If you think the latest tome of Giddens’ Sociology is the one textbook you need to get you through your undergraduate days, think again. Impress your tutor and learn something beyond the lecture theatre with these essential Verso titles.
Bolster any politics, philosophy, economics, literature, sociology or history essay with one of these books and not only score the grade, but begin your lifelong love affair with radical writers.
On October 31st Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, authors of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, spoke at Town Hall Seattle with economics Professor Dan Jacoby. Their conversation, broadcast on C-SPAN's BookTV, challenges the dominant economic theology that assumes globalization to be the natural progression of western capitalism. The authors, whose work Jacobi calls "magisterial," discuss in detail the formation of this ideology after World War II. Probing both the union's emphasis on individual consumption and the anti-globalization movement's tendency towards stasis, Gindin and Panitch call for more effective tactics in the quest for economic reform.
The author was also featured on a recent segment of GritTV with Laura Flanders, where she warned against getting comfortable in the wake of another Obama win:
It is with sadness and much admiration today that we mourn the passing of Spain Rodriguez, whose vivid and politically charged work shaped a counterculture's graphic sense. As one of the original cartoonists involved with the legendary Zap Comix and a contributor to the East Village Other during its golden years, Rodriguez created a gritty illustrative style that influenced a generation of left-leaning graphic novelists.
In this video, filmed outside the Verso Brooklyn office, Rodriguez speaks to the origins of his career, his compulsion to draw— "For me, it's like smoking"— and his fascination with Che Guevara.
This time a year ago, Occupy camps across the country found themselves dismantled, handcuffed, and power-washed away in a move coordinated by several city administrations, forcing the network of activists and anti-capitalists who once gathered in those public spaces to find alternative modes of protest.
A year later, at least here in New York, that network is leaping into action with a speed and force that's caused even the apparatus of the state -- FEMA and the National Guard, most notably -- to recognize Occupy Sandy and on some occasions seek its aid. Its a testament, at the very least, to the organizational prowess of a movement that has been continuously churning out projects, if not media-mandated spectacle, throughout 2012.
Sarah Leonard, one of the editors of last year's Verso title Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America and a member of the Dissent Magazine team, recently surveyed the post-election landscape.