FRANKFURT B O O K FA I R 2016 FORTHCOMING TITLES FROM NYU PRESS
FO R R I GH TS Q UE RIE S : Margie Guerra, Subsidiary Rights Administrator (212) 998-2540 margie.guerra@nyu.edu
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From Occupy Wall Street in New York to Pussy Riot in Russia, scholars look at the international phenomenon of culture jamming
Culture Jamming Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance Edited by Marilyn DeLaure and Mortiz Fink, Foreword by Mark Dery THE BOOK
THE EDITORS
Coined in the 1980s, “culture jamming” refers to an array of tactics deployed by activists to critique, subvert, and otherwise “jam” the workings of consumer culture. Ranging from media hoaxes and advertising parodies to flash mobs and street art, these actions seek to interrupt the flow of dominant, capitalistic messages that permeate our daily lives. Employed by Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot alike, culture jamming scrambles the signal, injects the unexpected, and spurs audiences to think critically and challenge the status quo.
MARILYN DELAURE is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. She has published essays on dance, civil rights rhetoric, and environmental activism. MORITZ FINK is a media scholar and author. He holds a doctoral degree in American Studies from the University of Munich. MARK DERY is a cultural critic. His writings on media, technology, pop culture, and American society have appeared in Artforum, Cabinet, Elle, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Salon, Spin, and Wired, among others. His books include Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, which has been translated into eight languages. He edited the scholarly anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. His latest book is the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts.
The essays, interviews, and creative work assembled in this unique volume explore the shifting contours of culture jamming by plumbing its history, mapping its transformations, testing its force, and assessing its efficacy. Revealing how culture jamming is at once playful and politically transgressive, this accessible collection explores the degree to which culture jamming has fulfilled its revolutionary aims. Featuring original essays from prominent media scholars discussing Banksy and Shepard Fairey, foundational texts such as Mark Dery’s culture jamming manifesto, and artwork by and interviews with noteworthy culture jammers including the Guerrilla Girls, The Yes Men, and Reverend Billy, Culture Jamming makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of creative resistance and participatory culture. FEBRUARY 2017 • 446 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-0620-1 • $30.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-7096-7 • $89.00 Media Studies • American Studies 5
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Rewiring our ideas about cybercriminals
Hacked A Radical Approach to Hacker Culture and Crime Kevin F. Steinmetz THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR KEVIN F. STEINMETZ is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Kansas State University.
Public discourse, from pop culture to political rhetoric, portrays hackers as deceptive, digital villains. But what do we actually know about them? In Hacked, Kevin F. Steinmetz explores what it means to be a hacker and the nuances of hacker culture. Through extensive interviews with hackers, observations of hacker communities, and analyses of hacker cultural products, Steinmetz demystifies the figure of the hacker and situates the practice of hacking within the larger political and economic structures of capitalism, crime, and control. This captivating book challenges many of the common narratives of hackers, suggesting that not all forms of hacking are criminal and, contrary to popular opinion, the broader hacker community actually plays a vital role in our information economy. Hacked thus explores how governments, corporations, and other institutions attempt to manage hacker culture through the creation of ideologies and laws that protect powerful economic interests. Not content to simply critique the situation, Steinmetz ends his work by providing actionable policy recommendations that aim to redirect the focus from the individual to corporations, governments, and broader social issues. A compelling study, Hacked helps us understand not just the figure of the hacker, but also digital crime and social control in our high-tech society.
NOVEMBER 2016 • 288 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-6971-8 • $28.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-6610-6 • $89.00 Media Studies • Criminology • Sociology • Anthropology
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Providing accessible A-to-Z surveys of prevailing scholarly concepts, The Keywords Series serve as flexible tools for carving out new areas of inquiry.
THE KEYWORDS SERIES
Keywords for Media Studies Edited by Laurie Outlette and Jonathan Gray THE BOOK
THE EDITORS
Keywords for Media Studies introduces and aims to advance the field of critical media studies by tracing, defining, and problematizing its established and emergent terminology. The book historicizes thinking about media and society, whether that means noting a long history of “new media,” or tracing how understandings of media “power” vary across time periods and knowledge formations. The contributors take stock of media studies now, intervene in debates, and chart new arguments in the field. Keywords for Media Studies will introduce those new to the field to some key terms, research traditions, debates, and their contexts and histories, while also offering both these readers and those who have been teaching and researching in the field for years a sense of new frontiers and questions.
LAURIE OUTLETTE is Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches media and cultural studies. She writes about television, media culture, social theory and consumer culture, and is the co-author of Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship and editor of A Companion to Reality Television, among other books. JONATHAN GRAY (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is author of Television Entertainment, Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, and Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality.
BOOKS IN THE KEYWORDS SERIES
MARCH 2017 • 240 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-5961-0 • $25.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-8365-3 • $89.00 Media Studies 7
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Welcome to the new digital world: it’s not just for the West anymore
Whose Global Village? Rethinking how Technology Shapes Our World Ramesh Srinivasan THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR RAMESH SRINIVASAN is the Director of the Digital Cultures Lab and Associate Professor of Information Studies and Design and Media Arts at UCLA. His work has been featured by Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The Young Turks, National Public Radio, and The Huffington Post.
In the digital age, technology has shrunk the physical world into a “global village,” where we all seem to be connected as an online community as information travels to the farthest reaches of the planet with the click of a mouse. Yet while we think of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as open and accessible to all, in reality, these are commercial entities developed primarily by and for the Western world. Considering how new technologies increasingly shape labor, economics, and politics, these tools often reinforce the inequalities of globalization, rarely reflecting the perspectives of those at the bottom of the digital divide. This book asks us to re-consider ‘whose global village’ we are shaping with the digital technology revolution today. Sharing stories of collaboration with Native Americans in California and New Mexico, revolutionaries in Egypt, communities in rural India, and others across the world, Ramesh Srinivasan urges us to re-imagine what the Internet, mobile phones, or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspective of diverse cultures. Such collaborations can pave the way for a people-first approach toward designing and working with new technology worldwide. Whose Global Village seeks to inspire professionals, activists, and scholars alike to think about technology in a way that embraces the realities of communities too often relegated to the margins. We can then start to visualize a world where technologies serve diverse communities rather than just the Western consumer. FEBRUARY 2017 • 272 pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-6296-2 • $35.00 Media Studies • Race & Ethnicity • Science & Technology
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An intimate examination of black anti-fascist dialogues in African American Spain
Archives of Flesh African American, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique Robert F. Reid-Pharr THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
In Archives of Flesh, Robert Reid-Pharr reveals the deep history of intellectual engagement between African America and Spain. Opening a fascinating window onto black and antiFascist intellectual life from 1898 through the mid-1950s, Reid-Pharr argues that key institutions of Western Humanism, including American colleges and universities, developed in intimate relation to slavery, colonization, and white supremacy This retreat to rigidly established philosophical and critical traditions can never fully address—or even fully recognize—the deep-seated hostility to black subjectivity underlying the humanist ideal of a transcendent Manhood.
ROBERT F. REID-PHARR is Distinguished and Presidential Professor of American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of three books, Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual (NYU Press, 2007), Black Gay Man: Essays (NYU Press, 2001), and Conjugal Union: The Body, the House, and the Black American (1999).
Calling for a specifically anti-white supremacist reexamination of the archives of black subjectivity and resistance, Reid-Pharr enlists the principles of posthumanist critique in order to investigate decades of intimate dialogues between African American and Spanish intellectuals, including Salaria Kea, Federico Garcia Lorca, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Lynn Nottage, and Pablo Picasso. In the process Reid-Pharr takes up the “African American Spanish Archive” in order to resist the anti-corporeal, anti-black, anti-human biases that stand at the heart of Western Humanism.
