Best of
History-And-Politics

2002

The History of American Trotskyism, 1928-38: Report of a Participant


James P. Cannon - 2002
    In this series of twelve talks given in 1942, James P. Cannon recounts a decisive period in the efforts to build a proletarian party in the United States.

Othello's Children in the New World: Moorish History and Identity in the African American Experience


José V. Pimienta-Bey - 2002
    Later referred to as 'Prophet' Noble Drew Ali, he would teach the so-called 'Negro' ('Black') public of the 1910s and '20s that they were specifically 'Moors,' and that they needed to publicly declare their Moorish nationality and Islamic faith. Drew Ali insisted upon the designation of 'Moor,' while relatively few of his contemporaries understood or appreciated the logic of placing such emphasis upon a 'Moorish' nationality. With the exception of Shakespeare's fictional 'Othello,' few 'mainstream' Americans knew anything of consequence concerning 'Moors' in any Western society. But before his passing in 1929, Ali's Moorish Science Temples would expose 'Negro' Americans to historical information connecting them to a 'Moorish' identity. Using primarily a historical methodology and drawing directly from M.S.T.A. literature, this work explores the key postulates of the Moorish Science Temple movement"--Amazon.co

Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness


Richard Kearney - 2002
    Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skilfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters.Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how Strangers, Gods and Monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them.

Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race: Culture, Social Movements, and the Politics of Race


Maxine Leeds Craig - 2002
    The Afro, as worn most famously by Angela Davis, became a veritable icon of the Sixties.Although the new beauty standards seemed to arise overnight, they actually had deep roots within black communities. Tracing her story to 1891, when a black newspaper launched a contest to find the most beautiful woman of the race, Maxine Leeds Craig documents how black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements.

Class Struggle and Resistance in Africa


Leo Zeilig - 2002
    Includes interviews with leading African socialists and activists.With contributions from Leo Zeilig, David Seddon, Anne Alexander, Dave Renton, Ahmad Hussein, Jussi Vinnikka, Femi Aborisade, Miles Larmer, Austin Muneku, Peter Dwyer, Trevor Ngwane, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, and Azwell Banda.Leo Zeilig coordinated the independent media center in Zimbabwe during the presidential elections of 2002 and, prior to this, worked as a lecturer at Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. He then worked for three years as a lecturer and researcher at Brunel University, moving later to the Center of Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg. He has written on the struggle for democratic change, social movements, and student activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Zeilig is co-author of The Congo: Plunder and Resistance 1880–2005.

Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che


Max Elbaum - 2002
    Revolution in the Air is the definitive study of how radicals from the sixties movements embraced twentieth-century Marxism, and what movements of dissent today can learn from the legacies of Lenin, Mao and Che.

For Queen and Country: One Man's True Story of Blood and Violence Inside the Paras and the SAS


Nigel "Spud" Ely - 2002
    From the Falklands to the Persian Gulf, he has been in the very center of the most ferocious fighting scenes modern history has witnessed. Armed to the hilt with the most up-to-date, hi-tech military machinery and his highly-toned fighting skills, Steve is truly a force to be reckoned with. For Queen and Country is his account of his most bloody, violent, heroic moments.

History and National Life


Peter Mandler - 2002
    Why do people care about history? It is still casually assumed that the 'point' of history is to tell us 'who we are'. History and National Life, by a historian whose last book The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (in effect a history of much of the 'heritage' idea) was hailed both by historians and general reviewers as 'superb', 'wonderful', splendid', 'fascinating' and 'enthralling', argues that history is less directly 'useful', but also richer than that. Here, Peter Mandler, writing largely in a British context, examines how successive generations use central historical totems (e.g. Henry VIII, Starkey's Elizabeth, the Walter Raleigh of the cover, the Civil War, World War One) for their own purposes - educational, moral, cultural or political. He concludes with a look at the debate about national English/British identity.

In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey


Jere Van Dyk - 2002
    It is also a portrait of an exotic land and people desperately struggling for survival during that war, as they are today. In 1981, with a letter and some financial backing from The New York Times, Van Dyk, bearded and dressed as an Afghan, sneaked into Afghanistan , then off-limits to foreigners, and lived in the ruggedly-beautiful mountains and desert of this country with the Mujahideen, the men then fighting the Soviet Union. “My spine tingled like a boy’s. I felt the sensation of adventure…The Turbans of ten laughing young men, armed to the teeth, flapped in the wind…I would not have traded this moment for all the money in the world. It was suicidal, magnificent, and I knew we’d be all right.” But it was close. He lived through Soviet ground and helicopter attacks, saw death and suffering, but also laughter. He had much to learn about Islam, tribal traditions and the holy war the guerrillas were waging. He was accused of being a Soviet spy, but ultimately won the trust of his Afghan guides. He saw a strong, courageous, often frightened people fighting to protect the only thing they knew--their homes, their families, their way of life. The author, a former runner, a fledgling politician and writer, who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family in a small town in the Northwest, also went looking for something deep among these men who shouted “God is Great” and went into battle against the Red Army. His story is about the people he met and his journey.