The following is Joan Stone’s Foreword to Dispersed City of the Plains by Harris Stone, his final book, published by Monthly Review Press in 1998. It provides a little context for the book’s creation and insight into Harris’s major aim: examining “the built form of the American city, the built form of monopoly capital.” | more…
Nancy Stout is the author of One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution. In this in-depth interview, Stout discusses Sánchez’s life, her role in the Cuban revolution, and her relationship with Fidel Castro. The interview was conducted by Hazel Kahan for her Tidings podcast and WPKN in Bridgeport, CT. | more…
Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker are well known for their important contributions to the study of Latin American Marxism, Latin American revolutionary politics and Jose Carlos Mariategui’s thought. Their new joint contribution is a volume that makes available to English readers a considerable number of Mariategui’s shorter texts… Mariategui, an undoubtedly gifted journalist, political author and literary critic, offers readers engaging and rich perspectives—mainly but not exclusively Latin American and Marxist ones—on some of the main issues that concerned European and Latin American progressive public opinion at the time. These translations are a welcome and useful aid for all engaged in teaching Latin American history and literature, the history of socialist ideas, indigenismo, world history, third world studies and so on. | more…
Salim Lamrani is the author of The Economic War Against Cuba. On May 26 he discussed the history, impact, and possible demise of the U.S. imposed economic sanctions against Cuba at Secular Hall in Leicester, UK. The event was a joint meeting of the Leicester Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Leicester Secular Society and part of a UK speaking tour organized by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. | more…
Giroux offers a compelling primer for the chaos that neoliberalism has wrought on our youth and education system. Giroux writes with passion that borders on poetic. And, unlike a lot of critical theory, the book is intelligible and easy to read. It would make a welcome addition any OWS-style people’s library or intro-level college class. | more…
Bruce Neuburger is the author of Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California. Join him for a talk at Revolution Books in New York City on June 11 at 7pm. | more…
Horace Campbell is the author of Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. Join him for a book talk at Busboys and Poets, the 5th and K Location, in Washington DC. | more…
Don’t miss the closing plenary featuring John Bellamy Foster, plus panels on Lettuce Wars and the struggles of farmworkers today, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya and an appraisal of the Libya invasion, a Socialist Register panel considering The Question of Strategy, and a discussion of István Mészáros, TINA, and OCCUPY. Don’t forget to visit the MR Press table for discounts on a wide range of titles, new and old! | more…
Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid, forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. In this segment he remembers the Rivonia Raid fifty years after it happened. The South African government in the early 1960s attacked the Rovonia farm, then occupied by the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party. These two groups, from which Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo came, were against the apartheid government. | more…
Salim Lamrani presents a comprehensive and systematic study of the United States’ economic sanctions against Cuba and the harm they cause the Cuban people. Lamrani delicately combines a heartrending catalogue of human suffering with robust analysis—including the examination of official U.S, government documentation—as he considers the origins, provisions and legality of the blockade. | more…
The Cuban revolution so closely associated with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara also involved those such as Camilo Cienfuegos, Eloy Menoyo, Frank Pais, and Celia Sanchez, all revolutionary heroes in their own right. Sanchez was Castro’s supporter, confidante, and—depending on the source—his lover. In this impressive biography Stout (reference librarian, Fordham Univ. Libs.; Havana: La Habana) utilizes interviews, Cuban archives (to which she was granted special access by Castro himself), letters, and other documents to provide an accurate portrait of Sanchez, who ran the planning organization of the revolution after the death of Pais in 1957… Highly recommended for readers and scholars of Cuban history. | more…
Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid, forthcoming from Monthly Review Press. He was interviewed by Portland’s KBOO Community Radio about his book and the lives of Ruth First and Joe Slovo. | more…
Two years after the failed NATO intervention, Libyan society is in chaos. Over 50,000 were killed in a mission that was meant to protect civilians, and there are reportedly more than 1,700 competing militias marauding the streets. One outcome of this chaos was the attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. There have been Congressional hearings on this attack, and on May 8, U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called another inquiry into the September 11, 2012 event. | more…