The artwork in this dossier draws from the Red Books Day 2025 Calendar. Each of the twelve contributions, produced in collaboration with the International Union of Left Publishers, is inspired by a red book from a different region of the world.
In 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the prime minister of newly independent Congo. His close ally Andrée Blouin describes how Belgium and the US conspired to oust Lumumba and impose Mobutu’s kleptocratic dictatorship on the Congolese people.
The two-state solution is now impossible, made so by the foolish decisions of a series of Israeli governments to allow massive Jewish settlement in the West Bank and enabling by the United States of America.
Once upon a time, Americans riding the rails could choose menus of charbroiled steak, golden French toast, and prunes.
Slave owners tried to keep enslaved people under control with better meals and more downtime during the holiday season. Many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of respite to plan escapes and start revolts,
In the early nineteenth century, the idea of species extinction was an alien concept. That changed after an expedition to Iceland in search of the last of the great auks.
In February 1939, the German-American Bund held an infamous, Hitler-supporting rally in Madison Square Garden. On Sunday, Trump will be holding a rally at Madison Square Garden. The parallel is unmistakable.
The discussion of climate change, as of every aspect of the planetary crisis, tends to be dominated by the question of capitalism and other economic issues; geopolitics, empire, and questions of power figure in it far less.
“The Secret Lives of Numbers,” by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell, highlights overlooked contributions to the field by ancient thinkers, non-Westerners and women.
William’s rise to power brought new means of exploitation and expropriation, by which the assets and rights of the common people were eroded and a massive concentration of wealth at the top end of the scale enabled.
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