From A Fine Old Conflict
by Jessica MitfordExpress
In the following excerpt from her memoir A Fine Old Conflict (1977), Jessica Mitford describes her life in postwar Oakland, where she and her husband Bob Treuhaft raised a family and became active in left-wing politics.
Intro to The War Before
by Laura WhitehornExpress
In the following excerpt from The War Before, coming soon from the Feminist Press, former Weather Underground member Laura Whitehorn introduces Safiya Bukhari, who became a member of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. A longtime political prisoner, then prison activist, Bukhari died in 2003. The War Before is a collection of Bukhari’s writings.
The War at the End of the World
by Rehan AnsariExpress
After an October of attacks in Pakistan, at a UN office in Islamabad, Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and police academies in Lahore and with the Pakistan Army backed by the US attacking the tribal areas of Pakistan—I decided to have a conversation on Skype with a Pakistani writer I spent some time with in Lahore last winter.
RANA HUSSEINI with Robert S. Eshelman
by Robert S. EshelmanExpress
In Murder in the Name of Honor (Oneworld), Jordanian journalist Rana Husseini describes how she became a leading voice against so-called honor killings, first, investigating the issue for the Jordan Times newspaper and, then, helping to found a grassroots movement seeking to end the practice.
How Most of the World Lives: The End of Poverty?
by Williams ColeExpress
One result of the latest downfall of the American financial system is that there’s been more critical discussion and news coverage of unemployment, lack of economic development, homelessness, and hunger in the U.S.
A Different Sort of Blowback
by Forrest HyltonExpress
Cocaine is a central commodity of the neoliberal age; so, too, its re-processed form (“crack”) for the desperately poor in de-industrialized cities of the North and South Atlantic.
A Look on the Bright Side
by Michael SandlinExpress
Continuing in the vein of his once-timely Gates of Eden (1977), a solid but conventional socio-cultural history of the 1960s, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression is reputable pre-boomer cultural historian and literary critic Morris Dickstein’s latest attempt to illuminate a historically tumultuous decade via a broad critical survey of its major cultural achievements.
The Man in Black and Red
by Margaret EbyExpress
In 2005, journalist Antonino D’Ambrosio stumbled upon Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian and had an epiphany: “Johnny Cash was a folksinger.”
On the Anti-Fascist Front
by Nisa QaziExpress
As our largely corporate print news structure endlessly brainstorms ways to survive the oft-cited and euphemistic transition from print to digital while remaining solvent, it’s illuminating to consider that when Ralph Ingersoll launched the short-lived but influential PM in 1940, he resolved not to include advertisements so that the paper would be beholden to no one.
A Theory of Everything
by Paul HiebertExpress
Malcolm Gladwell has lots of questions. What can the United States Air Force teach doctors about detecting breast cancer? What does a dance instructor look for in a competent dog trainer? Why are there so many different kinds of mustard, but only one kind of ketchup?
Tears of a Clown
by Christopher MichelExpress
Glenn Beck doesn’t bother me all that much. My secret: I don’t really watch his TV show, and I’ve only heard his radio show a few times. Aside from other people’s rants about him, my only real sense of Beck comes from the occasional mocking YouTube clip where his guests pass out, he screams at his callers, or gets tripped up during interviews on other shows.
By the Numbers
by Katie RolnickExpress
The title of Mark. A. R. Kleiman’s new book on crime and incarceration reduction, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, allegedly comes from an engineering adage. If it’s not working, you’re not using enough, or so they say.
Letter to the Editor
by Raphael RubinsteinExpress
In his review of Eliot Weinberger’s Oranges and Peanuts For Sale (September 2009), Michael Sandlin describes Vicente Huidobro, George Oppen and Gu Cheng as “obscure long-deceased poets.”
