Portside

Here is an extraordinary anthology by contemporary working class poets.

For the author of the work under review--much heralded by the reviewer--Czech novelist Franz Kafka was no chronic pessimist or dour, fatalistic misbeliever in human emancipation, but a consistent partisan artist siding with the humiliated.

Writer, poet, college teacher, political activist, peace agitator and feminist,Grace Paley was a well-known and highly respected commodity to those of us active in left protest during the 1960 and much later. This new collection of her writings should remind us of what we justifiably admired most, not just her talent as a writer but her commitment to the struggle and the long haul.

Two veteran Washington reporters mine a host of anonymous sources to give us a devastating portrait of a Hillary Clinton presidential effort that was a campaign without either a mission or a vision. Matt Taibbi takes a look.

A one-time defender of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, the well-regarded journalist has had an extended and systematic rethink that is part memoir and part scourging critique, concluding that the reigning Israeli consensus, abetted by the U.S. and shared by liberal Zionists, is less a victim and more a provocateur, with a long list of moral and ethical lapses and a compelling case for world censure and well-deserving of boycott, disinvestment and sanctions.

Many commentators who have affirmed that something called "white rage" gave us Trump appear to treat the phenomenon as if it was a newly sprouted thing. Here is a book that aims to add nuance and historical context to a widely noted, but still too-little examined, aspect of our contemporary political reality.

Attempting to make a silk purse out of a proverbial sow's ear, the author and the volume's contributors envision, either realistically or ironically, how building a wall on the U.S.- Mexican border could be artistically or environmentally pleasing, leaving aside ethical questions of migrants' rights or even how such a wall would be anything but a glaring insult to those living south of it.

Olio, by Tyehimba Jess, has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. It is an outstanding book that visits, and reimagines, a deeply influential yet far too little examined African American cultural moment. This is a powerful, innovative work of verse created by one of this country's best contemporary poets. Here is a review.

Critiquing a somewhat fawning book by a well-trod biographer of the Atlantic aristocracy, the reviewer nevertheless finds enough merit in the work to present a picture of the royals and their long-suffering and sometimes insufferable prince as a window on Britain's royal family and a glimmer as to why masses of British subjects still revere the preposterous institution.

Jack London, who died 100 years ago last November, was one of the most prominent socialist writers of the early 20th century. Here is a look at some of his political writings.