The Rebuilding Can Begin
Cradle Community, Brick by Brick: How We Build a World Without Prisons (Hajar Press, 2023 (2nd edition)). Reviewed by Beth Ansell.
Book Review
Everyday Acts of Love
Queer Footprints - A Guide to Uncovering London’s Fierce History (Pluto Press, 2023) is a combination of 200 interviews, secondary research, oral herstory* and many stories derived through activism. Its author Dan Glass shares what he realised through its creation.
Review: They Built Proper Shelters
A People’s History of the Cold War: Stories from East and West by Colin Turbett (Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2023) Colin Turbett’s new book gives us a different angle on the Cold War, focusing on the stories of the people impacted by the events of the period. This is a refreshing change from the […]
Review: The Pace of Murder
Never Tell Anyone You’re Jewish: My Family, the Holocaust and the Aftermath by Maria Chamberlain (Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd, 2022). Reviewed by Hamish Kallin. Never Tell Anyone You’re Jewish is a brilliant title for an unsettling and unusual book. The author, Maria Chamberlain, now 77 years old, has lived in Edinburgh since her parents […]
Review: Who Raised the Standard?
Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910-14 (Pluto Press, 2023). Reviewed by Dexter Govan. Since the pandemic, the contradictions around us have become ever more visible. The continued decline in our living standards clashes violently with images of billionaires’ rockets racing skyward. With each day that passes, reports of soaring inflation and poor growth increase […]
Imperialism by Stealth
Sean Sheehan reviews Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East, by Jonathan Parry (Princeton 2022). Promised Lands begins with a bombardment in 1799 against a town in what is now Israel, an opening salvo in the history of British involvement in parts of the Ottoman Empire. The intention of the bombardment was not […]
Rising More Slowly?
John Wood reviews Scotland Rising: The Case for Independence by Gerry Hassan (Pluto Press, 2022) Gerry Hassan has made timely and valuable contributions to our political discourse for around three decades now. His most notable volume remains The Strange Death of Labour Scotland (co-written with Eric Shaw in 2012), examining the decline of Scottish Labour, […]
On the road of relative decline? Two books on Scotland’s economic prospects
Mike Danson reviews two books on Scotland’s economic prospects: After Brexit. The Economics of Scottish Independence, by Gavin McCrone (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2022). ISBN 978 1 78027 762 2. £8.99. pp 188. The Bargain. Why the UK Works So Well for Scotland, by Tom Miers (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2022). ISBN 978 1 78027 769 1. £8.99. pp. […]
Growth in whose interest?
Gordon Morgan reviews Why the West is Failing – Failed Economics and the Rise of the East, by John Mills (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022) This book makes two major points. First, UK GDP growth is 1.4% compared to a world average of 3.5% and China’s rate of 9.1%. This low rate of growth is shared […]
Book Review
Ralph Guentzel, The Quest for a Feasible Utopia: Historical variants of democratic socialism and their contemporary implications, Nomos, 2022, pp238 Reviewed by Dexter Govan. With a bleak winter approaching, it can be difficult to imagine a bright future. And yet, for centuries through grim times as well as prosperous ones, socialists have theorised about what […]