Into the Verso Archive
We've been delving deep into the Verso Archive recently, looking back at some classic works from our backlist (& their changing covers). First up, Immanuel Wallerstein's Historical Capitalism in its many iterations: 1983 (left), 1999 (right), and the most recent edition from 2011 in the middle. This, along with ALL our books, are 50% off until the end of the year (with free shipping!
Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization by Immanuael Wallerstein
The master of world-systems theory provides a succinct anatomy of capitalism over the past five hundred years.
All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience into Modernity by Marshall Berman
All That Is Solid Melts into Air is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest books on modernity. A kaleidoscopic journey into the experience of modernization, it captures the dizzying social changes that swept up and transformed the lives of millions of people.
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? See the 1983 edition here.
Critique of Everyday Life: The One-Volume Edition by Henri Lefebvre
Lefebvre's classic analysis of daily life under capitalism, brought together in one complete volume for the first time. Written at the birth of post-war consumerism, Critique was an inspiration for the 1968 student revolution in France. It is a founding text of cultural studies and a major influence on the fields of contemporary philosophy, geography, sociology, architecture, political theory and urbanism.
Lineages of the Absolutist State by Perry Anderson
“The breathtaking range of conception and the architectural skill with which it has been executed make his work a formidable intellectual achievement.” – New York Review of Books
Forty years after its original publication, Lineages of the Absolutist State remains an exemplary achievement in comparative history. Picking up from where its companion volume, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, left off, Lineages traces the development of Absolutist states in the early modern period from their roots in European feudalism, and assesses their various trajectories. See an old archive edition here.
The Anti-Social Family by Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh
First published by Verso in 1982, this sensitive but uncompromising socialist-feminist critique of the nuclear family was reissued as part of our Feminist Radical Thinkers earlier this year. As the nuclear family persists as a structure central to contemporary society, this book remains as pertinent as ever.
See also the beautiful new Verso editions of Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure by Lynne Segal (First published by Virago Press 1994), Woman’s Consciousness, Man’s World by Sheila Rowbotham (first published by Pelican Books 1973), and Woman’s Estate by Juliet Mitchell (first published by Pantheon Books in 1971).
The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher
Published over the course of ten years, beginning in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography turned back the tide of Stalin’s propaganda, and has since been praised by everyone from Tony Blair to Graham Greene. In this definitive work, now reissued in a single volume, Trotsky’s true stature emerges as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.
Aesthetics and Politics
The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From New Left to New Labour by Colin Leys and Leo Panitch
Supposing the Subject Edited by Joan Copjec
Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England by Christopher Hill
Communities of Resistance: Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism by A. Sivanandan