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turkey
Books / 25 June 2026
25 June 2026

BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul

stones
Books / 25 June 2026
25 June 2026

STEVEN ANDREW is fascinated by an account of the many baseless folk tales that evolved to explain the existence of pre-historic stone circles

nazi art
Books / 25 June 2026
25 June 2026

GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis

Cleaver
Book Review / 25 June 2026
25 June 2026

DAVID HARVIE recommends a selection of Harry Cleaver’s writing that documents working-class activism and offers a method, and a way of understanding and investigating the world

time's echo
Book Review / 23 June 2026
23 June 2026

DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art

boix
Literature / 22 June 2026
22 June 2026

From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together

you must live
Book Review / 19 June 2026
19 June 2026

JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems

revolutions
Book Review / 17 June 2026
17 June 2026

HENRY BELL follows the lineage of revolutions, from the English to the Chinese, and asks where revolutionary politics exists today

magdalen
Books / 11 June 2026
11 June 2026

SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power

manson
Books / 11 June 2026
11 June 2026

RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump

puerto rico
Books / 11 June 2026
11 June 2026

ANDREW MURRAY welcomes a fascinating account of the struggle in Puerto Rico for democracy and independence

chasing
Books / 28 May 2026
28 May 2026

ALEX HALL welcomes the memoir of a prominent British academic of Ugandan/Zimbabwean heritage

undergrounding
Books / 28 May 2026
28 May 2026

JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip

sell genocide
Books / 22 May 2026
22 May 2026

GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a methodical unmasking of the US media’s complicity in the Israeli genocide, that should be a template for what’s needed to bring Britain’s corporate media to book

aliens
Books / 22 May 2026
22 May 2026

ALEX HALL is amused at the way the UFOs appear exactly where commercial interests, conspiracies, militarism and right-wing media overlap

cicero
Books / 22 May 2026
22 May 2026

MARTIN HALL examines the way the Roman orator took on different schools of philosophy

Protesters at St Paul's Cathedral, London, after a rally to challenge the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to support rewilding across the Church of England's vast estate, October 6, 2024
Books / 8 May 2026
8 May 2026

BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place

mother capital
Books / 30 April 2026
30 April 2026

ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity

crown silence
Books / 30 April 2026
30 April 2026

ELLIS RAE recommends a stunning history of the active role played by the British monarchy in establishing and profiting from slavery

THE ARCH OPPORTUNIST: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in Golders Green on Thursday April 30, 2026
Features / 1 May 2026
1 May 2026

Gavin O’Toole talks to anti-racism researcher HARRY SHUKMAN about the rise of the far right

cover
Books / 13 April 2026
13 April 2026

CHRISTOPHE DOMEC relishes a dizzyingly precise fiction that relays the problem of reporting the truth

atwood
Book Review / 13 March 2026
13 March 2026

JONATHAN TAYLOR ponders the difference between autobiography and memoir - between life and story - in Margaret Atwood’s account of herself

brown
Books / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

PAUL DONOVAN enjoys a somewhat rose-tinted survey of Brown’s achievements and legacy, as well as his moments of political cowardice

radicals
Books / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

JOHN GREEN is disappointed by a history of the British working class that retreads familiar paths and offers no new insights

uganda
Books / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends an important, if dispiriting book about the neo-colonial culture of Uganda under Yoweri Museveni

WB childhood
Books / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

KEN COCKBURN is intrigued by the publication of the Marxist theorist’s reminiscence of a bourgeois childhood

scifi
Science fiction / 10 March 2026
10 March 2026

Tyrannosaurs in Thailand, colonialism as videogame, and a feminist gem from 1936

benjamin
Books / 6 March 2026
6 March 2026

GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son

baroud
Books / 4 March 2026
4 March 2026

RON JACOBS recommends an outstanding family memoir of life in Gaza

Mann
Books / 3 March 2026
3 March 2026

FIONA O’CONNOR relishes a cinematic exploration of the writing, and the historical context of Thomas Mann’s WWI masterpiece, The Magic Mountain

CVCs
Books / 26 February 2026
26 February 2026

STEVE ANDREW recommends a Marxist analysis of the long chains of production that global corporations exploit

detecting
Books / 20 February 2026
20 February 2026

JONATHAN TAYLOR is intrigued how good storytelling can make a hobby as obsessional as metal detecting seem fascinating

franco
Books / 20 February 2026
20 February 2026

RON JACOBS sees similarities between the personality of the the Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco, and Donald Trump

stonehenge
Books / 17 February 2026
17 February 2026

BRENT CUTLER unpicks the complex social relations imagined in a novel about the builders of Stonehenge

mcinally
Books / 6 February 2026
6 February 2026

HELEN MERCER recommends a timely history of the Civil Service worker organisation that proposes a principled and strategic approach for the future

heaney
Books / 6 February 2026
6 February 2026

ALAN McGUIRE welcomes the complete poems of Seamus Heaney for the unmistakeable memory of colonialism that they carry

Parr
Books / 5 February 2026
5 February 2026

JOHN GREEN explores the controversial and popular images of the late Martin Parr, made in the heyday of Thatcherism

mc crime feb
Crime fiction / 3 February 2026
3 February 2026

Japanese innovation, Costa Rican skullduggery, Glasgow Central suicide, and good deeds punished in London

PS
Books / 29 January 2026
29 January 2026

JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime

wilde
Books / 29 January 2026
29 January 2026

MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson

water
Books / 20 January 2026
20 January 2026

RICHARD MURGATROYD appreciates a study that urges us to think about water differently, as a living entity with its own logic and intelligence

green philo
Books / 16 January 2026
16 January 2026

BRENT CUTLER welcomes a valuable contribution to discussions around the need to de-carbonise energy production

uzbek
Books / 18 January 2026
18 January 2026

STEVE ANDREW is intrigued by a timely and well-researched book that demonstrates the conflicted history of the central Asian country

Jack London
Opinion / 5 January 2026
5 January 2026

JENNY FARRELL reminds us that the US novelist, famed for pulp fiction and nature stories, was, by virtue of life experience, a committed revolutionary socialist

Steven's Croft Biomass Plant plant near Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland Pic: Chris Newman/CC
Books / 4 January 2026
4 January 2026

BRENT CUTLER recommends a sober examination of the real risks and true merits of nuclear energy, and an exposure of the capitalist system as an obstacle to human betterment

transcendence
Book Review / 11 December 2025
11 December 2025

JONATHAN TAYLOR is fascinated by the philosophical problems that permeate the art of life-writing

craftland
Book Review / 11 December 2025
11 December 2025

ALAN MCGUIRE relishes a celebration of handmade craftsmanship in the UK, and hears a quiet warning

o. caseey
Books / 9 December 2025
9 December 2025

JENNY FARRELL relishes an intimate memoir about growing up in the household of the great Irish communist and playwright Sean O’Casey

west
Books / 20 November 2025
20 November 2025

BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily

windrush
Books / 19 November 2025
19 November 2025

PETER MASON is beguiled by a fascinating account of the importance of cricket to immigrants from the Caribbean to the UK

complicit
Books / 19 November 2025
19 November 2025

GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes, and recommends a a candid, evidence-based record of Britain’s role in the slaughter visited by Israel upon the Palestinians

peek
Books / 18 November 2025
18 November 2025

PETER MASON is gripped by a novel that confronts corporate callousness with those prepared to act to bring about change

fair
Books / 18 November 2025
18 November 2025

KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book

waves
Book Review / 13 November 2025
13 November 2025

MARTIN HALL welcomes a study of Britain’s relationship with the EU that sheds light on the way euroscepticism moved from the margins to the centre

taliban
Books / 13 November 2025
13 November 2025

GAVIN O’TOOLE savours a veteran correspondent’s account of the monumental US failure in Afghanistan

apartheid to democracy
Books / 13 November 2025
13 November 2025

ALEX HALL recommends a considered and clear approach to dismantling apartheid and occupation, were Israel to come to its senses

manipulation
Books / 23 October 2025
23 October 2025

ALEX HALL is disappointed by a superficial investigation of how consumer choice can be influenced, that ignores the fact that most never have such a choice

antrobus
Books / 23 October 2025
23 October 2025

PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK

ravensbruck
Books / 23 October 2025
23 October 2025

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a compelling account of how women survived a Nazi concentration camp and lend their experience to today’s fight against the far right

