Arnold Weinstein. The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing, Princeton University Press, £14, 9780691177304, pp352 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan. The Lives of Literature, a valediction by a retiring academic who taught at an Ivy League university for over fifty years,has a lot not going for it. Prone to platitudinizing, paternalistic at times and peppered with […]
Patrick O’Hare Rubbish Belongs to the Poor: Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons, Pluto Press, 2022, 9780745341408, pp240, £19.99 Reviewed by John Wood. Whether from an environmental or geopolitical perspectives, waste management is on the political agenda in 2022. O’Hare – a young and influential activist academic – takes the reader on an impressive journey […]
Gregor Gall (ed.) A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society, Pluto, £14.99, 9780745345062, pp352 Reviewed by Matthew Crighton. I both applaud and am deeply disappointed by this book. As a collection of pieces on the main issues regarding inequalities in Scotland, it has clear analysis and prescriptions from a constellation of excellent […]
As the Calmac crisis continues to push the SNP Scottish Government further towards the rocks, Gregor Gall introduces a major new book on facilitating a future society in Scotland from the Jimmy Reid Foundation. We are now one year into Nicola Sturgeon’s third SNP Scottish Government. Barely a week goes by without a new, regressive […]
Richard Seymour, The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism and Barbarism, Indigo Press, 2022, £9.99, 9781911648413 Reviewed by John Wood Capitalism is a ‘multi-species affair’ whose success is fortified by its ability to produce a superficial ‘screen’ distracting from its destructive origins. This trait, usually in the form of material goods or perhaps digital experiences like […]
Lachlan Munro., R. B. Cunninghame Graham and Scotland: Party, Prose, and Political Aesthetic, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, £85, 9781474498265 Reviewed by Gerry McGarvey R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) was, and remains, the great enigma of Scottish politics. Graham was a quarter-Spanish cowboy in South America; a large Scottish landowner who was the first declared socialist […]
Andrew Cockburn, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine, Verso, 2021, pp288, 9781839763656 Reviewed by Bill Ramsay Cockburn powerfully evidences the theory that where western weaponry is deployed and used is not driven by rational operational far less strategic considerations. Often, what is passed off as strategy are really post-facto ‘rationales’ […]
Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy, Allen Lane, 2021, pp368, 9780241485873, £25 Reviewed by Will Podmore This is an exceptionally useful study of the impact of Covid. Tooze is a noted economic historian, author of Crashed: how a decade of financial crisis changed the world and is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom […]
The book will be available this April – further details in the next issue of Scottish Left Review. Contents Foreword Rozanne Foyer Introduction Gregor Gall The structural development of poverty and inequality Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney Towards climate justice Mary Church, Niamh McNulty and Eurig Scandrett Neo-liberalism and Scotland George Kerevan Economic democracy and […]
Leeanne Elizabeth Clark, My Journey Through Life: The Real Me, 2021, self-published, 9781913632069 Reviewed by Carole Ewart This autobiography is an intriguing story from an author that would usually be overlooked. It is a route map on how to thrive despite her parents and going on to family-based care. It explains the impact of parents […]