Book picks similar to
History of British Trotskyism by Ted Grant


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Red Star Over the Third World


Vijay Prashad - 2017
    There has never existed such a revolution of such significance and scale in the history of humanity’. – Hồ Chí Minh From Cuba to Vietnam, from China to South Africa, the October Revolution remains as an inspiration. After all, that Revolution proved that the working class and the peasantry could not only overthrow an autocratic government but that it could form its own government, in its image. It proved decisively that the working class and the peasantry could be allied. It proved as well the necessity of a vanguard party that was open to spontaneous currents of unrest, but which could guide a revolution to completion. This book explains the power of the October Revolution for the Third World. It is not a comprehensive study, but a small book with a large hope – that a new generation will come to see the importance of this revolution for the working class and peasantry in that part of the world that suffered under the heel of colonial domination. Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (both from LeftWord). He is a columnist for Frontline and Alternet. He is Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.

Are You Ready for the Country: Elvis, Dylan, Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock


Peter Doggett - 2001
    But the artistically fertile relationship between rock and country music has--since their first encounter in the 1950s--been uneasy and often explosive.

Uneven Development


Neil Smith - 1984
    Featuring pathbreaking analyses of the production of nature and the politics of scale, Smith's work anticipated many of the uneven contours that now mark neoliberal globalization. This third edition features an afterword updating the analysis for the present day.

Prisoner of War: Judy


Isabel George - 2012
    Judy saved Frank’s life many times over and raised the morale of all the men in the camp.Extracted from the bestselling title The Dog That Saved My Life, this short story tells the tale of a dog like no other, a dog who was awarded an animals’ Victoria Cross for her bravery and devotion.

The Good Friday Agreement


Siobhan Fenton - 2018
    The botched parliament at Stormont lumbers from crisis to crisis and has scarcely passed any laws. At the time of writing, Sinn Féin and the DUP are refusing to share power and Northern Ireland is facing being run directly from London.This remarkable book examines power-sharing and the peace process in Northern Ireland on the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and asks what it has achieved beyond an end to violence. She concludes that, although it brought an end to violent blood shed on Northern Ireland's streets, it also failed to create healthy and functional politics.The Good Friday Agreement served an important purpose in 1998, but has since been out-paced by local and global politics. It is no longer fit to facilitate the peaceful politics it made possible, as the current collapse of power-sharing sadly shows.

The Case for Socialism


Alan Maass - 2005
    ClairMass argues that another world—a socialist world—is possible, one in which people come before profit and working people control society democratically, putting the world’s resources to meeting human needs.

A Theory of Justice


John Rawls - 1971
    The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book.Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism


Paul M. SweezyJohn Merrington - 1970
    It ranged such distinguished contributors as Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, Kohachiro Takahashi and Christopher Hill against each other in a common, critical discussion. Verso has now published the complete texts of the original debate, to which subsequent discussion has returned again and again, together with significant new materials produced by historians since then.These include articles on the same themes by such French and Italian historians as Georges Lefebvre and Giuliano Procacci. What was the role of trade in the Dark Ages? How did feudal rents evolve during the Middle Ages? Where should the economic origins of mediaeval towns be sought? Why did serfdom eventually disappear in Western Europe? What was the exact relationship between city and countryside in the transition from feudalism to capitalism? How should the importance of overseas expansion be assessed for the 'primitive accumulation of capital' in Europe? When should the first bourgeois revolutions be dated, and which social classes participated in them? All these, and many other vital questions for every student of mediaeval and modern history, are widely and freely explored.Finally, for the new Verso edition, Rodney Hilton, author of Bond Men Made Free, has written a special introductory essay, reconsidering and summarising relevant scholarship in the two decades since the publication of the original discussion. The result is a book that will be essential for history courses, and fascinating for the general reader.

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life


Jon Lee Anderson - 1997
    Jon Lee Anderson's biography traces Che's extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro's government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian Jungle.Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara's window and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che's comarades-some of whom speak here for the first time-and with CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara's body was buried, which led to the exhumation and stat burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che's life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history."

The Constitution of Liberty


Friedrich A. Hayek - 1960
    Hayek's book, first published in 1960, urges us to clarify our beliefs in today's struggle of political ideologies.

The Story Of The Tour De France


Bill McGann - 2006
    The McGann's passionate and insightful writing evokes the raucous cast of riders, promoters, and journalists thrusting through highs and lows worthy of opera. This volume stands out as a must-read book for anyone seeking to appreciate cycling's race of races." -Peter Joffre Nye, author of The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America's Jazz Age Sport and Hearts of Lions "There are LOTS of books on the Tour de France. An increasing number of them are actually written in English. However, of those, none educates Americans about this grand spectacle�s rich past. The Tour de France has a history as fascinating and sordid as Rome�s and it is high time someone undertook to explain this to our American sensibility. Our guide for the trip is a man with a ravenous appetite for both world history and bicycle racing, just the sort of person to paint a Tour champion with the dramatic grandiosity befitting Hannibal himself." -Pat Brady, Editor, Asphalt Magazine At the dawn of the 20th Century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grace in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange�editor of the Parisian sports magazine L�Auto�took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the 6-day races on the track, but on the road. That�s exactly what happened. For almost 3 weeks the riders in the first Tour de France rode over dirt roads and cobblestones in a grand circumnavigation of France. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the 2 World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex with an ever-changing set of rules, as Desgrange kept tinkering with the Tour, looking for the perfect formula for his race. Each year a new cast of riders would assemble to contest what has now become the greatest sporting event in the world.

Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times


Jerry H. Bentley - 1992
    The author examines the political, social, economic and cultural conditions that enabled one culture to influence or suppress another.

Why You Should be a Trade Unionist


Len McCluskey - 2020
    Drawing on anecdotes from his own long involvement in unions, he looks at the history of trade unions, what they do and how they give a voice to working people, as democratic organisations.He considers the changing world of work, the challenges and opportunities of automation and why being trade unionists can enable us to help shape the future. He sets out why being a trade unionist is as much a political role as it is an industrial one and why the historic links between the labour movement and the Labour Party matter.Ultimately, McCluskey explains how being a trade unionist means putting equality at work and in society front and centre, fighting for an end to discrimination, and to inequality in wages and power.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?


Mark Fisher - 2009
    What effects has this “capitalist realism” had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?

The End of History and the Last Man


Francis Fukuyama - 1992
    Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.