DECEMBER 2016 • 264 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-4362-6 • $28.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-4362-6 • $89.00 Literary Studies • American Studies • American Studies • African American Studies
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When anthropologists meet the law
Anthropology and Law A Critical Introduction Mark Goodale THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR MARK GOODALE is an anthropologist, sociolegal scholar, and social theorist. He currently conducts ethnographic research on revolution and the politics of disenchantment in Latin America (Bolivia) and writes theoretically about human rights as a key mode of contemporary worldmaking.
The anthropology of law is a key subfield within anthropology. Over the past twenty-five years, anthropologists have studied and analyzed the ways in which new forms of law—such as human rights—have reshaped important questions of citizenship, indigenous movements, and biotechnology, among many others. Meanwhile, the rise of international law and processes of transnational justice have posed new ethical and intellectual challenges to anthropologists, revealing the need for a comprehensive overview of the field. Anthropology and Law offers a broad analysis of the ways in which anthropologists have studied, interacted with, and critiqued the law—as systems of enforceable rules, ethical norms, frameworks for political action, and categories of identity. Mark Goodale introduces central problems in the anthropology of law, traces the development of the field, and builds on the legacy of its intellectual history. The book explores the new overlap of law, politics, and technology and surveys the contributions that anthropologists have made to our understanding of them. Chapters cover a range of intersecting areas that reflect the dynamism in the contemporary anthropology of law, including language and law, history, justice, regulation, indigenous rights, and gender. The volume concludes by examining the ultimate limits of law in the face of existing global economic and social conflicts, considering what it would mean to develop an ecological approach to law based in new forms of solidarity and pluralism.
MAY 2017 • 304 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-9551-9 • $35.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-3613-0 • $89.00 Anthropology
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Got water?
Water Abundance, Scarcity, and the Security in the Age of Humanity Jeremy J. Schmidt THE BOOK Humans take more than their geological share of water, but they do not benefit from it equally. And as we enter the Anthropocene, the geological era in which humans are profoundly Abundance, Scarcity, and influencing the Earth, Security in water is increasingly the Age of scarce. It has become an Humanity issue of security both for individual health and national security. In Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity, Jeremy Schmidt traces how the conceptualization of water as a resource has become hegemonic; it has become the way to think, talk, and study water management around the world. But water resources are not neutral. They were created and managed to support a specific political agenda.
how, when it comes to water, the two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources legitimates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense of others.
jer em y j. schmidt
Water
THE AUTHOR JEREMY J. SCHMIDT is an Assistant Professor in Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University. He is the co-editor of Water Ethics: Foundational Readings for Students and Professionals.
Offering a remarkable intellectual history that crisscrosses American anthropology and geography, Water reveals the peculiar ethnocentrism that links early twentieth-century conservation in the United States, the model of water management the U.S. promoted through international development, and contemporary programs of global governance that connect water resources to the Earth system. The book develops a novel interpretation of American liberalism by siting it within the practices used to plan, manage, and govern water resources. Debates over the Anthropocene tend to focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific assessments of human impacts on the planet. Schmidt shows
APRIL 2017 • 304 pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-4642-9 • $35.00 Anthropology 13
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How do women choose to play the aging game?
The Ways Women Age Using and Refusing Cosmetic Intervention Abigail T. Brooks THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR ABIGAIL T. BROOKS is Director of the Women’s Studies Program and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Providence College.
What is it like to be a woman growing older in a culture where you cannot go to the doctor’s, open a magazine, watch television, or go on-line without being confronted with products and procedures that are designed to make you look younger? Set against the backdrop of commercialized medicine in the United States today, this book explores the rise of the cosmetic anti-aging industry from the perspective of women themselves. In-depth interviews with a spectrum of women who are choosing and refusing cosmetic anti-aging interventions introduce readers to the complexities and contradictions that animate women’s contemporary attitudes about and approaches to aging. What do women have to say about their decision to embrace cosmetic anti-aging procedures? And, alternatively, how do women articulate their decision to grow older without them? Motherhood, race, and the body and ultimately critiques the new potentials for parenthood that put the very contours of kinship into question.
MARCH 2017 • 288 pages PAPER • 978-0-8147-2405-7 • $28.00 CLOTH • 978-0-8147-2410-1 • $89.00 Sociology 15
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Is prejudice a disease?
PA R T O F T H E B I O P O L I T I C S S E R I E S
Are Racists Crazy?
How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity Sander L. Gilman and James M. Thomas THE BOOK
THE AUTHORS
In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that—based on their clinical experiment —the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Shortly after the experiment, an article in Time Magazine cited the study, posing the question: Is racism becoming a mental illness? In Are Racists Crazy? Sander Gilman and James Thomas trace the idea of race and racism as psychopathological categories. From mid-19th century Europe, to contemporary America, up to the aforementioned clinical experiment at the University of Oxford, and ask a slightly different question than that posed by Time: How did racism become a mental illness? Using historical, archival, and content analysis, the authors provide a rich account of how the 19th century ‘Sciences of Man’—including anthropology, medicine, and biology—used race as a means of defining psychopathology and how assertions about race and madness became embedded within disciplines that deal with mental health and illness.
SANDER L. GILMAN is Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as Professor of Psychiatry, at Emory University. He is the author or editor of more than ninety books, including the basic study of the visual stereotyping of the mentally ill, Seeing the Insane. JAMES M. THOMAS is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Working to Laugh: Assembling Difference in American Stand-Up Comedy Venues and Affective Labour: (Dis)Assembling Distance and Difference.
An illuminating and riveting history of the discourse on racism, antisemitism, and psychopathology, Are Racists Crazy? connects past and present claims about race and racism, showing the dangerous implications of this specious line of thought for today.
DECEMBER 2016 • 368 pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-5612-1 • $35.00 Sociology • Psychology • Jewish Studies • Religion
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A look at the social and commercial forces making younger women turn to Botox
PA R T O F T H E I N T E R S E C T I O N S S E R I E S
Botox Nation
Changing the Face of America Dana Berkowitz THE BOOK The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery estimates there are about two-anda- half million Botox procedures performed annually, and that number continues to increase. The procedure is used as a preventive measure against aging and a means by which bodies, particularly women’s, can be transformed and “improved” through the appearance of youth. But why is Botox so popular, and why is aging such a terrifying concept?
culture of preventative medicine, the application of medical procedures to seemingly healthy bodies, and the growth and technological advancement to the anti-aging industry. The first in-depth social investigation into the development of Botox as a phenomenon, Botox Nation is a captivating and critical story of how norms about bodies, gender, and aging are constructed and reproduced on both cultural and individual levels.
THE AUTHOR DANA BERKOWITZ is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Louisiana State University.
Botox Nation draws from engaging, in-depth interviews with Botox users and providers as well as Dana Berkowitz’s own experiences receiving the injections. The interviews reveal the personal motivations for using Botox and help unpack how anti-aging practices are conceived by, and resonate with, everyday people. Berkowitz is particularly interested in how Botox is now being targeted to younger women; since Botox is a procedure that must be continually administered to work, the strategic choice to market to younger women, Berkowitz argues, aims to create lifetime consumers. Berkowitz also analyzes magazine articles, advertisements, and even medical documents to consider how narratives of aging are depicted. She employs a critical feminist lens to consider the construction of feminine bodies and selves, and explores the impact of cosmetic medical interventions aimed at maintaining the desired appearance of youth, the
JANUARY 2017 • 256 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-2526-4 • $27.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-4794-5 • $89.00 Sociology • Gender & Women’s Study • Medical Studies • Anthropology 17
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The legacy of trauma from generations of genocide
The Holocaust Across the Generations Trauma and its Inheritance Among Descendents of Survivors Janet Jacobs THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Over the last two decades, the cross-generational transmission of trauma has become an important area of research within both Holocaust studies and the study of genocide. The Holocaust informs both the psychological and social development of the children of survivors who, like their parents, suffer from nightmares, guilt, fear, and sadness. The impact of social memory on the construction of survivor identities among succeeding generations has not yet been adequately explained. In The Holocaust across Generations, Janet Jacobs fills these significant gaps in the study of traumatic transference.
