Film star. Icon. Agitator. Martyr.Paul Robeson was a prize-winning scholar and the greatest footballer of his era, even before he ascended to global superstardom as a singer, Hollywood actor, and activist. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson stunned audiences with ‘Ol’ Man River’ and Othello, as his passion for social justice led him from Jazz Age Harlem to the mining towns of Wales, from the frontiers of the Spanish Civil War to Stalin’s Russia.C...

Why did politicians think an independent slave nation might emerge from northern Queensland? Should we clone thylacines? How did a sociopath spur the first European architecture in Australia? What was 'bicycle face' and how did it relate to feminism? Jeff Sparrow has been described as 'one of Australia's most crucial political thinkers.' With restless curiosity his writing takes us from ancient tortoises to the psychology of gun massacres, from queer bushrangers to Enid Blyton, and from at...

A polemic about global warming and the environmental crisis, which argues that ordinary people have consistently opposed the destruction of nature and so provide an untapped constituency for climate action.Crimes Against Nature uses fresh material to offer a very different take on the most important issue of our times. It takes the familiar narrative about global warming — the one in which we are all to blame — and inverts it, to show how, again and again,...

The first book since Christchurch to trace the massacre’s fascist roots and what it represents.The massacre of more than fifty worshippers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, shocked the world. The murders were not random. They expressed a particular ideology, one that the alleged perpetrator described as ‘fascism’.But what does fascism mean today — and what kind of threat does it pose? Jeff Sparrow traces the history of the far right, showing how fasc...

Donald Trump is the Thing-that-should-not-be.The man lives, quite literally, in a building serviced by a golden elevator. Somehow, he presented himself as the scourge of the elites. For decades, he built a persona based on the most conspicuous consumption and the crassest of excess — and then he won the presidency on an antiestablishment ticket. The unlikely rise of Donald J Trump exemplifies the political paradox of the twenty-first century.In this new Gil...

Explores the world of Lambics, Flanders red and Flanders brown beers as well as the many new American beers produced in the similar style.

For more than seventy years, idealists and rebels of all stripes saw in the Communist Party the best hope for a world remade. Who were the people who dedicated themselves to that beautiful dream? How did they experience its shimmering promise - and cope with its shattering collapse? This is the story of Guido Baracchi, the playboy and dilettante who experienced communism at its best - and its very worst. His love affair with Marxism took him from his father's astronomical observatory to th...

How hard is it to kill, as a hunter on a Kangaroo cull, as a worker in an abattoir, as an executioner in a prison, as a soldier at war?Ninety years after World War I, police in a Victorian country town uncover the mummified head of a Turkish soldier, a bullet-ridden souvenir brought home from Gallipoli by a returning ANZAC. The macabre discovery sets Jeff Sparrow on a quest to understand the nature of deadly violence. How do ordinary people—whether in today's wars or in 1915—learn ...

With essays taking the reader from London to Bali, theatre to library and from election campaigns to television, The Meaning of Recognition collects the best of Clive James on art, culture and politics from 2001–2005.Whether analysing Bing Crosby, Bruno Schulz or Shakespeare, celebrating The Sopranos and The West Wing, or lamenting the decline of Formula One, Clive James writes with style and substance, offering food for thought across a ...

'A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times ... If you're looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.' KATE RAWORTH, economist and author of Doughnut EconomicsA Financial Times Book of the Year______________________________________Our planet is in trouble. But how can we reverse the current crisis and create a sustainable future? The answer is: DEGROWTH....

From an acclaimed professor and former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a passionate and edgy defense of free speech in Canada, and the role the internet plays in the issue.In February 2013, Tom Flanagan, acclaimed academic, University of Calgary professor, and former advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, made comments surrounding the issue of viewing child pornography that were tweeted from the event he was speaking at and broadcast worldwide. In the t...

Explore the power of the underdog in Malcolm Gladwell's dazzling examination of success, motivation, and the role of adversity in shaping our lives, from the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia.Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's vict...