Boix
Books / 21 October 2025
21 October 2025

Essays on contemporary Latin American feminism, a poetry debut by a queer Texan of Mexican heritage, and a lush volume of tango and milonga drawings

Partisans
Books / 17 October 2025
17 October 2025

RON JACOBS recommends an accessible graphic history of the Partisans and their many instances of heroic and successful resistance to fascism

fraud
Books / 15 October 2025
15 October 2025

ALEX HALL recommends an exhaustive investigation of the means by which the Starmer faction assassinated the left

byrne
Books / 7 October 2025
7 October 2025

This thriller is a politically charged and morally complex dive into climate activism and police repression, judges JENNY FARRELL

crime
Crime fiction / 7 October 2025
7 October 2025

Cat show killer, avenging the pawns, women hunt the Ripper, and running dry in the outback

 

ghosts
Books / 2 October 2025
2 October 2025

JOHN GREEN is enchanted by the story of women’s farm work, both now and the the 1940s, that brims with political and social insight

gaza
Books / 2 October 2025
2 October 2025

RON JACOBS is moved to tears by an eloquent journal of heartfelt intensity and human portraiture

UCU
Books / 2 October 2025
2 October 2025

ROBERT OVETZ recommends a case study, from the University of Leicester, in their struggle against precarization, AI, privatisation, outsourcing, and work intensification in higher education

ai con
Books / 2 October 2025
2 October 2025

IAN SINCLAIR welcomes a lucid critique of a technology that reproduces and enables oppression, power, and environmental devastation

BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE: Yanaocha mine in Cajamarca, Peru is the largest gold mine in South America operated by Newmont Corporation. It is considered the most profitable in the world [Pic: Elbuenminero/CC]
Books / 9 September 2025
9 September 2025

JOE GILL appreciates a lucid demonstration of how capital today is an outgrowth of the colonial economy

nature books
Books / 9 September 2025
9 September 2025

PAUL DONOVAN recommends three new books that explore the human relationship with nature

culpable
Book Review / 7 September 2025
7 September 2025

MARJORIE MAYO is moved by the clarity with which the FBU call out the true causes of this preventable tragedy

sturgeon
Books / 29 August 2025
29 August 2025

KENNY MACASKILL delivers his assessment of Nicloa Sturgeon’s account of her political career

starmer symptom
Books / 28 August 2025
28 August 2025

ANDREW MURRAY recommends a volume of essays that nail the visionless, racist and neoliberal character of policy under Starmer’s Labour Party

amazon
Books / 28 August 2025
28 August 2025

GAVIN O’TOOLE examines the fatal relationship between environmental crimes and politics in Brazil and the inspiration provided by Indigenous people

anglican crimes
Book Review / 15 August 2025
15 August 2025

GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism

crime
Crime Fiction / 12 August 2025
12 August 2025

Timeloop murder, trad family MomBomb, Sicilian crime pages and Craven praise

jacobs
Books / 8 August 2025
8 August 2025

RON JACOBS rides shotgun with a member of Black Bloc on the wave of anti-capitalist protests of the 1990s and early 2000s

bacon
Books / 8 August 2025
8 August 2025

MATTHEW SHARPE recommends the essays of a Renaissance politician that instruct and unnerve after 400 years

Illustration by Malc McGookin
Books / 5 August 2025
5 August 2025

PAUL BUHLE agrees that a grassroots movements for change in needed in the US, independent of electoral politics

gaia
Books / 1 August 2025
1 August 2025

JOHN HAWKINS wrestles with the anti-humanist fantasies of techno-feudalist thinking

US
Books / 1 August 2025
1 August 2025

With reservations, RON JACOBS recommends a deep dive into the nature, history, and mindset of US intelligence

gaza
Books / 31 July 2025
31 July 2025

ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends that these beautifully written diaries from Gaza be essential reading for thick-skinned MPs

muntzer
Books / 25 July 2025
25 July 2025

JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR

ginseng
Books / 25 July 2025
25 July 2025

Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest

satie
Books / 18 July 2025
18 July 2025

ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes an exuberant blend of emotion and analysis that captures the politics and contrarian nature of the French composer

first
Book Review / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

SALEEM BADAT and VASU REDDY introduce a new book about an outstanding interpreter of the world, and an activist scholar committed to changing society