JANET JACOBS is Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado. She is the author of numerous books and journal articles, including Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews and Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory.
The volume brings together the study of post-Holocaust family culture with the study of collective memory. Through an in-depth study of 75 children and grandchildren of survivors, the book examines the social mechanisms through which the trauma of the Holocaust is conveyed by survivors to succeeding generations. It explores the social structures— such as narratives, rituals, belief systems, and memorial sites—through which the collective memory of trauma is transmitted within families, examining the social relations of traumatic inheritance among children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Within this analytic framework, feminist theory and the importance of gender are brought to bear on the study of traumatic inheritance and the formation of trauma-based identities among Holocaust carrier groups. JANUARY 2017 • 184 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-3929-2 • $24.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-3356-6 • $89.00 Sociology • Jewish Studies • Religion
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Can apathetic millennials even be trusted in office?
Out of the Running Why Millennials are Rejecting Political Careers and Why it Matters Shauna L. Shames THE BOOK Millennials are often publically criticized for being apathetic about the American political process and their lack of interest in political careers. But what do millennials themselves have to say about the prospect of holding political office? Are they as disinterested in political issues and the future of the American political system as the media suggests?
the future of the American political system—how can a system adapt and grow if qualified, intelligent leaders are not involved? An engaging and accessible resource for anyone who follows American politics, Out of the Running highlights the urgent need to fix the American political system, as an absence of diverse millennial candidates leaves its future in a truly precarious position.
THE AUTHOR SHAUNA L. SHAMES is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Camden. Prior to entering academia, she worked with several nonprofit and feminist organizations, including the National Organization for Women (NOW) and The White House Project. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2014.
Out of the Running goes directly to the source and draws from extensive research, including over 50 interviews, with graduate students in elite institutions that have historically been a direct link for their graduates into state or federal elected office: Harvard Law, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Boston’s Suffolk University Law School. Shauna Shames, herself a young graduate of Harvard University, suggests that millennials are not disinterested; rather, they don’t believe that a career in politics is the best way to create change. Millennials view the system as corrupt or inefficient and are particularly skeptical about the fundraising, frenzied media attention, and loss of privacy that have become staples of the American electoral process. They are clear about their desire to make a difference in the world but feel that the “broken” political system is not the best way to do so—a belief held particularly by millennial women and women of color. The implications of Shames’ argument are crucial for
JANUARY 2017 • 272 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-7748-5 • $27.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-2599-8 • $89.00 Sociology • Political Science • Gender & Women’s Studies • Race & Ethnicity 19
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Union Power The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania James Young THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
If you’re lucky enough to be employed today in the United States, there’s about a one-in-ten chance that you’re in a labor union. And even if you’re part of that unionized 10 percent, chances are your union doesn’t carry much economic or political clout. But this was not always the case, as historian and activist James Young shows in this vibrant story of the United Electrical Workers Union. The UE, built by hundreds of rank-and-file worker-activists in the quintessentially industrial town of Erie, Pennsylvania, was able to transform the conditions of the working class largely because it went beyond the standard call for living wages to demand quantum leaps in worker control over workplaces, community institutions, and the policies of the federal government itself.
JAMES YOUNG is Professor of History Emeritus at Edinboro University, Pennsylvania. He has been a union member all his life and a worker in several unions, including the SEIU and USWA. He is a contributing author to Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture and Advocates and Activists, 1919-1941: Men and Women Who Shaped the Period Between the Wars.
James Young’s book is a richly empowering history told from below, showing that the collective efforts of the many can challenge the supremacy of the few. Erie’s two UE locals confronted a daunting array of obstacles: the corporate superpower General Electric; ferocious red baiting; and later, the debilitating impact of globalization. Yet, by working through and across ethnic, gender, and racial divides, communities of people built a viable working-class base powered by real democracy. While the union’s victories could not be sustained completely, the UE is still alive and fighting in Erie. This book is an exuberant and eloquent testament to this fight, and a reminder to every worker— employed or unemployed; in a union or out—that an injury to one is an injury to all. FEBRUARY 2017 • 248 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7617-2 • $29.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7618-9 • $95.00 Sociology
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A Monthly Review Press Title
The Syriza Wave Surging and Crashing with the Greek left Helena Sheehan THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Utterly corrupt corporate and government elites bankrupted Greece twice over. First, by profligate deficit spending benefiting only themselves; second, by agreeing to an IMF “bailout” of the Greek economy, devastating ordinary Greek citizens who were already enduring government-induced poverty, unemployment, and hunger. Finally, in response to dire “austerity” measures, the people of Greece stood up, forming, from their own historic roots of resistance, Syriza—the Coalition of the Radical Left. For those who caught the Syriza wave, there was, writes Helena Sheehan, a minute of “precarious hope.”
HELENA SHEEHAN is professor emerita at Dublin City University, where she taught history of ideas and media studies. She is also the author of several books, including Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History and Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories, as well as magazine articles on politics, culture, and philosophy.
A seasoned activist and participant-observer, Helena Sheehan adroitly places us at the center of the whirlwind beginnings of Syriza, its jubilant victory at the polls, and finally at Syriza’s surrender to the very austerity measures it once vowed to annihilate. She takes time to meet many Greeks in tavernas, on the street, and in government offices, engage in debates, and compare Greece to her own economically blighted country, Ireland. Sheehan sees Syriza transformed from a horizon of hope to a vortex of despair. But out of the dust of defeat, she draws questions radiating hope. Just how did what was possibly the most intelligent, effective instrument of the Greek left selfdestruct? And what are the consequences for the Greek people, for the international left, for all of us driven to work for a better world? The Syriza Wave is a page-turning blend of political reportage, personal reflection, and astute analysis. JANUARY 2017 • 272 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7625-7 • $26.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7626-4 • $95.00 Sociology 21
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism Samir Amin THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Out of early twentiethcentury Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union also produced a movement away from capitalism—a long transition that continues today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia— and, by extension, the future of socialism itself.
SAMIR AMIN was born in Egypt in 1931 and received his Ph.D. in economics in Paris in 1957. He is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His numerous works include The Law of Worldwide Value, Eurocentrism: Second Edition, The World We Wish to See, The Liberal Virus, Accumulation on a World Scale, Imperialism and Unequal Development, and The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism.
Amin manages to combine an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics—both crucial to understanding Russia’s complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia’s geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness.” Yet Russia’s unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin’s great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia’s historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism. JULY 2016 • 144 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7601-1 • $23.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7602-8 • $89.00 Sociology
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A Monthly Review Press Title
The Hidden Structure of Violence Who Benefits from Global Violence and War Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree THE BOOK
THE AUTHORS
Acts of violence assume many forms: they may travel by the arc of a guided missile or in the language of an economic policy decision that contaminates drinking water, and they may leave behind a smoldering village or a starved child. The all-pervasive occurrence of violence makes it seem like an unavoidable, and ultimately incomprehensible, aspect of the human world, particularly in a modern era. But, in this detailed and expansive book, Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree demonstrate otherwise. Widespread violence, they argue, is in fact an expression of the underlying social order, and whether it is carried out by military forces or by patterns of investment, the aim is to strengthen that order for the benefit of the powerful.
MARC PILISUK teaches at Saybrook University and is Professor Emeritus of Human and Community Development at the University of California at Davis. He is a former president of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence and a steering committee member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He has published ten books and more than 140 articles over an academic career spanning five decades. JENNIFER ROUNTREE is research manager at the National Indian Child Welfare Association in Portland, Oregon. She has a PhD in psychology from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco, California, and supports American Indian/Alaska Native tribes and urban Indian communities in community based participatory research.
