On the first anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Verso is publishing a new and updated edition of Peter Hallward's Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment.
On publication, Damming the Flood was called the "first accurate analysis of recent Haitian history" by Paul Farmer, who has since been appointed by Bill Clinton as the Deputy UN Special Envoy to Haiti. This new edition contains a substantive new afterword covering the international response to the earthquake and the run up to the elections.
Published as a new and updated edition to mark one year since the earthquake that devastated Haiti, Peter Hallward's Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment should be considered the book on the region. To reiterate why, here is an exclusive excerpt from the book's new Afterword, entitled "From Flood to Earthquake," in which Hallward states,
In these intolerable circumstances, nothing short of popular remobilization on a massive scale, more powerful, more disciplined, more united and more resolute than before—nothing, in other words, short of the renewal of genuinely revolutionary pressure—holds out any real prospect of significant change for the majority of Haiti's people.
In a review of John Nichols' forthcoming book, Kirkus calls The "S" Word "an important reminder of the invaluable strains of socialist thought throughout American political history, from fighting despotism to creating universal health care." The reviewer goes on to observe how "Nichols brilliantly exposes Glenn Beck's acute ignorance of [Tom] Paine by actually reading and quoting from the impassioned advocate for engaged citizenship."
Detailing his favorite books of 2010 for The Progressive, Editor Matthew Rothschild selects Erik Olin Wright's Envisioning Real Utopias alongside Bill McKibben's Eaarth, Martha Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity, Edwidge Danticat's Create Dangerously, and Andrei Codrescu's The Poetry Lesson.
Rothschild sums up Envisioning Real Utopias as "profound," describing as it does a "vision of a radically democratic and egalitarian society—and some ways we might get there."
Visit Progressive Radio to listen to Erik Olin Wright speak to Rothschild about the new book.