Is socialism an impossible, discredited dream or the only realistic path for human survival? If you're not sure of the answer, or are just curious about what the Left really believes in, you need to read Maass. He's the Tom Paine of the contemporary American left."--Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums"This is a vivid, fluent and rare book about socialism for those uninterested in tracts and excited by new prospects."--John Pilger, a...

The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relations...

Discover a new way to read classics with Quick Read.This Quick Read edition includes both the full text and a summary for each chapter.- Reading time of the complete text: about 7 hours- Reading time of the summarized text: 24 minutes"The Blithedale Romance" is a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1852. The story takes place in the mid-1800s and revolves around the conflict between the ideals of a communist community called Blithedale and the private des...

In this widely praised book, Vladislav Zubok argues that Western interpretations of the Cold War have erred by exaggerating either the Kremlin’s pragmatism or its aggressiveness. Explaining the interests, aspirations, illusions, fears, and misperceptions of the Kremlin leaders and Soviet elites, Zubok offers a Soviet perspective on the greatest standoff of the twentieth century. Using recently declassified Politburo records, ciphered telegrams, diaries, and taped conversations, among other...

The collective principle asserts that... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means. — Aneurin Bevan.

These days, it is easy to be cynical about democracy. Even though there are more democratic societies now (119 and counting) than ever before, skeptics can point to low turnouts in national elections, the degree to which money corrupts the process, and the difficulties of mass participation in complex systems as just a few reasons why the system is flawed. The Occupy movement in 2011 proved that there is an emphatic dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, particularly with the e...

"Most Americans first heard of Michael Harrington with the publication of The Other America, his seminal book on American poverty. Isserman expertly tracks Harrington's beginnings in the Catholic Worke"

Cuba has loomed large in American memory and history. Throughout the last half-century, the island and its larger-than-life revolutionary leader have been key players in the Cold War and mythologized by Americans and American politicians. In 2016, relations thawed, and the country opened its doors to American. The Rolling Stones played in Havana. President Obama arrived too in March. He was the first President to visit the nation almost 100 years—since Coolidge in 1928. And then Fidel Cast...

Thought reform is arguably China’s most controversial social policy. If reeducation’s critics and defenders agree on little else, they share the conviction that ideological remolding is inseparable from its Mao-era roots. This is the first major English-language study to explore one of the most important aspects of those origins, the essential relationship between thought reform and the “dangerous classes”—the prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other “lumpenproletarians” that Commu...

This historical study examines America's Cold War diplomacy and covert operations intended to lure Cambodia from neutrality to alliance.Although most Americans paid little attention to Cambodia during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, the global ideological struggle with the Soviet Union guaranteed US vigilance throughout Southeast Asia. Cambodia's leader, Norodom Sihanouk, refused to take sides in the Cold War, a policy that disturbed US officials. From 1953 to 19...

Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America’s “first line of defense” against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL’s “commonsense anticommunism,” she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sed...

Anarchist response to Nikolai Bukharin’s ‘Anarchy and Scientific Communism’; a libertarian critique of the proletarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the organisation of production, etc., by two of Bukharin’s anarchist contemporaries. Includes Rocker’s essay ‘Marx and Anarchism’.This what Lenin’s ‘Golden Boy’ — and, at the time, considered Lenin’s most-likely successor— Nikolai Bukharin, had to say about anarchism . ....