The Hidden Structure of Violence marshals vast amounts of evidence to examine the costs of direct violence, including military preparedness and the social reverberations of war, alongside the costs of structural violence, expressed as poverty and chronic illness. It also documents the relatively small number of people and corporations responsible for facilitating the violent status quo, whether by setting the range of permissible discussion or benefiting directly as financiers and manufacturers. The result is a stunning indictment of our violent world and a powerful critique of the ways through which violence is reproduced on a daily basis, whether at the highest levels of the state or in the deepest recesses of the mind. JULY 2015 • 360 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7542-7 • $25.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7543-4 • $89.00 Sociology 23
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Labor in the Global Digital Economy The Cybertariat Comes of Age Ursula Huws THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
For every person who reads this text on the printed page, many more will read it on a computer screen or mobile device. It’s a situation that we increasingly take for granted in our digital era, and while it is indicative of the novelty of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is also the key to understanding its driving force: the relentless impulse to commodify our lives in every aspect.
URSULA HUWS is Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, and founder of Analytica Social and Economic Research. She is the author of The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World.
Ursula Huws ties together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of the last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. She examines the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet. Labor in the Global Digital Economy is a forceful critique of our dizzying contemporary moment, one that goes beyond notions of mere connectedness or free-flowing information to illuminate the entrenched mechanisms of exploitation and control at the core of capitalism.
DECEMBER 2014 • 208 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7463-5 • $19.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7464-2 • $75.00 Sociology
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Educational Justice Teaching and Organizing Against the Corporate Juggernaut Howard Ryan THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
That education should instill and nurture democracy is an American truism. Yet organizations such as the Business Roundtable, together with conservative philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Walmart’s owners, the Waltons, have been turning public schools into corporate mills. Their top-down programs, such as Common Core State Standards, track, judge, and homogenize the minds of millions of American students from kindergarten through high school. But corporate funders would not be able to implement this educational control without the de facto partnership of government at all levels, channeling public moneys into privatization initiatives, school closings, and high-stakes testing that discourages independent thinking.
HOWARD RYAN has taught college English, worked for many years in union organizing and representation in higher education, as well as in labor journalism. Now retired, he writes and organizes for quality education in public schools.
Educational Justice offers hope that there’s still time to take on corporatized schools and achieve democratic justice in the classroom. Forcefully written by educator and journalist Howard Ryan, with contributing authors, the book opens with four chapters that discuss theories on teacher unionism, social justice pedagogy, and corporate school reform. These chapters are balanced with four case-study chapters documenting exemplary teaching and school-site organizing practices in the field. Reports from various educational fronts include innovative union strategies against charter school expansion, as well as teaching visions drawn from the social justice and whole language traditions. Bold, informative, clearly reasoned, this book is an education in itself—a democratic one at that. NOVEMBER 2016 • 320 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7613-4 • $23.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7614-1 • $95.00 Sociology 25
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Studs Terkel Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation Alan Wieder THE BOOK Studs Terkel was an American icon who had no use for America’s cult of celebrity. He was a leftist who valued human beings over political dogma. In scores of books and thousands of radio and television broadcasts, Studs paid attention— and respect—to “ordinary” human beings of all classes and colors, as they talked about their lives as workers, dreamers, survivors. Alan Wieder’s Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, But Mostly Conversation is the first comprehensive book about this man.
with real humans. Wieder’s book also shows us why such contact might be crucial to those of us in movements rising up against injustice. The book is simply the best introduction available to this remarkable man. Reading it will lead people to Terkel’s enormous body of work, with benefits they will cherish throughout their lives.
THE AUTHOR ALAN WIEDER is an oral historian who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and has taught at the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In the last fifteen years, he has published three books and numerous articles on South Africans who fought against the apartheid regime. The latest book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid, was published in 2013 by Monthly Review Press.
Drawing from over one hundred interviews of people who knew and worked with Studs, Alan Wieder creates a multidimensional portrait of a run-of-the-mill guy from Chicago who, in public life, became an acclaimed author, raconteur, while managing, in his private life, to remain a mensch. We see Studs, the eminent oral historian, the inveterate and selfless supporter of radical causes, especially civil rights. We see the actor, the writer, the radio host, the jazz lover, whose early work in television earned him a notorious place on the McCarthy blacklist. We also see Studs, the devoted husband to his adored wife, Ida. Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, But Mostly Conversation allows us to realize the importance of reaching through our own daily realities—increasingly clogged with disembodied, impersonal interaction—to find value in actual face-time
DECEMBER 2015 • 304 Pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7593-9 • $19.95 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7594-6 • $89.00 Biography 27
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An intimate portrait of a towering figure
Jacob Neusner An American Jewish Iconoclast Aaron W. Hughes THE BOOK Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by—and of interest to—religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American academy. But even those who disagree with Neusner’s academic approach to ancient rabbinic texts have to engage with his pioneering methods.
American ethos. His Judaism is open, informed by and informing the world. It is an American Judaism, one that has enabled American Jews—the freest in history—to be fully American and fully Jewish.
THE AUTHOR AARON W. HUGHES holds the Philip S. Bernstein Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Rochester.
In this comprehensive biography, Aaron Hughes shows Neusner to be much more than a scholar of rabbinics. He is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and was an outspoken political figure during the height of the cultural wars of the 1980s. Neusner’s life reflects the story of what happened as Jews migrated to the suburbs in the late 1940s, daring to imagine new lives for themselves as they successfully integrated into the fabric of American society. It is also the story of how American Jews tried to make sense of the world in the aftermath of the extermination of European Jewry and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and how they sought to define what it meant to be an American Jew. Unlike other great American Jewish thinkers, Neusner was born in the U.S., and his Judaism was informed by an
SEPTEMBER 2016 • 336 Pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-8585-5 • $35.00 Biography
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Breathtaking scholarship drawing on research in multiple languages, this book examines popular Chelm stories in an engaging and compelling style
How the Wise Man Got to Chelm The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tale Tradition Ruth von Bernuth THE BOOK When God created the world, he sent out an angel with a bag of foolish souls and orders to distribute them equitably all over the world—one fool per town. But the angel’s bag soon broke and all the foolish souls spilled out on the same spot. These souls built a settlement where they landed, which became
anthologies, newspapers, or periodicals. To date, there has been no critical analysis of the Chelm tales along the lines offered in this book. By contributing to the understanding of how these texts arose, merged with other traditions, and developed further, this book makes a crucial and original contribution to scholarship in Jewish and European history ,German, Jewish and Yiddish literature, literary studies more generally, including for scholars interested in cultural hybridity, formation of minority cultures, and folklore.
THE AUTHOR RUTH VON BERNUTH is Assistant Professor of German and Director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Wunder, Spott und Prophetie: Natürliche Narrheit in den Historien von Claus Narren [Wonder, Ridicule, and Prophecy: “Natural folly” in the Stories of Claus the Fool] (Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009).
the town now known as Chelm. The collected tales of the “wise men” of Chelm constitute the best-known folktale tradition of the Jews of Eastern Europe. This tradition includes a sprawling repertoire of stories treating the intellectual limitations of the perennially and proverbially foolish members of this old and important Jewish community. Chelm did not make its debut in the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence until late in the nineteenth century. But since then, it has led a double life—as a real city and as an imaginary place onto which questions of Jewish identity, community, and history have been projected. The origins and subsequent linguistic and cultural journeys of this Yiddish folk tale are complex, stretching back at least to the Middle Ages. How the Wise Men Got to Chelm is the first scholarly exploration of the creation and life of the Yiddish folk tales of the “wise men” of Chelm. It offers the first comprehensive survey of all the collections of Chelm stories and their Yiddish precursors published between 1700 and the present, whether in stand-alone volumes,
OCTOBER 2016 • 336 Pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-2844-9 • $35.00 Religion • Jewish Studies
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From Mormonism in South Park to anti-semitic critiques of Family Guy
Drawn to the Gods Religion and Humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy David Feltmate THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR DAVID FELTMATE is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Auburn University. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Waterloo.
