Radicalism Books - Page 6

Encyclopedia of the American Left

List Price: $125.00 By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $104.58

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An important tool that belongs in your shop. Yet.... 4 out of 5 stars.
14 of 18 people found this review helpful.

The new Oxford edition is a big improvement on the first. At least the two major practicing bodies of Marxist-Leninist thought today (ISO & RCP) are at least mentioned by name this time! The context is informative and the critical edge is penetrating. Those of us who have marched with those groups will appreciate a little uninfatuated, academic, outside perspective. The RCP's fading post 70's glory is mercilessly skewered, and the ISO's sectarian hair-splitting is given necessary historical background. But there's something missing from the analysis. Any practicing worker or Marxist/activist will want to know what is GOOD about the parties that survive today. Shouldn't there be some forward thinking? We are still out here, organizing against police brutality, fighting the right-wing backlash, advocating workers' power, fighting for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. There is a vanguard of a real democracy we see only glimmers of in the history of the Left.

Editorial Review:

This is the throughly revised, updated and expanded edition of a groundbreaking reference source--the most comprehensive guide available to the history of radical and progressive movements in America. More than 600 articles (100 new to this edition) written by 300 leading historians cover key figures, events, issues, organizations, and concepts, from Tom paine to the Black Panther Party.

Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War

Greg Palast

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Total reviews: 98 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The “top journalist in America and the funniest” (Randi Rhodes, Air America), takes his previous New York Times bestseller a step further with hot undercover dispatches— hanging out the dirty underpants of the “armed and dangerous clowns that rule us.”

A White House spokesman said, “We hate that sonovabitch.” They’re not alone: From corporate suites to Osama’s cave, they fear what Britain’s Guardian calls “investigations up there with Woodward and Bernstein—and a lot funnier.” But Greg Palast’s fanatic following (nearly two million readers of his Web column) has made him “a cult fave among progressives” (Village Voice) who can’t wait for his next release.

Palast’s old-style gum-shoe detective work to dig out the info on the War on Terror, greed- dripping schemes to seize little nations with lots of oil, the hidden program to steal the 2008 election, and the media biases that keep it unreported are the meat and bones of this BBC television reporter’s new book. Armed Madhouse is illustrated with dozens of documents marked “secret” and “confidential” that have walked out of file cabinets and fallen into Palast’s hands.

You won’t find Palast in The New York Times (except its bestseller list), but you will read his reports on the hottest Web sites worldwide, hear him regularly on Air America and the Pacifica radio networks, and see his stories reappearing as the basis for Eminem’s hit video “Mosh,” Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and sampled by a dozen of today’s top platinum rock artists. BACKCOVER: “The greatest investigative journalist in America.”
—ALAN CHARTOCK, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

“The type of investigative reporter you don’t see anymore—a cross between Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes.”
—JIM HIGHTOWER

“Courageous reporting.”
—MICHAEL MOORE

“Upsets all the right people!”
—NOAM CHOMSKY

Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America

Winston James

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Editorial Review:

A major history of the impact of Caribbean migration to the United States. Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farakhan -- the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is extensive. In this magisterial and lavishly illustrated work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century's first waves of immigrants from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America. Examining the way in which the characteristics of the societies they left shaped their perceptions of the land to which they traveled, Winston James draws sharp differences between Hispanic and English-speaking arrivals. He explores the interconnections between the Cuban independence struggle, Puerto Rican nationalism, Afro-American feminism, and black communism in the first turbulent decades of the twentieth century. He also provides fascinating insights into the impact of Puerto Rican radicalism in New York City and recounts the remarkable story of Afro-Cuban radicalism in Florida.

The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

Randolph Bourne

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Editorial Review:

Randolph Bourne was only thirty-two when he died in 1918, but he left a legacy of astonishingly mature and incisive writings on politics, literature, and culture, which were of enormous influence in shaping the American intellectual climate of the 1920s and 1930s. This definitive collection, back in print at last, includes such noted essays as "The War and the Intellectuals," "The Fragment of the State," "The Development of Public Opinion," and "John Dewey's Philosophy." Bourne's critique of militarism and advocacy of cultural pluralism are enduring contributions to social and political thought, sure to have an equally strong impact in our own time. In their introduction and preface, Olaf Hansen and Christopher Lasch provide biographical and historical context for Bourne's work.

Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today

Harvey Klehr

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 1.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Histories of American radical left groups abound. The Communist party, the tiny Trotskyist movement, and the New Left have all been abundantly chronicled. Very little information has been available, however, about the Radical Left today. Far Left of Center remedies that deficit. Part One deals with the Communist party of the United States, the largest and most influential Marxist-Leninist group in the United States. Part Two deals with Trotskyist, Maoist, the other Marxist-Leninist organizations in the United States. Part Three deals with organizations that eschew formalities to Marxist-Leninist parties and are not under the control of these parties, although they may work with them towards some of the same objectives. The basic premise of this volume is that these far-left groups support and defend oppressive and totalitarian regimes and cooperate with those dedicated to the destruction of democracy and intellectual freedom. The author is careful to distinguish these groups from democratic socialists in the United States, who have vigorously and continuously denounced Marxism-Leninism and those regimes founded on its principles. Klehr has written a sober, well-documented, comprehensive account of the Radical Left in the United States today.

Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical

Yves Engler

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Every student should read this! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is a fun and interesting look at how the author went from being a junior hockey player to becoming a student activist. It's easy to read and aimed at young people, from high school to undergrads. I suspect most old radicals (like me) will also really enjoy it. It gives me hope that the next generation of students might once again be willing to take on the system.
Buy this book!

Editorial Review:

This story of how a former junior hockey player became a media spokesperson for radical university students in Canada gives an inside look at the thinking, motivation, and politics of the latest generation of student activists. Answering questions such as What makes a student radical? and Can students in the 21st century play a part in changing the world?, this autobiography also explains the reasons for and importance of fostering student activism.

The Immigrant Left in the United States (S U N Y Series in American Labor History)

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Subjects -> Law -> Administrative Law -> Emigration & Immigration

Editorial Review:

This book investigates the role immigrant radicals have played in U.S. society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. A valuable contribution to the history of the American Left, it makes use of a wealth of material from immigrants whose everyday speech and intellectual discourse were not in the English language.

The social-history scholarship that informs the essays is innovative in method and purpose. Articles on Mexican-American, German, Jewish, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, Ukrainian, Greek, Arab, and Haitian immigrants supply missing conceptual links between the immigration experience, the neighborhood and the workplace, and political, labor, and cultural institutions. Taken together, they offer a model study in transnational history, one of the most important new fields of historical inquiry. Included are essays by Douglas Monroy, Stan Nadel, Michael Topp, Mary E. Cygan, Maria Woroby, Michael W. Suleiman, Robert G. Lee, Carole Charles, Van Gosse, and the editors.

Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman & the Countercultural REvolustion in America

Larry Sloman

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Although there have been other biographies of the late-'60s radical dissident and counterculture publicist Abbie Hoffman, as well as his own writings such as Steal This Book, this oral biography strikes a valuable chord. Unlike other oral biographies--particularly those organized by George Plimpton around such figures as Edie Sedgwick and Truman Capote--with snobs waffling on about nothing much, the context of Hoffman's fame amid the political struggles of the '60s and '70s fits the mold of a many-voiced, democratic narrative. The interviews were carried out, selected, and assembled by the prolific Larry Sloman, former editor at National Lampoon and High Times, author of On the Road with Bob Dylan, and coauthor of Howard Stern's Private Parts and Miss America. In his own way, Hoffman could be a "shock jock" too, but during such gripping events as the Chicago Seven trial or demonstrations agains the Vietnam War, he could be funnier and sadder than Howard Stern ever was. Plagued by manic-depressive syndrome, psychosis, substance abuse, and relational problems, he ruined his life by choosing to deal drugs, which forced him to go underground for six years late in his life. Hoffman, who died of suicide, nevertheless possessed, as Sloman, who knew him from 1967 on, writes, an "incredibly sharp wit" and "charisma" that won him friends even when he was plainly exploiting them. A lively ride of a book, one that will bring back memories for anyone who lived through these parlous times of America's history. --Benjamin Ivry

Culture and the Radical Conscience

Eugene Goodheart

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Editorial Review:

Debates on culture, politics, and the university have hardly abated since the 1960s when the radical assault on the authority of culture first challenged the classical conception of higher education with imperious demands for relevance and ideological correctness. Since then, campus unrest on the part of students has given way to a radicalized faculty characterized by contempt for high culture, fetishization of pop culture, and increasing absorption by feminism and identity politics. While this development has not gone unchallenged, most have dismissed opponents of traditional scholarship as intellectual nihilists and anarchists. In contrast, Eugene Goodheart's Culture and the Radical Conscience recognizes the moral and cultural roots of radical and utopian tradition while deploring its tendency toward intolerance and narrowness. Goodheart defends the study of serious literature for its interplay of aesthetic response, alertness to political theme, and historical awareness.

Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations With Those Who Shaped the Era

Ron Chepesiuk

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

fascinating 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book taught me so much about the dreaded and lionized radicals of the '60's. It is interesting to note how many of them were economically priviledged. The celebrated protests at Columbia University are an interesting example; Bernadine Dohrn was one such person, who married Billy Ayers, from an enormously wealthy family. Having pursued elite educations in which they would be cordoned off from other people in poorer communities, the students seem to have become self-conscious, and threw their support to the impoverished adjacent areas, especially Harlem. Obviously, many of these priviledged white people are considered silly by Black radicals now, and one suspects this was often the case back then, too. However, they have always been able to talk otherwise, and it is only now that gen-xers and such are able to question the legacy of priviledge and violence of the sixties. White people are much less likely to try to borrow the sufferings of Blacks, and no longer jabber about integration. The sixties radicals were pretty silly in a lot of ways, but they were a start, and this book by Chepesiuk is entertaining if sentimental. And how could someone be sentimental about such political issues of continuing importance? Who knows; but I'm proud to be a seventies-born radical feminist, who respects African-Americans but does not appropriate their struggle. We will never pretend to take the sixties headliners as seriously again.

Editorial Review:

Aroused by the successes of the civil rights movement and galvanized by the antiwar movement, radical leaders of the 1960s sought to make revolutionary changes in American society. Partly through their leadership, a generation was awakened by the call for a counterculture. That generation is now responsible for the same social and political structures they so adamantly, and sometimes violently, opposed. How did the sixties affect the counterculture leaders? And what are they doing now? Paul Krassner, Cleveland Sellers, Jane Adams, Dave Dellinger, Bill Ayers, Warren Hinckle, Peter Berg, Noam Chomsky, Tim Leary, Philip Berrigan, Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Erica Huggins, Jim Fouratt, Bernadine Dohrn, Barry Melton, Peter Coyote, and Abbie Hoffman reflect on the seminal events that dominated the sixties and discuss the major issues and problems facing America (and them!) today.