Monthly Review Press

“We Told Him All”: Alan Wieder talks to PopMatters about Studs Terkel

February 20, 2024

At this writing we Americans find ourselves at the ass end of 2016 after a slog of an election year in which we elected a bankrupted reality TV star as the president elect… The people of the United States have spoken and they do not want progressive, liberal ideas at this time. ¶ For the rest of us, Studs Terkel—the great oral historian, champion of the common man, political activist, radio host, and listener—couldn’t be more relevant now. Author Alan Wieder recently released a timely and engaging biography, Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation. Mr. Wieder and I engaged in some conversation about Terkel’s life and work.

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February 20, 2024

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Marx and the Earth, by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, reviewed in International Socialism

February 20, 2024

Marxist analyses of the natural world have been the focus of intense debate recently, and the publication of any book that further explores what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels thought about the subject is something to be welcomed. John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett have proven track records of writing some of the clearest books on the subject, and while Marx and the Earth is not a specific response to some of their recent critics, it is an important defence of Marx’s and Engels’s original work.

The Socialist Imperative reviewed in Against the Current

February 20, 2024

The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now 224 pp, $24 pbk, ISBN: 9781583675465 By Michael A. Lebowitz Reviewed by Karin Baker “I read plenty of articles, short and long, on... READ MORE

Alan Wieder talks about Studs Terkel on WFMT, Studs’s old Chicago radio station

February 20, 2024

Alan Wieder recently visited Chicago’s WFMT studios (98.7FM) and joined Tony Macaluso to discuss his book, Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation. Studs was a long-time WFMT host, free-spirit, and renowned oral historian.

“What does it mean to smash the state?”: Leo Panitch interviewed by LeftEast

February 20, 2024

Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, has also been an editor of The Socialist Register for 25 years. With Greg Albo, Panitch edited the 2017 edition of SR, Rethinking Revolution. During a recent trip to Belgrade, Panitch was interviewed by the Serbian left-wing portal, MAŠINA. The Eastern European platform, LeftEast, translated the conversation from Serbian into English.

“Why Inequality Matters”: Steve Early, in Counterpunch, reviews Michael Yates’s new book

February 20, 2024

Radical economist and Monthly Review associate editor Michael Yates grew up in a western Pennsylvania manufacturing town. He spent more than three decades working as a college professor. Yet, despite his own academic career, Yates never lost touch with the life experience of high school classmates, friends, neighbors, and relatives who toiled in blue collar jobs...

New! Catch The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left

February 20, 2024

Utterly corrupt corporate and government elites bankrupted Greece twice over by profligate deficit spending and by agreeing to an IMF “bailout” of the Greek economy, devastating Greek citizen. Finally, in response to “austerity” measures, the people of Greece stood up, electing, from their own historic roots of resistance, Syriza—the Coalition of the Radical Left. ¶ A seasoned activist and participant-observer, Helena Sheehan adroitly places us at the center of the whirlwind beginnings of Syriza, its jubilant victory at the polls, and finally at Syriza’s surrender to the very austerity measures it once vowed to annihilate. The Syriza Wave is a page-turning blend of political reportage, personal reflection, and astute analysis.