Portside

When Communist writer Albert Maltz was blacklisted in the McCarthyist era, no commercial publisher in the U. S. would touch his novel A Tale of One January. A new edition slated for US distribution means his 70-year blacklist will finally end.

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America. Their books — along with Sinatra’s song and film; Richard Wright’s memoir, coincided with a surge of activism.

Judith Berlowitz’s historical novel offers readers a peek into the Spanish Civil War and the idealism that brought people from across the globe together to fight for democratic governance and human rights.

Here is a history of fascism in Europe that may be helpful as we consider this troubled, and troubling, moment.

In the early years of Nazi rule, the vagueness of much Nazi ideology enabled many Germans to see in Nazism what they wanted to see.