The Spoils of War – Andrew Cockburn
Reading these essays did remind me of having read them
before, since a couple of them I know I already read in Harpers. But it’s worth
it because what Cockburn does show just so many ways that the foreign policy priorities
of the last 20 years goes against what should be our national priorities.
Mainly it’s an appalling list of how many ways we direct our resources to stupid
priorities and how these resources are poorly spent even with those priorities.
Not only do we spend on the wrong things, but we also don’t even do it well.
Well written and will make you justly angry.
The Souls of Black Folk – Du Bois
Du Boise was writing after the general failure of Reconstruction
and reading this made me want to go deeper on the reconstruction history,
especially the failure of the Freedman’s Bank. It’s just a throwaway paragraph,
but it seems like a real important turning point to me. A lot of the essays are
interesting as history, and there’s the sad thing where a lot of them still
feel relevant and pertinent. However, others feel alien, talking about specific
concerns that may have been forgotten. The style is interesting. It’s almost
uncanny – like the cadences are off for a modern reader, maybe it is based on a
then-current speaking style or something. This book is an important bridge from
the postwar era to the rebirth of the civil rights era.
A World Without Police – Maher
This is one of those books that kind of go into greater
detail on things you already know and just say it more fluently and with
greater detail. The policing and justice system are interrelated with so much
of the current social structure and it’s broken (as is the current political
and economic system). Maher will teach you just how this is broken and calls
strongly for abolition. What’s really important here is that it just isn’t a
utopian idea. What Maher calls for is greater community involvement shows examples
how different places have worked though abolition of this incredibly broken system,
from police on the streets to the broader incarceration system.
Feminist Antifascism – Majewska
I’ve been reading more theory lately, and a lot of it does
do that thing where it is written in a way that feels deliberately obtuse stylistically.
Thankfully, Majewska does not do that here. Her book calls for important third
places against fascism and for feminism (thus the title and subtitle). However,
what this book does do is assume familiarity of the reader for a lot of
different other theorists. There’s a section on 131-2 that just drops the names
of 10 different theorists and though I have heard of most of them she didn’t
really even give a shorthand of the ideas of all of them. Partly on me, but it
makes following along a bit harder. What’s weird is that there’s a chapter on
the Polish Solidarity movement where she goes over the movement’s history and I
think that because she isn’t assuming that people know that history she goes
into detail and though it is more alien to me, it is the most successful essay
of the book. Overall, another interesting offering from Verso but had some
hurdles for me.
