Portside

December 10 was International Human Rights Day, making the book under review a timely, sobering take on the uphill struggle for human rights at home and abroad in the face of rising nativism, racism, xenophobia - paeans to alleged traditional values.

A scholar of the Classics takes a look at how the far right uses, and abuses, ancient texts in its propaganda.

Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy.

The role of the enslaved in the political crisis that led to the Civil War is not as well known as it should be, but this volume adds to our knowledge on this topic.

Think today's lack of congressional comity is bizarre? It's nothing (or not yet something) compared to the physical violence prevalent on the floor of the House and Senate in the period leading up to the Civil War.

A new collection by the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and poetry editor of The New Yorker consists of poems that, says this reviewer, "fit the bill of quantum poetry."

A counterintuitive if rigorous argument that the sex lives of men and women under the Soviets were better than those in the capitalist West, based on the system's ability to deliver the sort of social benefits unavailable even in Scandinavia.

A new introduction to Karl Marx and his legacy.

Ben Fountain's "Beautiful Country Burn Again" revisits (and tries to make historical sense of) the convulsions of the 2016 election as prelude to--and forewarning of--the perfervid run-up in Trump country to the 2018 midterm contests.

"Hedges’ assessment of the sickness of our times is searing in its directness," writes reviewer Weller. "His rage is palpable in his scolding of the system we take for granted, one we preserve at our own peril."