Monday May 20th, 2013

Featured Books

An important contribution to knowledge by providing a theoretical framework for analyzing the changing nature of women’s paid work in Asia.
—Swasti Mitter, author, Common Fate, Common Bond; former Deputy Director of United Nations University Institute for New Technologies

Capital Accumulation and Women’s Labour in Asian Economies

The global impact of Asian production of the wage goods consumed in North America and Europe is only now being recognized, and is far from being understood. Asian women, most only recently urbanized and in the waged work force, are at the center of a process of intensive labor for minimal wages that has upended the entire global economy. First published in 1997, this prescient study is the best available summary of this crucial process as it took hold at the very end of the twentieth century. This new edition brings the discussion up to 2011 with an extensive introduction by world-famous economist Jayati Ghosh of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.… | more |

A wonderful book about a courageous and extraordinary woman who was highly principled, yet endowed by nature with all the clandestine skills.
—John le Carré

The Unlikely Secret Agent

Winner of South Africa’s top literary prize, the Alan Paton Award, The Unlikely Secret Agent tells the thrilling true story of one woman’s struggle against the apartheid system. It is 1963. South Africa is in crisis and the white state is under siege. On August 19th, the dreaded Security Police descend on Griggs bookstore in downtown Durban and arrest Eleanor, the white daughter of the manager. They threaten to “break her or hang her” if she does not lead them to her lover, “Red” Ronnie Kasrils, who is wanted on suspicion of involvement in recent acts of sabotage, including the toppling of electricity pylons and explosions at a Security Police office in Durban. But Eleanor has her own secret to conceal.… | more |

Exceedingly well researched and written, this book lays bare the putrid essence of an important component of U.S. imperialism in its current form.
—Ward Churchill, author, Acts of Rebellion

Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror

U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia

Since the late 1990s, the United States has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Colombia, ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State Department-designated terrorist groups. The result has been a spiral of violence that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. This book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work? Scholars Villar and Cottle suggest that the answers lie in a close examination of the cocaine trade, particularly its class dimensions. … | more |

The God Market

The God Market

How Globalization is Making India More Hindu

Against expectations of growing secularism as a result of globalization, Meera Nanda argues that India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this “State-Temple-Corporate Complex,” she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world’s second-most populous country. … | more |