everyone concerned with the history of and the fight against British Imperialism needs to read. Both scholarly and politically committed. A fine piece of work. Highly recommended. ~ John Newsinger, author of The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire
Diet of Austerity, A
by Elaine Graham-Leigh

How and why the working class are being blamed for climate change, and what we can do about it.

Received wisdom is increasingly that we all have to eat less to save the planet, but received wisdom is wrong. A Diet of Austerity argues that, just as the poor are blamed for the economic crisis, Malthusian conceptions about food and ecology are being used to hold the working class responsible for climate change and global hunger. Challenging existing dogmas about overconsumption and personal responsibility, it shows that what we need to stop climate change is system change.

Reviews:
Elaine has a produced a must-read book for all of us concerned with combatting climate change. We can't diet our way to a better world but we can and must change the system to sustain the future. This book is well written, fascinating, controversial and essential. ~ Derek Wall, Former Green Party of England and Wales Principal Speaker and author of The Rise of the Green Left

Who is to blame for climate change? Graham-Leigh says it's not fat people, cows or the working class. A challenging and interesting book, packed with new ideas to make you think again about what you thought you knew. ~ Jonathan Neale, Author of Stop Global Warming, Change the World

Food production and consumption is increasingly recognized as a major driver of global climate change, but where does the balance of blame lie? Elaine Graham-Leigh’s book makes an important and timely contribution to the debates swirling around food production systems, 'overconsumption' and climate change. The class-based ideological assault on working people as the culprits of our multi-faceted ecological crisis, are elucidated with great clarity by the author. For people who believe combining social justice with ecological sustainability is an essential part of the answer, Graham-Leigh’s book provides essential ammunition as to why it is our system of food production for commodity exchange, and the waste inherent in it, rather than individual behavior and food choices, that lies at the heart of the crisis. ~ Chris Williams, Author of Ecology and Socialism

An excellent, polemical book; enjoyable, interesting and very, very well-written. A really new contribution to theory and an incisive argument. ~ Chris Nineham, Author of The People v Tony Blair
Dispirited
by David Webster

What a post-spiritual world view could look like

This book by David Webster is a counter-blast against the culturally accepted norm that spirituality is a vital and important factor in human life. Rejecting the idea of human wellbeing as predicated on the spiritual, the book seeks to identify the toxic impact of spiritual discourses on our lives. Spirituality makes us confused, apolitical and miserable, whether that spirituality is from conventional religious roots, from a new-age buffet of beliefs, or from some re-imagined ancient system of belief. Looking beyond this dismissal, the book looks towards atheistic existentialism, Theravada Buddhism and political engagement as a means to imagine what a post-spiritual world view could look like.

Reviews:
Should be placed gently but firmly in the hands of any budding convert who thinks that the vacuous claims of a new spirituality are any better than the lies, evasions and hypocrisies of orthodox religion

~ Professor Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy, Cardiff University

Refusing all inwardness and consolation, David Webster faces down spirituality’s guile in favour of a bleak atheism’s hints of a worthwhile life. Bracing, timely stuff! ~ Peter Manley Scott, University of Manchester, UK

Annoyed by the phrase 'I am not religious, but I’m very spiritual', Dr. David Webster successfully maps out the problems and contradictions it leads to. This is as close to a 'must read' as it gets, for the religious as well as the spiritual reader, as well as for atheists. ~ Dr. Mikael Askander, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Sweden
Dog Days
by Linda Coggin

Peculiar, unique, unusual, elements of Cummings, Stevie Smith and Larkin cohere then fall away, in a collection of darkly clear, or clearly dark poems.

These poems act like short, sharp surprises. They can be oblique and then unravel with raw clarity, a strong and emotional openness pervading their deceptively simple structures. Coggin's strange and singular voice is recognisably English and even colloquial, but with a sophistication and love of imagery, even mystery. This is her first collection, and showcases not only her range but her unique relationship with memory, her presence in each poem more breathlike than embodied, and no less substantial for that.

Reviews:
Coggin’s poetry is both incisive and quirkily humourous. Well worth investigating.

~ Emmet O'Cuana, http://abookadaytillicanstay.wordpress.com

Linda Coggin's poems are liminal, crossing and recrossing thresholds between real, surreal, and mythic, life and death, the transgressive and the responsible. There is deep humanity in these poems, often allied to the acceptance of sadness and of imperfections - domestic chaos, the facts of dying and ageing. A sharp-eyed and humorous poem about a father's day race ends with unexpected and moving compassion for the unfit stragglers. This collection surprises at every turn, catching the reader rewardingly off guard. ~ Dr John Freeman, Cardiff University
Don't Lose Track Vol. 1: 40 Selected Articles, Essays and Q&As
by Jordannah Elizabeth

Don't lose track, she moves fast.

Don't Lose Track is a collection from the widely published arts and culture journalist, Jordannah Elizabeth. The book includes reviews, essays and interviews hand selected by Jordannah from a catalog of over 200 articles.

Reviews:
http://www.infectiousmagazine.com/industry-interview-jordannah-elizabeth-the-deli-sf-weekly-mtv-networks/ ~ Angela Mastrogiacomo , Infectious Magazine

This review inspired me to check out the album. I found it strange but beautiful, just as the author depicted. Excellent article! - Susan Harvey

http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2014/aug/07/shabazz-palaces-new-album-challenges-postmodern-hi/ ~ Susan Harvey , http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2014/aug/07/shabazz-palaces-new-album-challenges-postmodern-hi/

"I was at this show and the review was right on, gone it would seem are the days of Anton attacking the audience. They have become maybe the best shoe gaze band ever." ~ Nick Lamagna, http://www.eastbayexpress.com/CultureSpyBlog/archives/2014/05/09/live-review-the-brian-jonestown-massacre-at-the-fox-theater-5-8

"There’s nothing we love more at Infectious than hard working, passionate, ambitious people, and the Bay Area’s Jordannah Elizabeth is just that..."

~ Angela Mastrogiacomo, Infectious Magazine
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
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
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
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