Drawn to the Gods offers a new theory of religious satire, one illuminated through an examination of religion and humor in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy. Drawing on the worldviews put forth by these three wildly popular animated shows, it demonstrates how ideas about religion’s proper place in American society are communicated through humor. The book includes discussion of a wide range of American religions, including Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Native American Religions, New Religious Movements, “Spirituality,” Hinduism, and Atheism. Along the way, readers are shown that jokes about religion are influential tools for teaching viewers how to interpret and judge religious people and institutions. Each chapter is comparative across programs, developing a picture of how each show understands and communicates what constitutes good religious practice as well as which traditions they seek to exclude on the basis of race and ethnicity, stupidity, or danger. Through this examination, an understanding of what it means to each program to be a good religious American becomes clear, along with how the media more generally, with the use of satire, helps to shape and manipulate public knowledge about different religious groups. Drawn to the Gods is a book that fans, students, and scholars will enjoy as they explore the significance of finding humor in these program’s religion jokes.
APRIL 2017• 288 Pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-9036-1 • $28.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-2218-8 • $89.00 Religion 31
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A way of worshiping in an immigrant religious community
Ethnic Church Meets Mega Church Indian American Christianity in Motion Prema A. Kurien THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR PREMA A. KURIEN is Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University and author of two awardwinning books, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India, and A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism.
Ethnic Church Meets Mega Church traces the religious adaptation of members of an important Indian Christian church—the Mar Thoma denomination—as they make their way in the United States. Prema A. Kurien draws on multisite research in the United States and India to examine the pressures church members face to incorporate contemporary American evangelical worship styles into their practice, often at the expense of maintaining the ethnic character and support system of their religious community. While first-generation Indian Americans struggle to maintain their traditional practices, second-generation members blend Mar Thoma Christianity with tenets and practices of American evangelicalism, including an emphasis on an individualistic faith, and non-liturgical praise and worship services. Many others have left to attend evangelical megachurches. While it is already well-known that the rise of American evangelical megachurches has led to the reshaping of the American mainline, this book shows that American evangelicalism is also having a profound impact on the religious life of recent immigrants and their children. This volume contributes to our understandings of post-1965 immigrant religiosity and the way it is being reshaped by the second generation. Moreover, Kurien’s sophisticated analysis demonstrates how the forces of globalization are influencing religious practices in both the country of origin and the destination, revealing the changing dynamics of Christian communities in the Global South.
JUNE 2017 • 304 Pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-2637-7 • $35.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-0475-7 • $89.00 Religion
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Alternative Sociologies of Religion Through Non-Western Eyes James V. Spickard THE BOOK The sociology of religion has long used Western Christianity as a model for all religious life. As a result, the field has tended to highlight certain aspects of religion, such as religious beliefs and formal organizations, while paying less attention to others.
sociology, prompted by scholars from the Global South. It concludes by highlighting the consequences of a Eurocentric view of intellectual life, calling for a more global perspective in the social sciences. Through broadening the sociological canon to make room for more voices, the volume offers a stimulating challenge for the contemporary study of religion.
THE AUTHOR JAMES V. SPICKARD is Professor of Sociology at the University of Redlands. He holds a PhD in Religion and Society from the Graduate Theological Union.
Rather than simply criticizing such limitations, Alternative Sociologies of Religion offers three fresh and intriguing possibilities. James Spickard imagines what the sociology of religion would look like had it arisen in different cultural contexts. What would sociologists of religion better see, had they been raised in Confucian China? What could they learn about religion from Ibn Khaldūn, the famed 14th century Arab scholar? What would they better understand, had they been born Navajo, whose traditional religion certainly does not revolve around beliefs and organizations? Through these thought experiments, Spickard demonstrates how non-Western sociologies would be better prepared to understand such factors as who maintains religious communities, the relationship between religion and ethnicity as forms of social solidarity, and the role of embodied experience in religious rituals. Moreover, he shows how thinking in these ways illuminates characteristics of Western religions that have largely been invisible to sociologists working in the dominant manner. The book situates these alternatives in a broader critique of MARCH 2017 • 320 Pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-6631-1 • $27.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-2663-6 • $89.00 Religion 33
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China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia U.S.–China Relations, Volume II Edited by David B. H. Denoon THE EDITOR
China, the United States, and the Future the United StateS, of Southeast Asia and the FUtUre highlights the growing oF SoUtheaSt aSia competition between China and the U.S. in the Southeast Asian region. The Southeast Asia volume highlights the growing competition between China and the U.S. in EDiTED bY DaviD b. H. Denoon the Southeast Asian region. Both China and the U.S. trade extensively with the region, have major investments there and see the region as important for strategic interests. There are also sharp divisions among the Southeast Asian states on what types of external ties they would like to emphasize. The authors reflect a broad range of viewpoints and let the reader see how countries as different as Thailand and Indonesia see the growing competition between Beijing and Washington.
DAVID B. H. DENOON is Professor of Politics and Economics at New York University and Director of the NYU Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the author and editor of eight books, including Real Reciprocity: Balancing U.S. Economic and Security Policy in the Pacific Basin.
U.S.–China relationS VolUme ii
THE BOOK
China,
contributors
Vikram Nehru Ann Marie Murphy Amy Freedman
Evan Laksmana Heng Yee-Kuang Tran Troung Thuy Zakaria Ahmad
Catharin Dalpino Edward Lincoln G. V. C. Naidu and Gulshan Sachdeva
Chen Shaofeng Chu Shulong Marvin Ott Michael McDevitt
MAY 2017 • 512 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-1032-1 • $35.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-6630-4 • $89.00 Political Science 35
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A Monthly Review Press Title
The American War in Vietnam Crime or Commemoration? John Marciano THE BOOK On May 25, 2012, President Obama announced that the United States would spend the next thirteen years—through November 11, 2025— commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, and the American soldiers, “more than 58,000 patriots,” who died in Vietnam. The fact that at least 3 million Vietnamese—soldiers, parents, grandparents, children—also died in that war will be largely unknown and entirely uncommemorated. U.S. history barely stops to record the millions of Vietnamese who lived on after being displaced, tortured, maimed, raped, or born with birth defects, the result of devastating chemicals wreaked on the land by the U.S. military. The reason for this appalling disconnect of consciousness lies in an unremitting public relations campaign waged by top American politicians, military leaders, business people, and scholars who have spent the last sixty years justifying the U.S. presence in Vietnam.
in classrooms where teachers seek to do more than repeat the trite glorifications of U.S. Empire. It will provide students everywhere with insights that can prepare them to change the world.
THE AUTHOR JOHN MARCIANO, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland, has been an antiwar and social justice activist, author, scholar, teacher, and trade unionist. He is the author (with William L. Griffen) of Lessons of the Vietnam War (1984); and Civic Illiteracy and Education: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of American Youth (1997).
A devastating follow-up to William L. Griffen and Marciano’s 1979 classic Teaching the Vietnam War, The American War in Vietnam seeks not to commemorate the Vietnam War, but to stop the ongoing U.S. war on actual history. Marciano reveals the grandiose flag-waving that stems from the “Noble Cause principle,” the notion that America is “chosen by God” to bring democracy to the world. The result is critical writing and teaching at its best. This book will find a home AUGUST 2016 • 198 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7585-4 • $18.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7586-1 • $89.00 Political Science
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Wall Street’s Think Tank The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014 Laurence H. Shoup THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
The Council on Foreign Relations is the most influential foreignpolicy think tank in the United States, claiming among its members a high percentage of government officials, media figures, and establishment elite. For decades it kept a low profile even while it shaped policy, advised presidents, and helped shore up U.S. hegemony following the Second World War. In 1977, Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter published the first in-depth study of the CFR, Imperial Brain Trust, an explosive work that traced the activities and influence of the CFR from its origins in the 1920s through the Cold War. Now, Laurence H. Shoup returns with this long-awaited sequel, which brings the story up to date. Wall Street’s Think Tank follows the CFR from the 1970s through the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present. It explains how members responded to rapid changes in the world scene: globalization, the rise of China, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of a “War on Terror,” among other major developments. Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling class, but is not without challengers. Wall Street’s Think Tank is an essential guide to understanding the Council on Foreign Relations and the shadow it casts over recent history and current events.
