Book Reviews

Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams’s latest book on the fragile and fitful Northern Irish peace process is subtitled “Making Peace in Ireland,” and the text is prefaced by a Seamus Heaney poem: History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave But then, once in a lifetime The tide of justice can rise…

The goal that Cockburn and St. Clair’s collection of essays aspires to achieve is quite ambitious: “To lift [the] embargo” over “criticizing Israel.” This provocative collection only partially achieves this aim; moreover, I am uncertain that their volume is actually conducive to a more rational and open debate over U.S. policies toward Israel. Most contributors…

In the dark aftermath of September 11, a little-known but renewed quest began to take shape around the Muslim world, a quest geared at achieving social justice. If the problem of terrorism is to be addressed intelligently, religion cannot simply be brushed aside but instead must be reconfigured to meet global challenges. In a controversial…

Emerging from the shock waves of 9/11, this book itself is something of an event. For the first time, philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida appear side by side answering the same questions about the same topic: the philosophical and political consequences of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Habermas is known not only as the…

It takes little more than a cursory glance at American politics to recognize that notions of morality and sin, right and wrong, basically set the process in motion and determine which policies move forward and which languish. Religious and moral fervor of one sort or another influence policy decisions regarding medicine, cell research, public health,…

At a time of deepening political and moral crisis, not only for the Israeli government but for the entire Zionist project, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has produced a book purporting to set the record straight by rebutting all the accusations leveled against “the sole outpost of liberty and democracy in the Middle East.” The…

BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY: No End To War By Walter Laqueur A Long Short War By Christopher Hitchens Why We Are At War By Norman Mailer What Next By Walter Mosley Why Do People Hate America? By Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies The War Against the Terror Masters By Michael Ledeen Public discourse…

Rum and revolution have been associated together for centuries. Rum is “the global spirit with its warm beating heart in the Caribbean,” the one factor that is shared by all the cultures of the region, and enthusiastically drunk by the descendants of those who were enslaved to produce it. I began drinking rum with uninformed enthusiasm…

The Land Beyond Promise: Israel, Likud and The Zionist Dream by Colin Shindler Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid by Marwan Bishara I In The Land Beyond Promise Colin Shindler provides an historical perspective on one of Israel’s main political movements, namely, the Nationalistic-Right. In particular, Shindler traces the development of Israel’s biggest political party, the Likud.…

Just as the building trades workers’ attack on New York anti-war demonstrators in May 1970 came to symbolize the gulf between labor and the new social movements, the November 1999 Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization now evoke the hope of cooperation between them. Bringing together blue-collar union members, environmentalists costumed as sea turtles,…