Reviews

If the phrase “war comics” conjures up for you images of magazines with names like “Warlord” and “Commando”, and simple-minded celebrations of militarism and empire, then, please, just ignore the title.

Indeed, the first two selections in this wonderful collection - Keiji Nakazawa's “I Saw It!” (precursor to his epic account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, Barefoot Gen) and Raymond Briggs' “The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman” - are as anti-war a pair of comics as you are likely to find.

Other…

On first approach, Hollow Land appears to be very much an academic study, aimed at architecture/political science/anthropology students.

The language is convoluted, and challenging and demands much of the reader's existing understanding of both post-modern academic discourse and the history and context of the Israeli occupation.

But stick with it. Hollow Land deconstructs and reconstructs architecture and archaeology as never neutral - but instead fundamentally political - practices, used as tools of war and identity building…

The privatisation of so much of the US military machine has been more than just a subplot of the Iraq war, and Jeremy Scahill's comprehensive study of the rise of mercenary company Blackwater is a useful guide to the reconfigured military-industrial complex the anti-war movement now faces.

Blackwater was founded by Christian conservative Erik Prince in 1997 to meet the “anticipated demand for outsourcing” in the US military.

From a relatively low-key initial training role, it has grown to a 20,000-strong mercenary army under…

A US State Department lawyer once explained the goal of kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment of “terrorist suspects”: to “find the legal equivalent of outer space”. That this goal has been largely achieved is illustrated by Clive Stafford-Smith, in a first-hand account of his legal visits to Guantanamo Bay. He describes the torture suffered by his clients, the conditions they endure, and the risible legal process offered to them.

This book, whilst deadly serious and a great resource for activists, has unexpected…

Award-winning BBC business correspondent Paul Mason has set out on an important task in this, his first book: to keep alive the epic and inspirational stories of workers' struggles of days gone by and pass them on to the growing ranks of exploited working classes being created by the current expansion of global capitalism. Mason picks an international selection of key historical moments from the era of the first Industrial Revolution, and pairs them with examples of present day struggles in which the global workforce are facing problems of…

These two books are moving and compelling explorations of the lives of Iraqi women. One is a work of fiction; the other an oral history. While the narrative forms allow an intimate and detailed view of individual lives, both books are suffused with an understanding of how the political situation of Iraq has always gone to the core of how life is experienced.

Haifa Zangana weaves together the stories of five women exiled in London during the late 1990s. Despite differences of politics, background and age, the women are drawn to each…

Following the “collapse” of the Taliban in November 2001, Afghanistan fell off the radars of most anti-war activists. Consequently, many of us have quite a bit of catching up to do - which makes the publication of Bleeding Afghanistan extremely welcome.

Written by two US activists whose work with the Afghan Women's Mission - a non-profit organisation raising funds and awareness for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) - pre-dates 9/11, this is probably the book for activists to read on…

In Do It Yourself the Trapese Collective have succinctly compiled a practical snapshot of DIY culture: the idea that we can build meaningful social change ourselves, here and now.

At 300 pages the book does not set out to comprehensively cover all areas, but instead invites readers to feast on numerous practical suggestions and fill in the blanks with their “insurrectionary imaginations”. By its own admission, the book neglects important areas such as transport, housing, economics, race and gender, but, true to the Trapese Collective…

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The fundamental premise of this surprisingly gripping book is that “individuals rather than governments or companies are going to be the driving force behind reductions in greenhouse gases.”

Annual UK CO2 emissions amount to 12.5 tonnes per person, roughly half of which is generated by individuals running their houses, cars and taking transport. The other half is generated by activities such as agriculture, industry, and transporting goods. By a closely examining the emissions generated by heating houses, driving cars, etc. Goodhall…

What happens when the earth's climate warms by several degrees? Mark Lynas's latest book discusses changes predicted at various levels of global warming. By assigning each of the six chapters to degree of warming, Lynas illustrates the range of scenarios from one degree to six degrees. Some ideas presented will be familiar (rising ocean levels, crop failures, violent storms), but many more will come as a shock (more rainfall predicted for the Sahara desert, the Amazon rainforest easily become a vast empty desert). Lynas carefully supports…

This summer, long-time US peace campaigner/researcher Joe Gerson is visiting the UK for a speaker tour to launch his brilliant new book Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.

Joe Gerson documents operational planning for the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean war, the Vietnam war (early French phase as well as the later US debacle), and later.
Empire and the Bomb records the use of US nuclear threats during the Suez crisis (1956), the Lebanon and Iraq…

“... time was not a single river but something always branching into every possible outcome; time was a tree growing at infinite speed to produce infinite branches, so that there were many pasts and more presents and this very moment is begetting many futures.”
Rebecca Solnit, writing about the Merced River, Yosemite, USA

Place: London, Tate Britain and Parliament Square; Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran... centres of power and then where power acts; centres of resistance... Time: 2001; 2006; 2007; the long clock of injustice and its…

During my years of work in the international and local anti-apartheid movements and my pursuit of poetry that speaks to political reality, I discovered Brutus's poetry and heard of his activism. But I knew few details of his life and work. This book of memoirs, speeches, interviews and poetry is an excellent account of Dennis Brutus, and informed my admiration of his courage, commitment and perseverance.

Classified as “coloured” by the South African government, Brutus's parents were schoolteachers and they instilled a love…

In These Strange Criminals, Peter Brock collects stories of imprisoned conscientious objectors since the First World War, and - with one exception - from the English speaking world; Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA. While at times repetitive - but that's the nature of prison life - the different stories manage to capture the experience of imprisoned COs, their thinking, and also the changes to prison over the course of 50 years.

Brock chose prison memoirs from a wide range of objectors - religious and political -…