LAURENCE H. SHOUP received his Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University in 1974. He is the author of several books, including Imperial Brain Trust (with William Minter) and Rulers and Rebels: A People’s History of Early California, 1769-1901, as well as many articles in scholarly and popular publications. He has taught U.S. history at the University of Illinois, San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and has been active in the anti-war and social justice movements since the 1960s.
AUGUST 2015 • 400 pages CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7551-9 • $34.00 Political Science • Finance 37
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The past, present, and future of a Western political theory
Civil Society, Second Edition The Critical History of an Idea John Ehrenberg THE BOOK In the absence of noble public goals, admired leaders, and compelling issues, many warn of a dangerous erosion of civil society, which includes families, religious organizations, and all other NGOs. Are they right? What are the roots and implications of their insistent alarm? How can public life be enriched in a period marked by fraying communities, widespread apathy, and unprecedented levels of contempt for politics? How should we be thinking about civil society?
alter and shape our relationship to contemporary civil society. Civic engagement, political participation, and volunteerism in contemporary life has faded, he argues, and in order to bring civil society—and all its virtues—back to the fore, we need to counter the suffocating inequality that has taken hold in recent years. Thorough and accessible, Civil Society gives a sweeping overview of a foundational part of political life.
THE AUTHOR JOHN EHRENBERG is a Senior Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. He is the author of Civil Society, winner of the 1999 Michael J. Harrington Prize from the American Political Science Association.
Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea provides a comprehensive discussion and analysis of two and a half millennia of Western political theory, as well as how civil society might be understood in the future. John Ehrenberg analyzes both the usefulness and the limitations of civil society and maps the political and theoretical evolution of the concept and its employment in academic and public discourse. From Aristotle and the Enlightenment philosophers to Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement, Ehrenberg provides an indispensable analysis of the possibilities of what this increasingly important idea can, and cannot, offer to contemporary political affairs. In this new, second edition Ehrenberg brings the historical overview up to present day, specifically considering how major events such as 9/11, the global financial crisis, economic inequality, and rapidly advancing technologies
FEBRUARY 2017 • 352 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-9160-3 • $30.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-9671-4 • $89.00 (Hardcover) Political Science
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Part of the Perspectives on Political Violence Series
Women as Wartime Rapists Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping Laura Sjoberg THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Very few women are wartime rapists. Very few women issue commands to commit sexual violence. Very few women play a role in making war plans that feature the intentional sexual violation of other women. This book is about those very few women. Women as Wartime Rapists reveals the stories of female perpetrators of sexual violence and their place in wartime conflict, legal policy, and the punishment of sexual violence. More broadly, Laura Sjoberg asks, what do the actions and perceptions of female perpetrators of sexual violence reveal about our broader conceptions of war, violence, sexual assault, and gender?
LAURA SJOBERG is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. She is the author of several books, including Gendering Global Conflict and, with Caron Gentry, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, and Whores.
This book explores specific historical case studies, such as Nazi Germany, Serbia, the contemporary case of ISIS, and others, to understand how and why women participate in rape during war and conflict. Sjoberg examines the contrast between the visibility of female victims and the invisibility of female perpetrators, as well as the distinction between rape and genocidal rape, which is used as a weapon against a particular ethnic or national group. Further, she explores women’s engagement with genocidal rape and how some orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of entire regions. A provocative approach to a sensationalized topic, Women as Wartime Rapists offers important insights into not only the topic of female perpetrators of wartime sexual violence, but to larger notions of gender and violence with crucial cultural, legal, and political implications. NOVEMBER 2016 • 320 pages PAPER • 978-0-8147-7140-2 • $30.00 CLOTH • 978-0-8147-2927-4 • $89.00 Political Science • Law • Gender & Women’s Studies 39
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Cuba and the U.S. Empire A Chronological History Jane Franklin THE BOOK The 1959 Cuban Revolution remains one of the signal events of modern political history. A tiny island, once a de facto colony of the United States, declared its independence, not just from the imperial behemoth ninety miles to the north, but also from global capitalism itself. Cuba’s many achievements—in education, health care, medical technology, direct local democracy, actions of international solidarity with the oppressed—are globally unprecedented. And the United States, in light of Cuba’s humanitarian efforts, has waged a relentless campaign of terrorist attacks on the island and its leaders, while placing Cuba on its “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
brings us well into the 21st century, with a look at the current status of Assata Shakur, the Cuban Five, and the post-9/11 years leading to the expansion of diplomatic relations. Offering a range of primary and secondary sources, the book is an outstanding scholarly work. Cuba and the U.S. Empire brings new meaning to Simón Bolívar’s warning in 1829, that the United States “appears destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.”
THE AUTHOR JANE FRANKLIN is an internationally acclaimed historian and peace and justice activist since 1960. The author of several books on Cuba and Panama, she has published in various periodicals including The Nation and The Progressive, and appears frequently on radio and TV as a commentator about U.S.-Cuba relations. Some of her work is available at janefranklin.info.
In this updated edition of her classic, Cuba and the United States, Jane Franklin depicts the two countries’ relationship from the time both were colonies to the present. We see the early connections between Cuba and the United States through slavery; through the sugar trade; Cuba’s multiple wars for national liberation; the annexation of Cuba by the United States; the infamous Platt Amendment that entitled the United States to intervene directly in Cuban affairs; the gangster capitalism promoted by Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista; and the guerrilla war that brought the revolutionaries to power. A new chapter updating the fraught Cuban-U.S. nexus
APRIL 2016 • 464 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7605-9 • $25.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7606-6 • $89.00 Political Science
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis John Smith THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Winner of the first Paul A. Baran–Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph concerned with the political economy of imperialism, John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a seminal examination of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization. Deploying a sophisticated Marxist methodology, Smith begins by tracing the production of certain iconic commodities—the T-shirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone—and demonstrates how these generate enormous outflows of money from the countries of the Global South to transnational corporations headquartered in the core capitalist nations of the Global North. From there, Smith draws on his empirical findings to powerfully theorize the current shape of imperialism. He argues that the core capitalist countries need no longer rely on military force and colonialism (although these still occur) but increasingly are able to extract profits from workers in the Global South through market mechanisms and, by aggressively favoring places with lower wages, the phenomenon of labor arbitrage.
JOHN SMITH received his PhD from the University of Sheffield and is currently self-employed as a researcher and writer. He has been an oil rig worker, bus driver, and telecommunications engineer, and is a longtime activist in the anti-war and Latin American solidarity movements.
Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a major contribution to the theorization and critique of global capitalism.
JANUARY 2016 • 464 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7577-9 • $28.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7578-6 • $89.00 Political Science 41
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A Monthly Review Press Title
The Reawakening of the Arab World Challenge and Change in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring Samir Amin THE BOOK According to renowned Marxist economist Samir Amin, the recent Arab Spring uprisings comprise an integral part of a massive “second awakening” of the Global South. From the self-immolation in December 2010 of a Tunisian street vendor, to the consequent outcries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against poverty and corruption, to the ongoing upheavals across the Middle East and Northern Africa, the Arab world is shaping what may become of Western imperialism—an already tottering and overextended system.
by independent nations would necessarily mean the end of U.S. empire, and the economic liberalism that has kept it in place. The way forward for the Arab world, Amin argues, is to take on, not just Western imperialism, but also capitalism itself.
