British historian Dick Geary, who passed away last year, apologised several times in the course of this short book for not being able to go into any detail. That’s because the book was a part…Read more…
Review: The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever, by Peter Ward
Most books I’ve seen about “life extension” and immortality are written by advocates of various ways of living much longer, or even forever. These include Ray Kurzweil, the noted tech guru, and Dave Asprey, the…Read more…
Review: The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, by V.I. Lenin
It’s said that when he died, Lenin left behind a library in which the largest number of books were written by himself — but the second largest group were books written by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky…Read more…
Review: Glucose Revolution: The life-changing power of balancing your blood sugar, by Jessie Inchauspé
I read lots of books about health, obesity, diet and nutrition. I learn something from almost all of them. Even the most useless of them will contain one or two new insights, or sometimes ideas…Read more…
Review: Stasi Child, by David Young
I’m probably wrong about this, but I think the trend of writing police procedurals set in totalitarian societies started with Martin Cruz Smith, whose Gorky Park was published back in 1981. Since then there have…Read more…
Starmer, Biden and the picket line
The distinction often made by socialists between “liberal parties” and “labour parties” has been undermined somewhat by recent developments on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in the U.K., much has been of Labour leader…Read more…
Review: Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, by Andreas Malm
This short book is a brilliant book. Many of the books I read are quite predictable, and that is one of the reasons why I read them. If I read a thriller or crime fiction,…Read more…
Georgia and the Russian Civil War: A reply to Paul Vernadsky
This letter to the editor of Solidarity was published in the 27 July 2022 issue of the newspaper. I have not yet read Antony Beevor’s new book on the Russian revolution and civil war so…Read more…
The Totalitarians at Tolpuddle
This year I attended the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in Dorset for the very first time. It was on the bucket list for a Canadian friend and as I’d never been before, I thought – why…Read more…
Review: Nobody Walks, by Mick Herron
On page 74 of this book, a character is described as “a Service legend, in her way. Not a bona fide legend like your Jackson Lambs – the plural uncalled for, because there was only…Read more…
Review: X Troop – The Secret Jewish Commandos Who Helped Defeat the Nazis, by Leah Garrett
One reviewer described this book as “‘Inglorious Basterds’ but much better”. I don’t buy that at all. This is not, in any sense, based upon or linked to Tarantino’s brilliant film. Instead, it’s the true…Read more…
Review: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, by Karl Kautsky
I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it hasn’t stood the test of time. Kautsky’s predictions from 1918 about what was going to happen next in Soviet Russia turned out…Read more…
Review: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, by Karl Kautsky
I am of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it hasn’t stood the test of time. Kautsky’s predictions from 1918 about what was going to happen next in Soviet Russia turned out…Read more…
Review: Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, by Harald Jähner
This is a long, detailed and quite interesting account of the first years of Germany following the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945. But it is not comprehensive. There are many topics that…Read more…
Review: Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, by Harald Jähner
This is a long, detailed and quite interesting account of the first years of Germany following the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945. But it is not comprehensive. There are many topics that Jähner has…Read more…
Review: Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
This is one the great works of anti-Stalinist literature. It is an attempt by the ex-Communist Koestler to imagine how Soviet interrogators squeezed confessions out of men like Zinoviev, Kamenev and…Read more…
Review: Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
This is one the great works of anti-Stalinist literature. It is an attempt by the ex-Communist Koestler to imagine how Soviet interrogators squeezed confessions out of men like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin — men who…Read more…
Review: The Murder Book, by Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham, who is probably Britain’s finest living crime writer, has been knocking off a book a year, sometimes starring his main protagonist Tom Thorne, but sometimes with Thorne only…Read more…
Review: The Murder Book, by Mark Billingham
Mark Billingham, who is probably Britain’s finest living crime writer, has been knocking off a book a year, sometimes starring his main protagonist Tom Thorne, but sometimes with Thorne only having a walk-on part. In…Read more…
Review: The Second and Third Internationals and the Vienna Union (1922)
This short book is a transcript of a long-forgotten meeting that took place in Berlin’s Reichstag in early April 1922. At the initiative the Austrian Social Democrats and their colleagues in…Read more…