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TUG OF WAR: Foreign Fire

William Shakespeare adapted and directed by Barbara Gaines Broadway World Chicago / Chicago Shakespeare Theater
In launching a cycle of plays grounded in English history, Shakespeare was able to show his audiences the blood-soaked story of their own becoming, the history of their creation as a nation. (From an American vantage, it would be as though a present-day playwright were to track our history from Jamestown to World War II, focusing most intently on the span stretching from the Revolutionary through the Civil Wars.

Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness

R. Jamil Jonna and John Bellamy Foster Monthly Review
The renewed focus, particularly on the left, on precariousness constitutes a recognition of the harsh reality of capitalism, and particularly of today’s globalized monopoly-finance capital. More than a century of Marxian political-economic critique allows us to appreciate the extent to which the conditions that Marx described, focusing on a small corner of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, are now global, and all the more perilous.

The Silvertown Strike - A Partisan History

John Tully Monthly Review
The bourgeoisie does not rule by force alone; it does so by inculcating its ideas and values—its ideology—into the population at large. It follows, then, as the GMB’s John Callow argues in his preface to Silvertown, that “history, like politics…is a fiercely contested ideological space.” Historians who claim to be impartial and “value-free” are not to be trusted—or they are simple.

books

I am French

Jeremy Harding London Review of Books
Were the mass 'We are Charlie' demonstrations in France in support of 'We are France,' in the best republican tradition or a shot against Muslim immigrants signifying that 'You are not?' Polymath Emmanuel Todd argues that the demonstrations, like much of Charlie Hebdo's satire, were not so much attacks on toxic religious ideology as broadly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, indicating that the vaunted French secularism has lost its solidaristic component, 'equality.'

tv

ABC's 'American Crime': Much the Same, and Totally Different

Greg Braxton Los Angeles Times
During a presentation at the Television Critics Assn. press tour, executive producer Michael J. McDonald said he and Ridley wanted to explore tough issues that they did not get to examine last year, such as class and the education system.

tv

The People's Period Piece

Tirdad Derakhshani The Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Soderbergh's period medical drama, The Knick, which kicked off its second season on Oct. 16, has been praised for its vivid characterization, realism, historical accuracy, and visual style.
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