THE AUTHOR SAMIR AMIN was born in Egypt in 1931 and received his Ph.D. in economics in Paris in 1957. He is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His numerous works include The Law of Worldwide Value, Eurocentrism: Second Edition, The World We Wish to See, The Liberal Virus, Accumulation on a World Scale, Imperialism and Unequal Development, and The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism.
The Reawakening of the Arab World—an updated and expanded edition of Amin’s The People’s Spring, first published in 2012 by Pambazuka Press—examines the complex interplay of nations regarding the Arab Spring and its continuing, turbulent seasons. Beginning with Amin’s compelling interpretation of the 2011 popular Arab explosions, the book is comprised of five chapters— including a new chapter analyzing U.S. geo-strategy. Samir Amin sees the United States, in an increasingly multipolar world, as a victim of its own overreach, caught in a web of attempts to contain the challenge of China, while confronting the staying power of nations such as Syria and Iran. The growing, deeply-felt need of the Arab people for independent, popular democracy is the cause of their awakening, says Amin. It is this awakening to democracy that the United States fears most, since real self-government MARCH 2016 • 248 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7597-7 • $24.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7598-4 • $89.00 Political Science
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Honoring the magnificent structures of New York City
The Landmarks of New York An Illustrated, Comprehensive Record of New York City’s Historic Buildings, Sixth Edition Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel THE BOOK As the definitive resource on the architectural history of New York City, The Landmarks of New York documents and illustrates the 1,352 individual landmarks and 135 historic districts that have been accorded landmark status by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission since its establishment in 1965. Arranged chronologically by date of construction, the book offers a sequential overview of the city’s architectural history and richness, presenting a broad range of styles and building types: colonial farmhouses, Gilded Age mansions, churches, schools, libraries, museums, and the great twentieth-century skyscrapers that are recognized throughout the world.
religious freedom; the Watchtower in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem; the New York Botanical Garden in The Bronx; and Sailors Snug Harbor on Staten Island. The sixth edition adds 106 new individual landmarks, two special addenda on the hotly-contested “back-log” and resultant 30 pending designations, over 150 new photographs, and new historic district maps.
THE AUTHOR BARBARALEE DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL is the founder and chair of the New York Landmarks 50 Alliance, chairperson of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center and chair of the New York State Council on the Arts. She is also a commissioner of the American Battle Monuments Commission, and a director of the Trust for the National Mall. A former White House assistant, she served as the first director of the Office of Cultural Affairs of New York City, and was the longest-serving commissioner of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, serving from 1972 to 1987, under four mayors.
That so many of these structures have endured is due, in large measure, to the efforts of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Since the commission was established, New York City has become the leader of the preservation movement in the United States, with more buildings and districts designated and protected than in any other city. The Landmarks of New York includes such iconic structures as Grand Central Station, the Chrysler Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Carnegie Hall, as well as those that may be less well known but are of significant historical and architectural value: the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest structure in New York City; the Bowne House in Queens, the birthplace of American
OCTOBER 2016 • 912 pages CLOTH • 978-1-4798-8301-1 • $75.00 History • New York City
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A Monthly Review Press Title
A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory Steve Cushion THE BOOK Millions of words have been written about the Cuban Revolution, which, to both its supporters and detractors, is almost universally understood as being won by a small band of guerrillas. In this unique and stimulating book, Stephen Cushion turns the conventional wisdom on its head, and argues that the Cuban working class played a much more decisive role in the Revolution’s outcome than previously understood. Although the working class was well-organized in the 1950s, it is believed to have been too influenced by corrupt trade union leaders, the Partido Socialist Popular, and a tradition of making primarily economic demands to have offered much support to the guerrillas. Cushion contends that the opposite is true, and that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerrillas operating in the mountains.
the largest general strike in Cuban history. He argues that these efforts helped clinch the victory of the revolution, and thus presents a fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.
THE AUTHOR STEVE CUSHION is a retired university lecturer with a PhD in Caribbean Labor History who lives in the East End of London. For twenty years, he worked as a bus driver in London, and has been an active socialist and trade unionist all his adult life. He is currently adviser to the Museum of Labor History on the digitization of their archives.
Developed during five research trips to Cuba under the auspices of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana, this book analyzes a wealth of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers, and other agitational material from the 1950s that has never before been systematically examined, along with many interviews with participants themselves. Cushion uncovers widespread militant activity, from illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, all of which culminated in two revolutionary workers’ congresses and FEBRUARY 2016 • 272 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7581-6 • $27.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7582-3 • $89.00 History 45
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The evolution of ownership in the digital age
Creativity Without Law Challenging the Assumptions of Intellectual Property Edited by Kate Darling and Aaron Perzanowski THE BOOK Intellectual property law, or IP law, is based on certain assumptions about creative behavior. The case for regulation assumes that creators have a fundamental legal right to prevent copying, and without this right they will under-invest in new work. But this premise fails to fully capture the reality of creative production. It ignores the range of powerful non-economic motivations that compel creativity, and it overlooks the capacity of creative industries for self-governance and innovative social and market responses to appropriation.
and communities, the accounts collected here help to ground debates over IP policy in the empirical realities of the creative process. Their parallels and divergences also highlight the value of rules that are sensitive to the unique mix of conditions and motivations of particular industries and communities, rather than the monoculture of uniform regulation of the current IP system.
THE EDITORS KATE DARLING is Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab, where she advises on intellectual property issues and researches the intersection of technology, law, and society.
This book reveals the on-the-ground practices of a range of creators and innovators. In doing so, it challenges intellectual property orthodoxy by showing that incentives for creative production often exist in the absence of, or in disregard for, formal legal protections. Instead, these communities rely on evolving social norms and market responses—sensitive to their particular cultural, competitive, and technological circumstances—to ensure creative incentives. From tattoo artists to medical researchers, Nigerian filmmakers to roller derby players, the communities illustrated in this book demonstrate that creativity can thrive without legal incentives, and perhaps more strikingly, that some creative communities prefer, and thrive, in environments defined by self-regulation rather than legal rules.
AARON PERZANOWSKI is Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He is the author of The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy.
Beyond their value as descriptions of specific industries
FEBRUARY 2017 • 304 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-5624-4 • $30.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-4193-6 • $89.00 Media Studies • Sociology • Law 47
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Big Farms Make Big Flu Dispatches on Infectious Diseases, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science Rob Wallace THE BOOK Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on the hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry—each animal genetically identical to the next—packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed, and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.
While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace’s collection is the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science into a new understanding of infections.
THE AUTHOR ROB WALLACE received a Ph.D. in biology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and did post-doctorate work at the University of California, Irvine, with Walter Fitch, a founder of molecular phylogeny. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he is both a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota and a deli clerk at a local sandwich shop.
In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Rob Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. With a precise and radical wit, Wallace juxtaposes ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens with microbial time travel and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid. JUNE 2016 • 400 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7589-2 • $24.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7590-8 • $89.00 Environmental Studies 49
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Creating an Ecological Society Toward a Revolutionary Transformation Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Sickened by the contamination of their water, their air, of the Earth itself, more and more people are coming to realize that it is capitalism that is, quite literally, killing them. It is now clearer than ever that capitalism is also degrading the Earth’s ability to support other forms of life. Capitalism’s imperative—to make profits at all costs and expand without end—is destabilizing the Earth’s climate, while increasing human misery and inequality on a planetary scale. Already, hundreds of millions of people are facing poverty in the midst of untold wealth, perpetual war, growing racism, and gender oppression. The need to organize for social and environmental reforms has never been greater. But crucial as reforms are, they cannot solve our intertwined ecological and social crises. Creating an Ecological Society reveals an overwhelmingly simple truth: Fighting for reforms is vital, but revolution is essential.
FRED MAGDOFF is Professor Emeritus of Plant and Soil Science at the University of Vermont. His most recent books include Agriculture and Food in Crisis (edited with Brian Tokar), The ABCs of the Economic Crisis (with Michael Yates), and The Great Financial Crisis (with John Bellamy Foster). CHRIS WILLIAMS is an environmental activist, teacher, and author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis.
