Cassie (Cassandra) Raven works in a mortuary in Camden, north London, where she speaks to the dead — and it seems they might be speaking back. This is the first book in a series of…Read more…
Review: Terrorism and Communism: A Contribution to the Natural History of Revolution, by Karl Kautsky
When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in the first days of November 1917, socialists everywhere greeted the news with delight. But not Karl Kautsky, the German Social Democrat then widely known as…Read more…
Review: Zero Days, by Ruth Ware
I love a good, fast-paced thriller and this book showed a lot of promise. In the opening few pages, the heroine — a woman known as “Jack” — returns home from a dangerous assignment (she…Read more…
Review: Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead? by Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell
With those four men listed as the authors, how could this have been such an uninteresting book? It’s the transcript of a debate which took place in Toronto several years ago. Pinker and Ridley made…Read more…
Review: George Orwell and Russia, by Masha Karp
Growing up in the Soviet Union, Masha Karp read George Orwell’s novels, and in particular 1984 and Animal Farm and could not understand something. How could someone who never lived in her country, who did…Read more…
There is no left alternative to Biden
While Republican politicians are queuing up to take on Donald Trump for the party’s nomination next year, there’s hardly anything going on in the other camp. Unless he falls ill or changes his mind, Joe…Read more…
Review: Self-Discipline for Writers: Writing Is Hard, But You Too Can Write and Publish Books Regularly, by Martin Meadows
This is an example of a book with a very good title, but little else. The author appears to have done hardly any research, mostly tells you stuff any writer would know, and the good…Read more…
Review: Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex, by Christopher Turner
Don’t be put off by the silly title. “Orgasmatron” was an inside joke in Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper”. And no, Wilhelm Reich did not invent sex (as far as I know). But title aside,…Read more…
Review: Freud – A very short introduction, by Anthony Storr
This very short book is unfortunately not a very good book. If you want to know what Freud thought about things, probably the best place to start is Freud himself. Author Anthony Storr concedes that…Read more…
Workers’ rights violations at record high – and what to do about it
On the last day of June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released its annual “Global Rights Index”. It presented a bleak picture of a world where workers’ rights are routinely trampled upon. And according…Read more…
50 years later …
This week marks the 50th anniversary of my first visit to Israel. It was July 1973 and I was one of a group of six members of the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) sent to…Read more…
Review: Damascus Station, by David McCloskey
Remember a time when the CIA was seen as either the bad guys or at best morally complicated? Back in the Seventies, post-Watergate, if the CIA put in an appearance in a book or film,…Read more…
Review: The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? by Rosa Luxemburg
This is effectively two long articles combined in one small book, and re-reading it after many years, I can now understand it in a different light than before. Rosa Luxemburg has been claimed by many…Read more…
Review: Reich for Beginners, by David Zane Mairowitz, illustrated by German Gonzales
A very good introduction — in graphic novel format — to the life and work of Wilhelm Reich, a brilliant psychoanalyst and a man who attempted to reconcile the teachings of Freud and Marx. His…Read more…
Review: The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, by Bertrand Russell
In 1920, when this book first appeared, there were not very many critics of the new Soviet government on the Left (outside of Russia). Anarchists including Emma Goldman visited Russia and came away disenchanted. Rosa…Read more…
In Georgia, Chiatura’s miners are once again in struggle
In 1924 a rebellion against Bolshevik rule broke out in western Georgia. The opening shots were fired in the manganese mining town of Chiatura, which had for years stood at the centre of working class…Read more…
What Washington can teach London about history
Last week, on a visit to Washington, D.C., I spent some time in two new museums and walked away wondering why we don’t have museums like that in the U.K. The first was the National…Read more…
Review: Social Democracy versus Communism, by Karl Kautsky
As the Second World War was coming to an end, anti-Stalinists on the Left found themselves facing a difficult problem. The Soviet Union had won a resounding victory against Nazi Germany. Stalin was widely perceived,…Read more…
Review: Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less, by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz
Write shorter sentences. Use one syllable words where possible. That’s the message of this short book, which is padded with lots of empty space, some forgettable graphics and endless advertising for the authors’ software which…Read more…
Review: Replay, by Ken Grimwood
If you’ve seen the movies ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ you’ve got the plot of Replay. The novel begins with the death of 43-year-old Jeff Winston — who immediately re-awakens a quarter century…Read more…