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More than four billion people—some 60 percent of humanity—live in debilitating poverty, on less than $5 per day. The standard narrative tells us this crisis is a natural phenomenon, having to do with things like climate and geography and culture. It tells us that all we have to do is give a bit of aid here and there to help poor countries up the de...
Aaron Bastani
May 19, 2021Also recommended by
David Heinemeier HanssonBestselling, magisterial melding of global environmental history and global political history.......
Aaron Bastani
May 19, 2021
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the cou...
Aaron Bastani
May 12, 2021Also recommended by
Ch Fawad HussainA major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers. Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.Now, we approach our new home.AURORA....
Aaron Bastani
Mar 28, 2021In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Ann...
Aaron Bastani
Mar 17, 2021It was the year of the glorious Battle of Britain, of the heroic evacuation of Dunkirk. It was the time when the mighty British empire declared its intention to fight the Nazis-alone if necessary-to the bitter end. It was, as Churchill dubbed it, Britain's "Finest Hour." In 1940: Myth and Reality, Clive Ponting reveals that it was nothing of the so...
Aaron Bastani
Jan 21, 2021
The People's Republic of Walmart
How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism (Jacobin)
Since the demise of the USSR, the mantle of the largest planned economies in the world has been taken up by the likes of Walmart, Amazon and other multinational corporationsFor the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the ol...
Aaron Bastani
Dec 07, 2020Writer and critic Vivian Gornick's classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life."Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class." So begins Vivian Gornick's exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse...
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Corey Robin'Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain ... You will not find a better informed history' David Goodhart, Evening Standard'A striking new perspective on our past' Piers Brendon, Literary ReviewFrom the acclaimed author of Britain's War Machine and The Shock of the Old, a bold reassessment of Britain's twentieth century.It is usu...
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Duncan Weldon
The Jakarta Method
Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World
The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist par...
Aaron Bastani
Sep 19, 2020Also recommended by
Rob Delaney
Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency
War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
What does the COVID 19 tell us about the climate breakdown, and what should we do about it? The economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented. Governments have spoken of being at war and find themselves forced to seek new powers in order to maintain social order and prevent the spread of the virus. This is often exer...
Aaron Bastani
Aug 19, 2020The History Thieves by Ian Cobain
Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain
The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara
The BBC by Tom Mills
Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek