Portside

Reader Comments - Tony Benn; Labor organizing; BDS and American Jews; Seniors; Mayor de Blasio; Education - Charters, Testing, Children's Literature, Adjuncts; Real Irish American history; Keystone XL; Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cosmos; Announcements: GLobal Protests Against Racism and Fascism - this Saturday; Cecily McMillan Trial Update; New books/resources - New Labor in New York; Living Wage Calculator; Getting Back to Full Employment; Truth About Three Mile Island

Of 3,200 children's books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin.

Reader Comments - Nelson Mandela; Republic Windows - CEOs Going to Jail; Minimum Wage; Healthcare - Single-Payer; Syria; India homophobia; Austerity; Living Wage - Low wage workers; Books to read (or to give; or both); Announcements - Suggestion for Year-end Giving - Davis-Putter Scholarship; Shostakovich For The Children Of Syria - Carnegie Hall, New York - January 13

Reader Comments - Philippine Recovery and Climate Change; Human Origins; "Strange Fruit;" North Carolina; Delbert Tibbs; Adjunct Unions; Corporate Profits-great infographic; South Africa - COSATU-ANC-SACP Alliance; Education; Healthcare; ALEC; Occupy; Steve Kindred; Race and Cuba; Announcements - The Invention of the White Race; Celebrating the Life of Father Paul Mayer; Pete Seeger's new book

Doris Lessing, died this week at 94, was one of the major fiction writers of the second half of the 20th century and one of the most vividly representative literary figures of our times. She was a visionary, prophet, feminist icon and Nobel prizewinner given to constant literary reinvention. She was a young, romantic, passionate, fiercely ambitious single mother pounding away at a portable typewriter trying to keep it together, writes Clancy Sigal, of his former lover.

An intimate, occasionally sad and frequently humorous insight into the life of one of the world's best known authors.