Skip to main content

Plastic People, Pedal Power and the Strength of Protest

Stuart Jeffries The Guardian
This survey of counterculture protest in late 20th century Europe offers readers a look at a set of movements that are fondly remembered, but that also deserve to be far better known.

Abolition After the George Floyd Rebellion

Jason E. Smith Los Angeles Review of Books
This study, which focuses on the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder, offers, says reviewer Smith, "the first truly comprehensive account of that summer."

A Nation of Guns

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Monthly Review
This book, says reviewer Dunbar-Ortiz, "contains a passionate narrative" by Paul Auster, a poet and novelist, alongside "stark and somber black-and-white photographs of sites of mass shootings" by Spencer Ostrander.

The Canonization of Lou Reed

Jeremy Lybarger The New Republic
In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.

The Many Worlds of American Communism

Joel Wendland-Liu Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
This new study of the Communist Party USA, says, reviewer Wendland-Liu, "is at its best in its detailed treatment of political debates and the labor histories of the formative period and the popular front period."

How Cities Can Transform Democracy

Charlotte Cator LSE Review of Books
This study of "of the political meaning of the city under global urbanisation," writes reviewer Cator, is particularly timely "in light of ongoing global housing struggles and a widespread surge in the cost of living."

A Newly Translated Novel Captures the Tragedy of Greek Communism

Tadhg Larabee Jacobin
Written in 1972, during Greece’s military junta, leftist Marios Chakkas’s recently translated novel The Commune is a mournful testament from a world where the stakes of politics were communism or fascism, democracy or dictatorship.