Monthly Review Press

New! “Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living”

February 20, 2024

How can we build a future with better health and homes, respecting people and the environment? The 2020 edition of the Socialist Register, Beyond Market Dystopia, contains a wealth of incisive essays that entice readers to do just that: to wake up to the cynical, implicitly market-driven concept of human society we have come to accept as everyday reality. Intellectuals and activists connect with and go beyond classical socialist themes, to combine an analysis of how we are living now with visions and plans for new strategic, programmatic, manifesto-oriented alternative ways of living....

“Timely anachronism”–New West Indian Guide reviews “The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism”

February 20, 2024

This latest work by Gerald Horne, born January 3, 1949 and still producing history monographs at a rate of knots, inspired me to wonder why he is not better known in Britain. ...

Health care beyond neoliberalism?–Social Theory & Health reviews “Health Care Under the Knife”

February 20, 2024

That capitalist medicine prioritises the generation of surplus value over the health of populations should be obvious to any critical student or scholar in the field, but where Waitzkin and colleagues depart from this basic assumption is in demonstrating the political economy of health in the current phase of neoliberalism where, for example, the processes of financialization have eclipsed material production….

Lying to pretend things are OK: ResoluteReader looks at “The Lie of Global Prosperity”

February 20, 2024

The end of 2019 has seen a growing ‘global revolt’ in countries as varied as Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Ecuador, Catalonia and Lebanon. Seth Donnelly's new book is not about these revolts, but is an explanation of the dynamics that have driven the impoverishment of the Global South and how the ruling class seeks to justify things....

Raising the bar for biographical writing: Marxist Left Review looks at “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

February 20, 2024

Michael Heinrich has raised the standards of biographical writing with Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society. In content and scope, it is an unparalleled work of scholarship. It makes Marx relevant to our understanding of capitalist society, while cutting down the overgrown myths about him....

“A deep look into the dark world of the jazz industry”–Portside reviews Gerald Horne’s “Jazz and Justice”

February 20, 2024

“No artist is able to overcome, through his own individual resources, the contradiction of enchained art within an enchained society. The most which we can hope to accomplish is the contradiction of such a society through emancipated art, and even in this attempt he might well be the victim of despair.”—Theodor Adorno

Author Eve Ottenberg reviews Seth Donnelly’s “The Lie of Global Prosperity”

February 20, 2024

Neoliberals love to quote the World Bank’s rosy statistics about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, those statistics are skewed and manipulated to the point of outright prevarication, as Seth Donnelly demonstrates in his book, The Lie of Global Prosperity. He quotes a breathless World Bank press release, ‘soon 90 percent of the world’s population will live on $1.90 a day or more’…

Marx & Philosophy looks at “Trump in the White House”–modestly hoping that looming tragedy turns into farce

February 20, 2024

‘The only conceivable answer today to cascading planetary catastrophe is a broad-based ecological and social revolution, in which the population mobilizes to protect the future of humanity: a revolutionary war for the planet’...

“Of interest to all radicals and political gossips”–Dublin Review of Books considers “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Autobiographies are tricky things. The memoir can ground the writer in external events or situations and provide an objective rationale. The autobiography places oneself at the centre of the narrative and is an act of whopping self-regard that demands a weighty justification...

New! “Shamrocks and Oil Slicks: A People’s Uprising Against Shell Oil in County Mayo, Ireland”

February 20, 2024

Shell promised wonderful things.... But when the citizens of County Mayo realized what Shell actually intended to do, they rose up. Shamrocks & Oil Slicks tells the story of County Mayo—the fishermen, farmers, teachers, business people—who, motivated by love for their environment, their community, and their country, fought one of the planet’s most powerful destroyers to a standstill.