Tag: reviews

Review: Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate

Media Mouse has posted a review of the new anthology Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate edited by Howie Hawkins in the book reviews section of the site. The book provides an interesting and highly useful exploration of both the failures of and lessons that can be learned from the Green Party’s 2004 presidential campaign as well as the greater questions of progressives and electoral politics.

Review: The Best War Ever

Media Mouse has posted a review of Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber’s new book, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, in the book review section of the site. The book picks up where their 2003 book Weapons of Mass Deception left of and examines the ways in which the major media has failed to investigate government claims in the Iraq War and has consequently played a major role in perpetuating the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts.

July 4 Book Review: Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

As the country gets ready to observe independence day, we might find it useful to ready Anthony Arnove’s most recent book on the issue of US troops in Iraq. The title is modeled after a book that radical historian Howard Zinn wrote in 1967 called Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. Not only does Arnove’s book share the same title as Zinn’s book, he shares similar arguments and the same conclusion. This is Arnove’s second book on Iraq, the first of which was an excellent collection of essays written during the late 90s entitled Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War. In many ways, if the anti-war movements in the US had paid attention to issues raised in Arnove’s first book, we might have a much different analysis of and strategy for ending the US occupation of Iraq now.

Read the full review of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

Reviews: Black Liberation and Socialism, Confronting Fascism, and Strip Show

Three new book reviews—Black Liberation and Socialism, Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement, and Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire—have been posted in the book review section of the site. While all of there books offer valuable background information for those organizing broadly for a better world, Confronting Fascism and Strip Show address issues that have been of particular concern for activists in Grand Rapids—the increase in neo-Nazi activity and the question of how to deal with sexploitation (“sex industry”) clubs such as Showgirl Galleria. Similarly, Black Liberation and Socialism offers an essential overview of black history and race in the United States.

Book Reviews: Gone Tomorrow and How Nonviolence Strengthens the State

Reviews of Gone Tomorrow and How Nonviolence Strengthens the State have been added to the book reviews section of the site. Heather Rodgers’ Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage is an intriguing look at the history of garbage, the corporatization of trash, its environmental consequences, and the history of consumerism in the United States. In Peter Gelderloos’ How Nonviolence Strengthens the State, Gelderloos provides a critique of nonviolence and looks at the ways in which nonviolence serves to aid the state. While the argument is not particularly well developed, it offers a number of insights that will hopefully lead to a more critical view of nonviolence.