Portside

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.

Carrying on from Raymond Williams' Keywords, the classic study of capital's appropriation of words for its own ends, the book under review looks at contemporary linguistic usage that serves and reinforces dominant class interests.

"For Mills," writes reviewer Lancaster, "the best corrective for the historical shortcomings of political liberalism is a healthy infusion of critical race theory."

Charting worldwide disaffection with liberal democracy, the book is a deep dive into Trumpism, Macronism, Brexit and question marks over the European Union, as well as mass movements weary of voting corrupt politicos in and out of office.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a leading figure of the mid-twentieth century culture of revolt, has just turned 100 years old. Reviewer Crepeau here discusses the poet and writer's newest novel.

An extended ode to the revolutionary German playwright-genius Bertolt Brecht, whose exhaustive new collected poems exalt combating injustice while keeping faith in his fidelity to dissent.

This book offers a new history of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the 7-1 Supreme Court ruling that legalized racist segregation.

In this interview, author Jonathan M. Metzl, a physician and social scientist, talks about traveling through Trump country to find that the politics of "white racial resentment" is poisoning and sickening GOP voters as well as our politics.

Luigi Nono’s writings offer an invaluable insight into the unity of thought of one of the twentieth century’s greatest musical minds. Unlike many other prominent contemporary composers, he was on the side of the world’s working classes.

This timely study, writes reviewer Davis, "recovers the theoretical integrity and conceptual complexity of a movement often reduced to the practical challenges it presented to establishment theologies."