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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger - The Year 1000

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There are an enormous number of differences between the years M and MM in the British Isles. Many of these are of course technological. Pl...
Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Mike Gonzalez & Houman Barekat - Arms and the People: Popular Movements and the Military from the Paris Commune to the Arab Spring

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The classic Marxist account of the State is that it is the collective institutions within society that help ensure the continued position ...
Sunday, January 20, 2013

Christian Wolmar - Fire & Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain

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Christian Wolmar is an unashamed fan of railways. This is not because he has some sort of obsessional trainspotting tendencies, but rather...
Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Richard Fortey - The Earth: An Intimate History

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Geology as a subject is one that most people know very little about. Few of us understand the processes that formed the world around us. H...
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Friday, January 11, 2013

Peter Alexander, Luke Sinwell & others - Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer

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When footage of the massacre of some 34 platinum mineworkers at Marikana in South Africa reached television screens around the world it pr...
Thursday, January 03, 2013

N.A.M. Rodger - The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1642 - 1815

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The subtitle of this book is "A Naval History of Britain". The of is important because this and its companion volumes deal with ...
Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Carolyn Ives Gilman - Isles of the Forsaken

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Carolyn Ives Gilman's book Isles of the Forsaken is a clever and original work of fantasy. At its core are the intertwined stories of...
Thursday, December 20, 2012

Baku: Congress of the Peoples of the East

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 My recent reading of The Oil Road reminded me of the fascinating radical history of the city of Baku. Formally part of Russia and now in...
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Monday, December 17, 2012

Iain M. Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata

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One of the great things about Iain M. Banks' Culture novels is the way that they explore what might happen in a society that has essen...
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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Francis Pryor - The Birth of Modern Britain

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Probably to the annoyance of some of my fellow socialists I've championed the work of Francis Pryor rather alot. His works of popular ...
Sunday, December 09, 2012

Brian S. Roper - The History of Democracy: A Marxist Interpretation

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Just what "democracy" is has varied enormously throughout history. In the developed world we are told that "our" dem...
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Thursday, December 06, 2012

John Gittings - The Changing Face of China

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Barely a day goes by without some newspaper including an article on China. China, it is said, is likely to be the next superpower, or unde...
Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Nathaniel Philbrick - In the Heart of the Sea

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The story of what happened to the unfortunate crew of the whaling ship Essex has been told many times. Not least by the poor unfortunates ...
Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Sven Lindqvist - 'Exterminate All The Brutes'

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The title of Sven Lindqvist's short book comes from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is the supposed solution to the task of ...
Monday, December 03, 2012

James Marriott & Mika Minio-Paluello - The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London

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Capitalism is a fossil fuel system. Historically capitalism needed the enormous energies concentrated in coal to kick off the industrial r...
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