Because it aims squarely at replacing capitalism with an ecologically sound and socially just society, Creating an Ecological Society is filled with revolutionary hope. The Authors provide informed, fascinating accounts of how a new world can be created from the ashes of the old. Their book shows that it is possible to envision and create a society that is genuinely democratic, equitable, and ecologically sustainable. And possible—not one moment too soon—for society to change fundamentally and be brought into harmony with nature.
FEBRUARY 2017 • 384 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7629-5 • $25.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7630-1 • $95.00 Environmental Studies
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A Monthly Review Press Title
Facing the Anthropocene Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System Ian Angus THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun— the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge.
IAN ANGUS is editor of the online ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, and co-author of the Belém Ecosocialist Declaration. His previous books include Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis (with Simon Butler) and The Global Fight for Climate Justice.
Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. Cogent and compellingly written, Facing the Anthropocene offers a unique synthesis of natural and social science that illustrates how capitalism’s inexorable drive for growth, powered by the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, has driven our world to the brink of disaster. Survival in the Anthropocene, Angus argues, requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with a new, ecosocialist civilization. JUNE 2016 • 280 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7609-7 • $19.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7610-3 • $95.00 Environmental Studies 51
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The unheard narratives of a culture in the wake of war
Moments of Silence Authenticity in the Cultural Expressions of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
Edited by Arta Khakpour, Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, and Shouleh Vatanabadi THE BOOK
THE EDITORS
The Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. The memory of it may have faded in the wake of more recent wars in the region, but the harrowing facts remain: over one million soldiers and civilians dead, millions more permanently displaced and disabled, and an entire generation marked by prosthetic implants and teenage martyrdom. These same facts have been instrumentalized by agendas both foreign and domestic, but also aestheticized, defamiliarized, readdressed and reconciled by artists, writers, and filmmakers across an array of identities: linguistic (Arabic, Persian, Kurdish), religious (Shiite, Sunni, atheist), and political (Iranian, Iraqi, internationalist). Official discourses have unsurprisingly tried to dominate the process of production and distribution of war narratives. In doing so, they have ignored and silenced other voices.
ARTA KHAKPOUR studied modern Persian literature at NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, where he defended his dissertation, “Each Into a World of His Own: Mimesis, Modernist Fiction, and the Iranian AvantGarde.” MOHAMMAD MEHDI KHORRAMI is Professor of Persian language and literature at New York University. His research field is contemporary Persian fiction. SHOULEH VATANABADI teaches Global Cultures in the Global Liberal Studies Program at NYU. She has been a member of NYU fulltime faculty since 1991. Her areas of specialization include: Cultral Studies; Middle East Studies; Iranian and Turkish Studies; Women’s Studies; Transnational and Postcolonial Studies.
Centering on novels, films, memoirs, and poster art that gave aesthetic expression to the Iran-Iraq War, the essays gathered in this volume present multiple perspectives on the war’s most complex and underrepresented narratives. These scholars do not naively claim to represent an authenticity lacking in official discourses of the war, but rather, they call into question the notion of authenticity itself. Finding, deciding upon, and creating a language that can convey any sort of truth at all— collective, national, or private—is the major preoccupation of the texts and critiques in this diverse collection. DECEMBER 2016 • 304 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-0509-9 • $30.00 CLOTH • 978-1-4798-4158-5 • $89.00 Cultural Studies 53
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When a single image captures a movement
Make Art Not War Political Protest Posters from the Twentieth Century Edited by Ralph Young THE BOOK
THE EDITOR
Two of the most recognizable images of twentieth-century art are Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” and the rather modest massproduced poster by an unassuming illustrator, Lorraine Schneider “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” From Picasso’s masterpiece to a humble piece of poster art, artists have used their talents to express dissent and to protest against injustice and immorality.
RALPH YOUNG is Professor of History at Temple University. He is the author of Dissent in America: The Voices That Shaped a Nation, a compilation of primary documents of 400 years of American dissenters.
As the face of many political movements, posters are essential for fueling recruitment, spreading propaganda, and sustaining morale. Disseminated by governments, political parties, labor unions and other organizations, political posters transcend time and span the entire spectrum of political affiliations and philosophies. Drawing on the celebrated collection in the Tamiment Library’s Poster and Broadside Collection at New York University, Ralph Young has compiled an extraordinarily visceral collection of posters that represent the progressive protest movements of the twentieth Century: labor, civil rights, the Vietnam War, LGBT rights, feminism and other minority rights. Make Art Not War can be enjoyed on aesthetic grounds alone, and also offers fascinating and revealing insights into twentieth century cultural, social and political history.
NOVEMBER 2016 • 128 pages PAPER • 978-1-4798-1367-4 • $29.95 Cultural Studies
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A Monthly Review Press Title
America’s Addiction to Terrorism Henry A. Giroux
THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
In the United States today, the term “terrorism” conjures up images of dangerous, outside threats: religious extremists and suicide bombers in particular. Harder to see but all the more pervasive is the terrorism perpetuated by the United States, itself, whether through military force overseas or woven into the very fabric of society at home. Henry Giroux, in this passionate and incisive book, turns the conventional wisdom on terrorism upside down, demonstrating how fear and lawlessness have become organizing principles of life in the United States, and violence an acceptable form of social mediation. He addresses the most pressing issues of the moment, from officially sanctioned torture to militarized police forces to austerity politics. Giroux also examines the ongoing degradation of the education system and how young people in particular suffer its more nefarious outcomes.
HENRY A. GIROUX currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. A founding figure in the movement for critical pedagogy and author of more than sixty books, including America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, he is one of North America’s most influential public intellectuals. He recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Educational Research Association.
Against this grim picture, Giroux posits a politics of hope and a commitment to accurate—and radical—historical memory. He draws on a long, distinguished career developing the tenets of critical pedagogy to propose a cure for our addiction to terrorism: a kind of “public pedagogy” that challenges the poisoned narratives of “America’s disimagination machine.”
JANUARY 2016 • 288 pages PAPER • 978-1-5836-7570-0 • $20.00 CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7571-7 • $89.00 Cultural Studies 55
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A Monthly Review Press Title
In Walt We Trust How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself John Marsh THE BOOK
THE AUTHOR
Life in the United States today is shot through with uncertainty: about our jobs, our mortgaged houses, our retirement accounts, our health, our marriages, and the future that awaits our children. For many, our lives, public and private, have come to feel like the discomfort and unease you experience the day or two before you get really sick. Our life is a scratchy throat. John Marsh offers an unlikely remedy for this widespread malaise: the poetry of Walt Whitman. Mired in personal and political depression, Marsh turned to Whitman—and it saved his life. In Walt We Trust is a book about how Walt Whitman can save America’s life, too.
JOHN MARSH is associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of two previous books: Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way out of Inequality and Hog Butchers, Beggars, and Busboys: Poverty, Labor, and the Making of Modern American Poetry. Marsh is also the editor of You Work Tomorrow: An Anthology of American Labor Poetry, 19291941. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife and daughter.
Marsh identifies four sources for our contemporary malaise (death, money, sex, democracy) and then looks to a particular Whitman poem for relief from it. He makes plain what, exactly, Whitman wrote and what he believed by showing how they emerged from Whitman’s life and times, and by recreating the places and incidents (crossing Brooklyn ferry, visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals) that inspired Whitman to write the poems. Whitman, Marsh argues, can show us how to die, how to accept and even celebrate our (relatively speaking) imminent death. Just as important, though, he can show us how to live: how to have better sex, what to do about money, and, best of all, how to survive our fetid democracy without coming away stinking ourselves. The result is a mix of biography, literary criticism, manifesto, and a kind of self-help you’re unlikely to encounter anywhere else. FEBRUARY 2015 • 256 pages CLOTH • 978-1-5836-7475-8 • $25.00 Literature 57
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