When cowboys were workers and battled their bosses In the pantheon of American icons, the cowboy embodies the traits of “rugged individualism,” independent, solitary, and stoical. In reality, cowboys were grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal workers, who responded to the abuses of their employers in a series of militant strikes. Their resistance arose from the rise and demise of a “beef bonanza” that attracted international capital. Busines ...
The true history of the imperial deal that transformed the Middle East and sealed the fate of Palestine On November 2, 1917, the British government, represented by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, declared that they were in favor of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This short note would be one of the most controversial documents of its time. A hundred years after its signing, Bernard Regan recasts the ...
The writings that underpinned the Chinese revolution, introduced by Slavoj Zizek. These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions, and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references from contemporary culture and politics, Zizek’s firecracker commentary reaches unsettling conclusions about the place of Mao’s thought in the revolutionary canon. ...
The extraordinary story of one of slavery’s earliest and most redoubtable opponents The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man—a Quaker dwarf originally from Essex who became one of the first people ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theatre to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage v ...
A classic history of the role of Black working-class struggles throughout the twentieth century This is the first comprehensive historical perspective on the relationship between Black workers and the changing patterns of Britain’s labour needs. It places in an historical context the development of a small black presence in sixteenth-century Britain into the disadvantaged black working class of the 1980s. The book deals with the colonial labour ...
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, Zizek shows why Lenin’s thought is still important today Lenin’s originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, Zizek argues in this new study and collection of original texts, Lenin’s true greatness can be better grasped in the very last couple of years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a ...
The definitive analysis of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India and the challenges for the radical Left With the Hindu nationalist BJP now replacing the Congress as the only national political force, the communalization of the Indian polity has qualitatively advanced since the earlier edition of this book in 1997. This edition has been substantially reworked and updated with several new chapters added. Hindutva’s rise necessitates a more cri ...
Award-winning author China Mieville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down Award-winning writer China Mieville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history. In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world hist ...
The acclaimed and controversial historian turns his critical gaze on the writing of history today Drawing on his four decades as a professional historian, Shlomo Sand interrogates the academic discipline of history, whose origin lay in the need for a national ideology. In the last few decades, traditional history has begun to fragment, yet only to give rise to a new role of historians as priests of official memory. Working in Israel has sharpen ...
