The case for space
In the last few days, NASA has twice had to abort launches of the Artemis mission to the Moon. By the time this article appears in print, there may be another attempt, a successful launch…
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Review: The Con Man, by Ed McBain
Having failed to kill off Detective Steve Carella in the previous book, the 4th book in the long-running 87th Precinct series has him playing a star role. As in many of McBain’s novels, there are…
Review: Proletarian dictatorship and terrorism, by Karl Radek
At the time he wrote this in 1920, Karl Radek was a loyal Bolshevik. This short book, like Trotsky’s more famous Terrorism and Communism, was written in rebuttal to Karl Kautsky’s book of the same…
Review: The Pusher, by Ed McBain
Even in 1956, when Ed McBain wrote this book, drug addiction was a problem in the United States. Like so many of the books in the 87th precinct series (this is the third), this story…
Review: The Mugger, by Ed McBain
This is the second book in McBain’s legendary 87th Precinct series, set in a fictionalised (albeit recognisable) New York City. McBain was experimenting with the idea of a whole team as ‘hero’ of the series…
Haunted by Andrey Vyshinsky’s Ghost
Last week I sent out a message to tens of thousands of trade unionists alerting them to two bits of news. The good news, I reported, was that some workers in Poland had won a…
Review: Cop Hater, by Ed McBain
I began reading the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain nearly 40 years ago, having stumbled upon them entirely by accident in a library. McBain (real name Evan Hunter) is widely seen as the inventor…
Review: Kindred, by Octavia Butler
This book is a cross between Jack Finney’s time travel classic Time and Again and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Written in 1979 and set three years earlier, it tells the story of a young African…
Review: Journey to Karabakh, by Aka Morchiladze
This is a very strange — and to me, sad — book. It was Morchiladze’s first novel, published in 1992, and describes the journey of two young men from Tbilisi to Armenia. As Georgia began…
Review: Karl Kautsky, by Dick Geary
British historian Dick Geary, who passed away last year, apologised several times in the course of this short book for not being able to go into any detail. That’s because the book was a part…