next crisis
Book Review / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by a deep dive into contemporary social crises, that examines how they are manipulated by elites

church
Books / 4 July 2025
4 July 2025

HENRY BELL notes the curious confluence of belief, rebuilding and cheap materials that gave rise to an extraordinary number of modernist churches in post-war Scotland

whippy
Books / 4 July 2025
4 July 2025

MARTIN HALL passes time in the sanguine company of a traditional conservative, recalling their disastrous governments

genocide
Books / 4 July 2025
4 July 2025

JOHN HAWKINS welcomes the passion, grief, precision and elegance of an eloquent witness of genocide

swindon
Books / 13 June 2025
13 June 2025

ALEX HALL is thrilled by a grassroots history of of Swindon’s stunning industrial and creative past

abundance
Books / 12 June 2025
12 June 2025

JOHN GREEN isn’t helped by the utopian fantasy of a New York Times bestseller that ignores class struggle and blames the so-called ’progressives’

subversive voice
Books / 12 June 2025
12 June 2025

IAN SINCLAIR wades through a useful but academic study of the protest song

londres
Books / 12 June 2025
12 June 2025

GORDON PARSONS recommends a gripping account of flawed justice in the case of Pinochet and the Nazi fugitive Walther Rauff

crime
Book Reviews / 10 June 2025
10 June 2025

A corrupted chemist, a Hampstead homosexual and finely observed class-conflict at The Bohemia

BAGRATION
Books / 6 June 2025
6 June 2025

TOMASZ PIERSCIONEK relishes a detailed history of the battles, manoeuvres and tactics that defeated fascism

palestine monuments
Books / 29 May 2025
29 May 2025

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a disturbing book that seeks to recover traces of the past that have been erased by Israeli colonialism

scorched
Books / 29 May 2025
29 May 2025

RON JACOBS salutes a magnificent narrative that demonstrates how the war replaced European colonialism with US imperialism and Soviet power

Pic: Kharsohtun/CC
Books / 25 May 2025
25 May 2025

ANDY HEDGECOCK admires a critique of the penetration of our lives by digital media, but is disappointed that the underlying cause is avoided

IT'S JUST NOT CRICKET: Protesters demonstrate outside Lord's Cricket Ground in London, on February 25 2025, against England playing Afghanistan in a Champions Trophy match, as female participation in sport has effectively been outlawed in Afghanistan since the Tailban returned to power in 2021
Books / 25 May 2025
25 May 2025

PETER MASON is surprised by the bleak outlook foreseen for cricket’s future by the cricketers’ bible

beautiful
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world

hot
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

ELIZABETH SHORT recommends a bracing study of energy intensive AI and the race of such technology towards war profits

barbarism
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery

future
Book Review / 9 May 2025
9 May 2025

HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come

tucker
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington

miners
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves

shosty
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

JONATHAN TAYLOR is intrigued by an account of the struggle of Soviet-era musicians to adapt to the strictures of social realism

nazi nightmares
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin

rainbow
Books / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity

The global average in 2021 was 50,000 kilocalories per head,
Culture / 13 April 2025
13 April 2025
MARTIN GRAHAM recommends a book that makes a critique of neoclassical economics and attempts to envision a sustainable global future
Kathe Kollwitz, Charge, sheet 5 of the cycle Peasants War, 1
Culture / 13 April 2025
13 April 2025
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
The Palisades Fire that started in the City of Los Angeles,
Books / 1 April 2025
1 April 2025
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
A LAN party at the 2004 DreamHack with hundreds of players
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
LABORATORY OF BULLYING: A scene from Ken Loach's Kes
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
JOHN GREEN recommends an entertaining, if harsh and instructive, study of bullying, discipline and power dynamics in schools and at work
HONORABLE TRADITION OF PROTEST: Junior doctors on a picket l
Books / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
American flags representing the 200,000 dead from COVID-19 p
Book Review / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective
Literature / 25 March 2025
25 March 2025
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang
A homeless man in New York
Book Review / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
JOHN HAWKINS is moved by an oral history that examines five black families pushed into homelessness in the US
UNITED WE’LL NEVER BE DEFEATED: A lantern parade in Liverp
Books / 14 March 2025
14 March 2025
MARJORIE MAYO recommends a punchy demonstration of the the way class politics are being fragmented by the right