Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

“Dead Epidemiologists:” A personalized, enlivening take on Covid-19

“Dead Epidemiologists:” A personalized, enlivening take on Covid-19

Author Rob Wallace made a decision: His new book Dead Epidemiologists would take a personal approach. How could it not? While he introduces his work through this intimate lens, Wallace’s perspective is global, tracking “the implications of capitalist agricultural production, distribution and consumption that is harming the web of life….”

Of men who do nasty things: CounterPunch reviews Vijay Prashad’s “Washington Bullets”

Of men who do nasty things: CounterPunch reviews Vijay Prashad’s “Washington Bullets”

So far, Biden’s foreign policy does not differ seismically from Trump’s. Indeed Biden’s first move–recognizing the unelected pretender to the Venezuelan presidency, Juan Guaido–was as lousy as anything Trump did. It raises the specter of CIA coups, assassinations, regime changes and Washington-orchestrated color revolutions, which Biden’s two dreadful foreign policy appointees, Victoria Nuland and Samantha Power, embraced ardently in the past. Of course … this has been how the U.S. has exercised power in the world (mostly the Global South) since at least the dawn of the twentieth century….

“Washington Bullets” offers hope: People’s World on Vijay Prashad’s new book

“Washington Bullets” offers hope: People’s World on Vijay Prashad’s new book

The 20th century saw a wave of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, national liberation movements transform the world, often with the aid of Soviet, Eastern European, and Cuban Communists. Just as often, these revolts against the old world–the racist, sexist world of subjugation and oppression of entire peoples–were violently suppressed…. Unfortunately, historically, inevitably right-wing opposition takes the shape of bullets–bullets emanating from Washington!…

The Chinese Rural Commune with Zhun Xu, author of “From Commune to Capitalism”

The Chinese Rural Commune with Zhun Xu, author of “From Commune to Capitalism”

Matt and Christian, hosts of Cosmonaut, join Zhun Xu, author of From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty for a discussion on China’s communes from their construction to their dismantling. They contextualize land reform globally, elaborate on how the Chinese land reform process looked different from the Soviet one, discuss how the communes looked and functioned, and what services they provided as well as their achievements and their points of failure….

Tracing the History of Black Gun Ownership in the U.S.: Gerald Horne on The Takeaway

Tracing the History of Black Gun Ownership in the U.S.: Gerald Horne on The Takeaway

While the face of the gun rights movement tends to be white conservatives, Black Americans are also contributing to the recent gun industry boom. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, gun sales by Black men and women rose 58 percent in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019. The choice that some Black Americans are making to arm themselves in self defense is just one part of a long, complicated chapter in U.S. history. Gerald Horne, a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston and author of The Bittersweet Science, joined Tanzania Vega on The Takeaway to discuss.

There’s a lot to tell: Irish Echo on Helena Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

There’s a lot to tell: Irish Echo on Helena Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

“We talked long into the night calling into question everything we had been brought up to believe….One night, it was all cozy and almost comfortable when I was in a pub with Billy and Seamus drinking, talking, and laughing for several hours. I would think back on it later with a strong sense of pathos, in light of what happened later, in light of how they both died. On that night, however, we were comrades and all seemed well,” says Helena Sheehan in a recent interview with The Irish Echo…