Portside

"Even if the sea does not swallow you," writes the poet Esther Kamkar (herself a migrant to North America) about the experience of migration, "your heart will be broken."

On the centennial of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's first-hand look at the uprising of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors is fit reading about a mass movement that overthrew the old aristocracy and then the bourgeois class itself. An exposition on ordinary people making history for themselves, the book is a gripping account of events in Petrograd, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks lead the various workers councils in finally seizing state power.

This new book, says Peter E. Gordon, argues that "ever since the fall of communism, a culture of defeat has characterized the left’s understanding of political history and theoretical critique." Gordon guides us through the intricacies of the case author Enzo Traverso makes in this volume.

Kathryn Bigelow's film about 1967 Detroit riots grapples with a harsh legacy of racism in America.

Olive oil fraud abounds: some producers blend cheap nut, seed, or other vegetable oils with just enough olive oil to lend the look, taste, and aroma of the real thing. Other perpetrators dilute extra-virgin olive oil with lower-grade olive oil, or mislabel lesser olive oil as extra-virgin. Last, though not nearly as appalling, packers intentionally mislabel the country of origin.

“Did South Park accidentally invent the alt-right?” Janan Ganesh asked recently in the Financial Times, articulating a theory that began gaining traction as an entire political movement seemed to crystallize around the show’s “anti-PC chic” and general fuck-your-feelings attitude.

Whatever we do or think we do, whatever we believe or think we believe, whatever great changes occur in the world, writes the New Zealand poet Michelle Elvy, some things just go on as they have gone on.

From outlawing bowling in colonial America to regulating violent video games and synthetic drugs today, Mark Stein’s Vice Capades examines the nation’s relationship with the actions, attitudes, and antics that have defined morality. This humorous and quirky history reveals that our views of vice are formed less by morals than by power.

This new book highlights the technology at the heart of what reviewer Jill Leovy calls "surveillance-driven policing," and the heightened dangers this new set of law enforcement tools pose to democracy.

In this op-ed, Lincoln Blades argues that HBO's new show Confederate is an unnecessary series that turns a blind eye to the world we currently live in.