What I liked most about this book was that the authors raise questions without answering them. Instead of asserting, as so many books of this type do, that (fill in name here) conspired to kill…
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Imagine if at the height of the Second World War psychiatrists had the opportunity to pluck one of the Nazi leaders out of Germany and subject him to years of close observation. Imagine what we…
I first came across Greil Marcus as someone who wrote about popular music — with a particular interest in Bob Dylan. It turns out that he has written about many aspects of American culture and…
The Manchurian Candidate tells a completely implausible story – or does it? Following his capture by Soviet troops during the Korean War, a U.S. soldier named Raymond Shaw is brainwashed and turned into the perfect…
I have just re-joined the Labour Party. Some people will say that one should never leave the Labour Party. Whatever it did, whatever bothered you and made it difficult to remain a member, you should…
In 2002, John Judis wrote a book predicting a new Democratic majority. It was his riposte to Kevin Phillips’ The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) which correctly predicted a quarter century of conservative Republican dominance of…
In 1939, British writer Geoffrey Household imagined how a lone sniper might attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian vacation home near Berchtesgaden. Two years later, anti-Nazi German director Fritz Lang — now exiled…
A few days ago, following up on a suggestion I made to LabourStart’s mailing list that people try out the secure messaging app Telegram, I received an interesting question. I had mentioned that pro-democracy protestors…
First of all, this is a terrific book. It is, in one sense, a coming-of-age story, but it is so much more. At the heart of the story is the eponymous Daniel whose life changes…
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is “lamentable”, “utterly useless”, a “creep” and a “shit”. Those are not the words of Donald Trump, but they are all used in an article in this newspaper last week….