Books about historical topics can sometimes be a bit difficult. Often, the list of names, facts, anecdotes, and dates is so long that the reader risks getting lost. Moreover, the reasons behind events are not always very clear, nor always explained in a way that is easy to understand.
Walden Bello looks back on Filipino and global struggles
20 August, byIn Global Battlefields: My Close Encounters with Dictatorship, Capital, Empire, and Love, Walden Bello remembers a rich life as a scholar and activist, from agitating against U.S. support for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s to becoming a leading critic of neoliberal globalization to joining the Philippine House of Representatives and running for vice-president.
Indonesia’s Communists Helped Forge Its National Identity
7 June, byReview of Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia by Rianne Subijanto (Cornell University Press, 2025).
“Putin’s Four Antifascist Myths: How Russia Uses ‘Antifascism’ to Justify the War in Ukraine”
27 May, byThe booklet can be downloaded: "Putin’s Four Antifascist Myths: How Russia Uses ’Antifascism’ to Justify the War in Ukraine by Anastasia Spartak (2025), Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Toward a Socialist Approach to Crisis
12 March, byStåle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the ecosocialist Zetkin Collective. His new book makes essential contributions to socialist strategy in our crisis times and, more broadly, to theorizing crisis. He develops a fresh understanding of the ecological crisis as one expression of capitalist crisis tendencies and persuasively argues against the left shibboleth that capitalist crises are good for radicals. “Crises are the enemy,” writes Holgersen, in his characteristically clear, captivating voice. The book will advance thinking among socialists familiar with crisis debates and active in movement struggles. It will also be an excellent resource for people becoming politicized who are newer to radical ideas. I recommend the book both to your radical reading group, and to instructors teaching critical sociology classes at undergraduate and grad levels.
Autonomous for Abortion Care
8 March, byIn the face of escalating restrictions and criminalization of abortion, Naomi Braine’s Abortion Beyond the Law highlights the transformative power of mutual aid and solidarity in ensuring access to abortion, despite oppressive laws.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Trip to Palestine: Facing the Zionist Backlash
19 February, byTa-Nehisi Coates is a celebrated writer, journalist and public intellectual known for his works on racism and the Black freedom struggle. Coates has been praised for his books and essays, including establishment publications. That would change after his 2023 visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Palestine, his first trip to the region.
How the Left Organized the Filipino Diaspora
11 September 2024, byMore than 10% of the population of the Philippines works overseas, sending back remittances that are crucial to the country’s economy. A new book outlines how the Left won this demographic — only to soon lose it
Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem
26 July 2024, byThe Ukrainian publicist Ivan Dzyuba wrote Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem in 1965. Nikita Khrushchev had just been succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev. For several reasons, republishing the book today is a good idea. This 60-year-old book is surprisingly interesting and not only because in 2014 Putin launched a new attempt to Russify Ukraine through force of arms.
Resistance Work” of Women Workers
26 July 2024, byDaria Saburova has written a fascinating three-month wartime field study of the Ukrainian mining town of Krivih Rih (which happens to be the home town of president Zelensky). It focuses on the voluntary “resistance work” of working-class women in this town. (For now, “Resistance Work” of Women Workers. The Ukrainian working classes in the face of war is in French only.)
This is a “situated” investigation: it breaks with the “geo-political” approaches that dominate a section of the left (…)
