Category: Monthly Review Press /

Snappy, absorbing, illuminative account of a life on the American & Irish Left: Logos reviews Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Helena Sheehan is a well-known and well-established presence on the Irish Left, an activist-academic with a strong form in meditative Marxist thought as well more accessible political commentary. As she shows in her new memoir, Navigating the Zeitgeist, it would be almost too obvious to say she led an interesting' life, moving from post-war suburbia and a brief period as a nun, to communism and Irish republicanism; she narrates each of these stages of her life in a fast-moving and engaging (but not always problem-free) style....

Gerald Horne presides at “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda” by Ishmael Reed

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, historian and prolific author--most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse--appears in this Powerhouse Arena launch for the publication of The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a play written by poet, essayist, and playwright Ishmael Reed. Originally produced at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Haunting dismantles the phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Broadway hit musical, Hamilton. Reed uses the musical’s crimes against history to insist on a radical, cleareyed look at our past...

Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a Capitalist Virus: Spectre interviews Rob Wallace

February 20, 2024

RW: As far as Trump getting COVID-19, I think it’s a spectacle and palace intrigue – it serves as a distraction. The very fact that he contracted it is at the same time stupefying, astonishing, and yet utterly predictable....

Socialist Review on John Bellamy Foster’s “The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology”

February 20, 2024

We live in a world that is facing a profound and deepening ecological and social crisis. People are searching for an understanding of how this all happened, and what can be done about it. In The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology John Bellamy Foster has written a comprehensive account of the many socialist thinkers who have developed ecological critiques of society. It is essential reading for all who want to change the world....

New! “Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations”

February 20, 2024

While vaunting itself as an oasis of democracy, the United States, in reality, has become a superpower by infiltrating foreign governments, obliterating entire cultures, and carrying out murderous military interventions in developing countries all over the world. Washington Bullets is about U.S. imperialism—the bullets sent by various Washington, DC administrations to crush revolutions, assassinate democratically elected leaders—to destroy hope....

Green Social Thought reviews “Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution” by Don Fitz

February 20, 2024

Don Fitz’s new book Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution was going to press at Monthly Review in early spring, as the pandemic was ramping up, so he had just barely enough time to slip in a postscript teasingly titled, “How Che Guevara Taught Cuba to Confront COVID-19.” The postscript puts an exclamation mark on the medical history of Cuba that Fitz takes us through in the 240 compelling pages that come before. Based on that history, one would have expected Cuba to take early, decisive actions to stem the pandemic, and Fitz says that’s exactly what happened....

“Trump’s ‘Patriot Education’ whitewashes racist, imperial US history”: Gerald Horne on PUSHBACK with Aaron Maté

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, radical historial and prolific author—most recently of The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century—talks to... READ MORE

Stephanie Urdang speaks at SACP’s panel “Gender Equality and Women’s Emancipation: Lessons learned…”

February 20, 2024

Stephanie J. Urdang, South African anti-apartheid activist, gender specialist, journalist, and author--most recently of Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa--spoke recently on a panel sponsored by the Jack Simons Party School of the South African Communist Party, on "Gender Equality and Women's Emancipation: Lessons learned from the struggle against Portuguese Colonialism." Watch, below, or on Facebook

Trump’s ‘Patriotic Education’ a Call for White Supremacy and Fascism: Gerald Horne talks to Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news

February 20, 2024

1619 vs. 1776? Trump’s recent speech attacking the New York Times 1619 Project and vaunting his own "1776 Project" is an attempt to rally his base, writes journalist Paul Jay, to create a McCarthyite campaign against the left, and devise conditions for hanging on, even if Trump loses the election. Hear historian and author Gerald Horne's on take on all this, as he joins Paul Jay on theanalysis.news podcast...

Anticipating the U.S. presidential election, Gerald Horne talks to The Platypus Review

February 20, 2024

Daniel Jacobs: What led you to research the history of the 16th and 17th centuries with respect to the settler colonial project?
Gerald Horne: A number of factors led me in that direction. One is that I was looking for synthetic overviews of the 16th and 17th centuries and was unable to find those overviews. You can find studies and monographs that deal with various aspects of those two centuries and, as my footnotes suggest, I draw upon those various studies extensively. The second point is when I started on this road I was generally dissatisfied with the origin stories, which I refer to often as creation myths, of the founding of the United States of America..."