Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Martin Duberman, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (New York: The New Press, 2012) Anthony Arnove, Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009 ed. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012)   The American Association of University Professors was founded 100 years ago in 1915 to defend academic freedom for professors who were initially under siege…

The Invisible Bridge, the book jacket informs us, “is the story of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” Thus are we introduced to the third volume of Rick Perlstein’s exploration of the birth and growth of contemporary American conservatism, centering on the rise of Ronald Reagan. (He has produced other books centering on…

The Brecht Industry rolls on: doctoral dissertations, journals, blogs, websites, YouTube, and memoirs comprising millions of pages, much to the consternation of the boys at the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, who must be musing on how it is that an ardent anti-capitalist has entranced the cognoscenti and, much like Che, taken the moral high-ground…

Of late, the tendency of media pundits and so-called Middle East experts has been to explain developments in Iraq as being due to factors intrinsic to that country and the region as a whole. They are viewed as being rooted in history, either of recent vintage—that is, as a consequence of the artificial borders set…

At a time when ‘shining’ India seemingly stands poised to become a global economic powerhouse steered by new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, selected by an increasingly impatient and disgruntled electorate, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen’s book, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, serves as a timely critical eye-opener for anyone interested in understanding the…