Portside

The courtesan in literature is an object of desire, but prostitutes of any gender are despised in law and in the popular culture. The book and film under review excoriate the reactionary hypocrisy and chart sex workers fighting back.

This book, the first 21st Century study of the frontier myth, writes reviewer Nathans-Kelly, comes at a time when "the United States has turned inward and backward with the same vehemence it once directed toward expansion and progress."

Canada and the United States are similar enough culturally, but in class relations for some 70 years the two stand markedly apart. The book under review helps to explain the multifaceted reasons why.

In this new book, Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo is concerned with the relationship between democracy and economic growth. Reviewer Donohoe considers whether the author sees any intrinsic value in democracy.

The highly regarded scholar's latest work tackles the deep roots of white nationalism as it emerged from conflicts surrounding Reconstruction and the failure of post-Civil War governments to stamp down racism and secure genuine emancipation.

The author of this book, Wolfgang Kaleck, is founder and General Secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. He is also Edward Snowden's lawyer.

Two books look to the histories of the Communist International and the Tricontinental movement to evaluate how organizing around color and region can effect global struggles against oppression and grow in tandem with multiracial workers’ movements.

This study, published as Appeasing Hitler in the UK, focuses on a vain, narrow-minded prime minister, and on how few Britons understood the Third Reich. The book will be published in the USA in June under the title Appeasement.

A look at the state of investigative reporting and long form journalism, a former New York Times editor details threats to an informed public coming from the decline of newspapers and the rise of social media gimmicks that beggar fact-based writing.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), by Hannah Arendt, has much to teach us in our troubled times. In this essay, Lyndsey Stonebridge offers a fine overview of Arendt's life and times, and puts her classic study in its proper context.