Magazine Issues

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Issue - 384

Syria

Revolution behind the lines

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In this issue

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Reviews & Culture

The Serpentine’s war room

The Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park has just doubled in size – taking over an old gunpowder store nearby. This was built during the Napoleonic wars “in case of foreign invasion or popular uprising”. It was a time when our rulers were terrified that the French Revolution might be contagious, and felt they needed a...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Fermin Muguruza

Fermin Muguruza is one of the most important musicians from the Basque Country. In 1983 he formed the ska/punk band Kortatu influenced by the Clash and the Redskins. Since the 1980s his music has been part of the Basque fight for justice. Today he has a world wide following. Last month Fermin was in London for a gig where he spoke to Rafel Sanchis.
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Wise Up Ghost

Elvis Costello and The Roots
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

It’s not too often that a Brecht play is staged in the West End and this Jonathan Church production, transferred after a successful run in Chichester Festival Theatre, lends itself well. Brecht wrote the “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” in 1941 as a refugee fleeing Nazi Germany. He was heading for America and uses...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

All My Sons

All Arthur Miller’s plays are brilliant critiques of the immorality of capitalism. All My Sons, written in 1947, is no exception. It is from a true story. In 1941-43, Wright Aeronautical Corporation conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use, resulting in planes crashing and pilots dying. Miller had...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Nothing But A Man

Half a century after being first released, Michael Roemer’s independent film, Nothing But A Man, has finally made it onto a British cinema screen. The film is set in a small town in the Deep South in the early 1960s, eight years after the last lynching has taken place. The black community live as second...
01 October 2013
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Socialist Review Archive

So You Think You Know About Britain?

Since I have been teaching geography in East London for over 15 years, it is not surprising that I have chosen a book by a geographer: Danny Dorling’s So You Think You Know About Britain? Danny Dorling has spent the last ten years or so turning out books and maps that analyse and present data...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Gordon Parks: Photofile

This is a beautiful new addition to the Photofile series. Parks’s photographic career spanned the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The book gives us a revealing history of African American life and much more. Despite being born into poverty in Kansas and sometimes living on the streets, Parks fought to develop his “artistic self” by writing,...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Introducing Marxism

This book is a great little introduction to Marxist theories. The authors use illustrations and text to explain concepts such as historical materialism and the dialectic but without crude oversimplification – very handy if you have to prepare for an emergency meeting on Marx’s ideas. The guide is part of the “Introducing…series”. The publishers Icon...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Salvador Allende

For those who know little of Chile’s 1973 September 11, this is a good starter. President Allende, a brave and decent man, a socialist and a democrat died defending his elected government against a vicious coup that replaced his regime with a Junta of generals who conducted a reign of terror and torture, primarily against...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Command and Control

This well-researched, fascinating and terrifying book is a history of nuclear weapons told through the story of a nuclear accident. The narrative alternates between an emergency at a nuclear facility storing a Titan II missile and the history of the development, use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Schlosser has researched the people responsible for developing...
01 October 2013
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Reviews & Culture

Bolshevism, Syndicalism and the General Strike

Anyone who has read Leon Trotsky’s brilliant writings on Britain will know that he directs some of his strongest invective at a group of left wing union leaders. This book is about one of those men, Alf Purcell. Trotsky’s view was clear – “The chief brake upon the British revolution is the false, diplomatic masquerade...
01 October 2013