Reviews

Tess Burrows set out to climb Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, knowing it would be a challenge she was prepared for a physically tiring journey that would push her to the very limits of her capabilities. Little did she know, however, that the spiritual journey she would undergo while climbing Chimborazo would far surpass the strenuous physical one.

In this autobiographical true story, Tess, her partner Pete, and their friends Mig and GT are the integral members of the Climb for Tibet team. Their goal is to climb to the point furthest…

How can we prepare for the 21st century without considering the four new contracts proposed in The World Ahead?

Mayor and Bride propose a new social contract. It requires that: the third industrial revolution and its accompanying globalisation work in an ethical manner; a new natural contract to coexist with the environment; a new cultural contract, whereby the intangible treasures of cultures will be enhanced and their conviviality promoted; and finally a new ethical contract, without which we shall never vanquish poverty…

This manages to be both an utterly charming book, and to convey a serious message. Skip the introduction its fine, but you can get the explanations of Zapatismo from a hundred other places. Maybe go back to it when you've read the stories. Which are marvellous.

Marcos is well-known for his writing, especially the eloquent communiqués which emerge periodically from the Lacandon jungle. These stories are a different breed whimsical, funny, literary. Don Durito de la Lacandon, a beetle knight errant who represents the self…

As states increasingly contravene or discard international treaties in the name of the war against terror, the task that Trident Ploughshares (TP) 2000 set itself in 1998 seems more challenging, but at the same time increasingly more necessary.

Through attempts at the practical disarmament of Britain's Trident nuclear submarines, and subsequent appearances in British courts, TP aims to challenge to the legality of Trident, and so ensure that the British government respects the body of international law, which they and others believe…

This is a book of essays, written by H bomb survivors and concerned citizens.

It is a very useful book for anyone wanting to hear about the first use of the nukiller bomb, and about what nuclear weapons actually do to people.

It also contains messages of support from various foreign leaders, which include several presidents and prime ministers.

Unfortunately, this also includes a message from the still controversial ex-UN Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim. Perhaps something could be done about that if a fourth edition…

On the night of 13 October 1965, the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer was working at home; his family had already moved, for their own safety, to his mother-in-law's house.

Around 10.30 pm, a crowd gathered outside and began to throw stones at the house. Police officers and soldiers arrived, telling Pram that they had come to “take him to safety”. Instead, he was taken to the Army Reserve Strategic Command Post.

He was held in a variety of prisons until 1969, when he was shipped to the prison island of Buru - an…

Appearing in English for the first time, this fascinating little book tells the story of Nikolai Trofimovich Iziumchenko (1867-1927), a peasant conscript to the Imperial Russian Army whose Tolstoyan beliefs led to his two-year imprisonment in a penal battalion.

Following a short, and informative, introduction from the book's editors, Iziumchenko's story is reproduced in translation with minimal annotation, making the account both accessible and readable for those with no prior knowledge of nineteenth-century Russian history or the…

We'moon on the Wall is a full colour, beautifully illustrated, month at a glance lunar calendar. With “Priestessing the Earth” as its theme, the 2002 version celebrates the work that women are doing all over the world to heal and tend the Earth, to empower women, and to make the world a safer place.

This focus on women's activity draws together the calendar’s poetry and exquisite pictures – the burst of gold that heralds July's “Sun Priestess”; the dynamism of March's “Amazon Warriors of the Bronze Age”; the power in the flow of…

This is a very useful work, which includes a 76-page bibliography that might well be described as an essential reading list for radicals.

The most useful part of this publication is devoted to directory of radical periodicals, which provides not just contact details, but also descriptions of what political issues they cover. However, these are mostly Canadian, US and British periodicals.

Many of them will already be well known amongst North American activists. For example: Adbusters, Nonviolent Activist and The Nuclear…

As an individual involved in nonviolent direct action, I'm often suspicious of academic books about activism. What purpose do they serve? They are too often "studies of" rather then any advancement of debates or ideas.

They seem to have little effect in informing the mainstream press or persuading them to be any more open or honest in what they write - as seen in media coverage of the Mayday "riots", which became "riots" some weeks before they actually took place. And the…

I had a Rwandan student who told me that during the genocide of 1994 husbands in cross-community marriages would kill their wives (and vice-versa). It is beyond imagining. This was not some bureaucratically organised, impersonal, rational process like the Holocaust of the Second World War. This was a genuinely popular genocide.

What most of us cannot understand is how it came about that hundreds of thousands of people who had never killed before took part in the mass slaughter. It is to Mamdani's credit that he does make the…

This is a kind of concept album about pirate-radio and death-row. The premise being that it’s the night before a revolutionary, activist nun (yes, nun), who advocates the medical use of marijuana, is about to be executed.

Hmmm... Michael Franti is a lovely, great guy, and this album has a lot to recommend it (it's on in the office a lot). Issues are sensitively covered, the songs are fantastic, beautifully arranged, hitting the political-soulful-funk spot perfectly. But the snippets of faux pirate-radio... aarrrgghhh! If it wasn't…

Though a relatively short book, this is a dense and scholarly work. It attempts to contextualise human rights within a three-fold setting - the philosophical, the legal and the political - with the emphasis on the latter, and usually least acknowledged, area.

It is a book which needs careful reading since it condenses many of the current and past theories in international relations, and critiques them in the light of the new era of globalisation, whilst never losing sight of what actually happens on the ground.

The basic…

“We started in a small way, but now this has snowballed to an extent where you don't know what will happen next....” (Guardian Weekly, 14 September 2000). It was one of the most successful protests in Britain for years, causing severe disruption to road and rail transport. Within two months the government was making concessions to the protesters' demands - lower taxes on road vehicles and their fuel.

Resistance and empowerment are sometimes commanded by activists almost as ends in themselves. But are some forms of empowerment right…

This is a revolutionary book; but Colin Hines doesn't believe in revolution.

The book's main point - that capitalist globalisation of the economy must be replaced by business and production based on the local - is a radical one, but he does not see a social shake-up on the cards.

Most of his argument seems to be directed at the supporters of the free market to convince them that localisation is necessary and possible. Chapter titles such as “Localisation will Bale Out the Market” stake out the position of the former…