Portside

John Rees, author of The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organization in England 1640-1650, (Verso, 2016; reviewed in Portside Culture, November 30, 2016) weighs in with his recommendations about some of the best fiction in English dealing with radical movements and the revolutionary experience.

Acclaimed Native American novelist Erdrich's fifteenth novel is a "multigenerational tale," writes reviewer Round, that "stretches across two centuries of life on the Northern Plains."

A look at the English Revolution's first decade, where radicals forced parliamentary leaders to complete the revolt against the monarchy, creating a some two decades-long republic through a genuine social revolution. The book's author is credited with bringing an activist's perspective to it and situating the uprising and the corresponding invention of the pamphlet as the basis for English popular sovereignty, despite the Glorious Revolution's return to a monarchy later.

Rock and roll music has always been a site of struggle over issues of race and racism. In this insightful review, Colin Vanderburg surveys what Jack Hamilton has o say regarding how rock music succumbed to the lure of American racism.

McLemee looks at 30 academic studies of Hillary Clinton, finding interest in her focusing either as a user of some form of communication media or as an object of media representation. Like the campaign's news coverage, where personality trumped policy, research tended to focus on how Clinton challenged or was constrained by traditional female roles or implicit assumptions about the proper connect between public and private identity than in her work as a public official.

This book, says reviewer Cass Sunstein, "might well be the best book ever written on the founders and their handiwork." It is the kind of book that helps provide useful context for this complex political moment. Readers interested in this topic might also look at America's Constitution: A Biography, by Akhil Reed Amar (Random House, 2005).

With the far right now soon to command government, ongoing movements are also growing to challenge corporate domination, white supremacy, environmental degradation, union busting and organize workers in low-paid industries. Written before the November election, Sarah Jaffe's book chronicles these and other struggles, letting the activists--many new to politics-speak, and suggesting the fight for social and economic justice is ongoing, no matter which party reigns.

This novel by Paul Beatty won England's Man Booker Prize last month. He is the first American writer to ever win the award. Here is a review of the book.

We know the rancid politics of the Tea Party, but what is behind the thinking of white, rural and hard-scrabble far-right supporters whose economic self-interests are at odds with their hard-right political and social beliefs. Berkeley sociologist Hochschild spent five years doing field research in western Louisiana, describing what people say, how they live, reconciling their contradictions and what lessons can be learned by knowing these people in a deeper way.

A new book of essays by one of this country's most celebrated poets.