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...

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...

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,...

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

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

In 1992, Jeff and Kristi Leeland’s infant son, Michael, needed a bone marrow transplant. It cost $200,000 they didn’t have. That’s when Dameon, the most picked-on kid in the junior high where Jeff taught, emptied his bank account and handed Jeff twelve $5 bills to help save Michael’s life. Other students rallied behind Dameon’s $60 donation of hope--and a community rallied behind them. In less than four weeks, they raised over $227,000 for Michael’s life-saving transplant....

A retired sports' journalist who we come to know only by his nickname, 'Lumpy', decides to tell the life story of one of his earliest and most interesting friends, Robbie Sparrow. The writer is caught in a dilemma; should he 'tell it like it was', or sanitise a life for a more palatable product. After consultation with the subject of the proposed book, 'Lumpy' finally decides to recount the story 'warts and all'.So we share Robbie's naughty, and sometimes wicked childhood, his adve...

Anthology of poetry, art, and short stories from 23 contributors across the globe.