Monthly Review Press

Helena Sheehan Arrives in the U.S. to discuss The Syriza Wave + New Greek Austerity Measures

Helena Sheehan Arrives in the U.S. to discuss The Syriza Wave + New Greek Austerity Measures

As the Greek Parliament approves fresh austerity measures and protests rock Athens and Thessaloniki, author Helena Sheehan arrives on the East Coast, just in time to discuss this explosive situation and her new book, The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left. Over the next two weeks, Sheehan will appear in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, then back to NYC for the Left Forum. Here is a short summary of her tour...

Helena Sheehan at NYU to Discuss The Syriza Wave: May 25, 6:30pm

Helena Sheehan at NYU to Discuss The Syriza Wave: May 25, 6:30pm

Thursday, May 25, 6:30-8:30pm
New York University
King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
53 Washington Square South, Manhattan
Hear Helena Sheehan, author of The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left, talk about her book with Nantina Vgontzas, NYU Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and AKNY-Greece Solidarity Movement member, Thomas Harrison, Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, and Molly Nolan, NYU History Professor.

Aeon: “Who Names Diseases?” – in which Rob Wallace figures prominently

Aeon: “Who Names Diseases?” – in which Rob Wallace figures prominently

In his book Big Farms Make Big Flu, the evolutionary ecologist Rob Wallace draws a direct link between the growing threat of zoonotic diseases, and the agricultural practices that neoliberalism has encouraged—notably, the expansion and consolidation of agribusinesses, and the vertical integration of different stages of food production. The food we eat is produced by an ever-shrinking number of ever-growing mass-production units, in which vast herds or flocks of hybrid animals are packed into megabarns, forced to mature in a matter of months, and then slaughtered, processed and transported around the world.

Oakland, May 30: Against the Corporate Juggernaut – Howard Ryan on Educational Justice

Oakland, May 30: Against the Corporate Juggernaut – Howard Ryan on Educational Justice

Tuesday, May 30
5:00-7:00pm
2027 42nd Ave.
Oakland, CA 94601
With Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the helm, teachers, parents, and students have every reason to organize! But what exactly are we up against? Let’s talk about that with Howard Ryan, author of Educational Justice: Teaching and Organizing Against the Corporate Juggernaut, who will offer an analysis and organizing stories that can help our work.

Jim Young’s Union Power reviewed by Labor Notes

Jim Young’s Union Power reviewed by Labor Notes

For unions in corporate America, it’s always been hard times. Even in labor’s heyday—the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s—unions had to struggle for everything. Plus, back then organizers risked being tarred as stooges for Moscow. ¶ Historian James Young makes those points clear in his readable new book Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania. But the book offers more than history—it’s instructive, showing how a progressive union can survive in the incredibly hostile and toxic environment of corporate America.

“Ragpicking Through History,” we discover, via Salvage, Jimmy Boggs

“Ragpicking Through History,” we discover, via Salvage, Jimmy Boggs

Salvage, a startling new quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters, brings us “Ragpicking Through History: Class Memory, Class Struggle and its Archivists,” an article by Tithi Bhattacharya, in which James Boggs’s The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook receives notice...

“E.P. Thompson’s Socialist Humanism” in Against the Current

“E.P. Thompson’s Socialist Humanism” in Against the Current

“The English working class ‘did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.’ In frequently quoted lines from the preface to The Making of the English Working Class (1780-1832), E.P. Thompson endeavored to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.’ ¶ More broadly, Thompson sought to elucidate class as a historical phenomenon that involved changing human relationships over time, rather than being a static structure or simple category of analysis….”

At least 484 Syrian and Iraqi civilians killed in air strikes, admits Cent Com: Gerald Horne weighs in

At least 484 Syrian and Iraqi civilians killed in air strikes, admits Cent Com: Gerald Horne weighs in

On June 3, The Independent and other media reported that the U.S.-led coalition (or Central Command) admitted killing at least 484 civilians in air strikes against Isis in Syria and Iraq. Gerald Horne, historian and author of several books, including the upcoming The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean, appeared on RT International to discuss this report and its “scandalous understatement” of the loss of innocent lives.