A deft and caustic takedown of the new prophets of profit, from Bill Gates to Oprah. As severe environmental degradation, breathtaking inequality, and increasing alienation push capitalism against its own contradictions, mythmaking has become as central to sustaining our economy as profitmaking. Enter the new prophets of capital: Sheryl Sandberg touting the capitalist work ethic as the antidote to gender inequality; John Mackey promising that f ...
A manifesto of sexual liberation, from the leading feminist thinker. Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? This is the central question of Straight Sex, Lynne Segal’s account of twentyfive years of feminist thinking on sexuality. Covering the thought of sixties-era sexual liberationists, alongside the ensuing passionate debates over sex and love within feminist and lesbian communities, Segal covers certain shifts toward greater sexu ...
Gripping maritime history from below with pirates and escaped slaves. Outlaws of the Atlantic turns maritime history upside down, exploring the dramatic world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants and other builders of empire, but rather from the point-of-view of common people whose labors made that world possible—sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates, and other outlaws, whose formative experiences at s ...
“Marvelously drawn tribute to free thinkers … Engaging, informative, and inspiring.” – Joe Sacco The countercultures that came to define bohemia spanned the Atlantic, encompassing Walt Whitman's Brooklyn and the Folies Bergere of Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein's salons and the Manhattan clubs where Dizzy Gillespie made his name. Edited by Paul Buhle and David Berger, Bohemians is the graphic history of this movement and its illustrio ...
Breathtaking and brilliantly illustrated—reclaiming the city with extreme urban explorations It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us—the cities we live in—that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city’s edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis? Explore ...
Capitalism’s colonization of every hour in the day. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life. Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable n ...
A moving life story from a leading voice in America’s immigrant rights struggle. Alfredo Gutierrez’s father, a US citizen, was deported to Mexico from his Arizona hometown—the mining town where Alfredo grew up. This occurred during a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria stoked by the Great Depression, but as Gutierrez makes clear, in a book that is both a personal chronicle and a thought-provoking history, the war on Mexican immigrants has rarely ab ...
Part of Verso's classic Mapping series that collects the most important writings on key topics in a changing world. In nearly two decades since Samuel P. Huntington proposed his influential and troubling ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, nationalism has only continued to puzzle and frustrate commentators, policy analysts and political theorists. No consensus exists concerning its identity, genesis or future. Are we reverting to the petty na ...
Tackling the myth of a post-racial society. Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive a ...