When I studied at university, I had access to reprinted editions of many American left publications. Among them was Labor Action, the weekly newspaper of Max Shachtman’s Workers Party. I have never forgotten the headline…
One of the great speeches in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” is made by Robert Duvall, playing a somewhat insane U.S. Army colonel in Vietnam. After delivering his oft-quoted “I love the smell of napalm…
By the time this book was published in 1934, the name of Ievno Azef had already faded from popular memory. But a quarter century earlier, he had achieved infamy as the most dangerous man in…
Keke would have been so proud. When her son Joseph was growing up in the small, dusty town of Gori, she dreamed that one day he would be a priest. He did eventually study at…
Sixty years after Boris Nicolaevsky wrote his account of the notorious Ievno Azef — the most infamous police agent to ever infiltrate a revolutionary organisation — Richard E. Rubenstein took a crack at the same…
Last year, I read Thomas Mullen’s Blind Spots, a novel set in the near future with an intriguing premise. I enjoyed it, and looked forward to reading The Rumor Game. This book is set in…
Colman Domingo has just been nominated to win an Oscar for best actor. I hope he wins — and not just because he did an excellent job playing American civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in…
The Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020 were a high-water mark for Socialist politics in the U.S. Sanders, who campaigned as a Democrat, won over thirteen million votes, 43% of the total, in his…
I admit it: I like reading books about ageing, life extension, and immortality. These seem to fall into two categories. Some authors expect to live forever because of the vitamin cocktails they drink every morning…
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) exists to certify that products coming from the world’s forests are produced responsibly. You may never had heard about the FSC, but if you look around your home, you’ll see…