Monthly Review Press

Steve Early, author of Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, contributor to Wisconsin Uprising, and author of The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor (from Haymarket Books), will be speaking at the following events.… | more |

The central aspect of Mészáros’ argument is the impossibility of understanding structure except through history. Furthermore, the denial of history (which is more or less explicit in structuralism and its progeny) is the necessary result of a failure to understand the dialectic of structure and history. Associated with this problem are a whole range of issues, first of all of course, the use of the Marxist concept of base and superstructure. There are also such matters as the relationship between individual and society, as exemplified, in a problematic sense, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s attempts to reconcile existentialism and Marxism. While both Sartre’s and Lévi-Strauss’ work is seen ultimately in terms of failure, Sartre is regarded with considerable respect. In contrast, Mészáros has little patience with Lévi-Strauss, for whom history in itself was a problem.… | more |

In Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now (Monthly Review, paperback, 2010), James D. Cockcroft provides a window to the past and present of the US neighbor. A speaker of English and Spanish, Cockcroft is also a prolific author of books on Mexico, with over a half-century of experience and study there. His new book published a century after the Mexican Revolution arrives at a crucial time, as pundits and politicians “talk loud and say nothing” about the struggles of common people in Mexico.… | more |

It has been almost 10 years since the death of the Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould at the relatively early age of 60. Gould was not only a major figure in the life sciences, he was also one of the great popularizers of science. He wrote a monthly column for Natural History magazine from 1974 to 2001, generating exactly 300 essays that explained complex scientific ideas without oversimplifying them. Ten collections of Gould’s popular articles, together with several other books aimed at a general audience, were best sellers, making him one of the best-known scientists of his generation. A year before his death, he was named a “living legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress. What makes Gould of particular interest to readers of this journal is that his scientific views were informed in interesting ways by his radical politics.… | more |