First published more than 40 years ago, this book tells the unbelievable story of the CIA’s experiments with mind control. Some of these even pre-date the founding of the CIA itself. Its…Read more…
Review: The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie
In many murder mysteries, the question of ‘who did it’ is less important than ‘how they did it’ – and that is certainly the case with this book. I came to read it…Read more…
Review: Hitler: His Life and Legend, by Walter C. Langer
At the height of the Second World War, Allied intelligence services grew increasingly interested in the personal life of the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. The British Special Operations Executive…Read more…
Review: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
There are not many novels — or at least not many novels I’ve read — that are set largely in libraries and archives, and whose heroes are historians. In this book, practically…Read more…
Review: What is Hypnosis? Studies in Auto and Hetero Conditioning, by Andrew Salter
Yen Lo, the Communist Chinese villain in The Manchurian Candidate was a big fan of Andrew Salter’s work. Andrew Salter, now considered one of the founders of behaviour therapy, published this…Read more…
Review: The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Crime Conspiracy & Cover-Up: A new investigation by Tim Tate and Brad Johnson
What I liked most about this book was that the authors raise questions without answering them. Instead of asserting, as so many books of this type do, that (fill in name here) conspired to kill…Read more…
Review: The Case of Rudolf Hess – A Problem in Diagnosis and Forensic Psychiatry, edited by J.R. Rees
Imagine if at the height of the Second World War psychiatrists had the opportunity to pluck one of the Nazi leaders out of Germany and subject him to years of close observation. Imagine what we…Read more…
Review: The Manchurian Candidate, by Greil Marcus
I first came across Greil Marcus as someone who wrote about popular music — with a particular interest in Bob Dylan. It turns out that he has written about many aspects of American culture…Read more…
Review: The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon
The Manchurian Candidate tells a completely implausible story – or does it? Following his capture by Soviet troops during the Korean War, a U.S. soldier named Raymond Shaw is brainwashed and…Read more…
Why I rejoined the Labour Party
I have just re-joined the Labour Party. Some people will say that one should never leave the Labour Party. Whatever it did, whatever bothered you and made it difficult to remain a member, you…Read more…
Review: The Socialist Awakening – What’s Different Now About the Left, by John B. Judis
In 2002, John Judis wrote a book predicting a new Democratic majority. It was his riposte to Kevin Phillips’ The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) which correctly predicted a quarter century…Read more…
Review: Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household
In 1939, British writer Geoffrey Household imagined how a lone sniper might attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian vacation home near Berchtesgaden. Two years later, anti-Nazi German…Read more…
Belarus: The issue is working class solidarity – not “imperialism”
A few days ago, following up on a suggestion I made to LabourStart’s mailing list that people try out the secure messaging app Telegram, I received an interesting question. I had mentioned that…Read more…
Review: The All True Adventures and Rare Education of the Daredevil Daniel Bones, by Owen Booth
First of all, this is a terrific book. It is, in one sense, a coming-of-age story, but it is so much more. At the heart of the story is the eponymous Daniel whose life changes…Read more…
Why American unions are backing Biden
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is “lamentable”, “utterly useless”, a “creep” and a “shit”. Those are not the words of Donald Trump, but they are all used in an article in this newspaper…Read more…
Review: The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination, by Richard J. Evans
The German army would have won the First World War, except that it was “stabbed in the back” by Socialists and Communists. Hitler was convinced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,…Read more…
The labour movement and the tragedy of Nagorno-Karabakh
The recent outbreak of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, seems like something out of another era. Turkey and Russia each support their own side. A century ago, the…Read more…
Review: Dress Rehearsal, by Quentin Reynolds
In August 1942, nearly two years before D-Day, Allied forces landed in France in large numbers. The Dieppe raid, which consisted mainly of Canadians, was considered a failure at the time. No…Read more…
Why socialists should not support Howie Hawkins
The golden age of the Socialist Party in the U.S. lasted about a decade. By 1912 the party’s vote peaked when Eugene Debs won 6%. It was downhill from there. After more than four decades…Read more…
Review: Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food is Wrong, by Tim Spector
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Myth. Calories accurately measure how fattening a food is. Myth. All processed food is bad for us. Myth. And so on. Tim Spector has identified more…Read more…