Z Books
Recent Z Books
Bayoumi: Midnight on the Mavi Marmara
Nov 16, 2010
Eastern Mediterranean, Monday, May 31st, 2010, 4.30am: Israeli commandos, boarding from sea and air, attack the six boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as it sails through international waters bringing humanitarian relief to the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Within minutes, nine peace activists are dead, shot by the Israelis. Scores of others are injured. The 700 people on board the ships are arrested before being transported to detention centers in Israel and then deported. Within hours, outrage at Israel’s action echoes around the world. Spontaneous demonstrations in Europe, the United States, Turkey, and Gaza itself denounce the attack. Turkey’s prime minister describes it as a “bloody massacre” and “state terrorism.” Lebanon’s prime minister calls it “a dangerous and crazy step that will exacerbate tensions in the region.” In these pages, a range of activists, journalists, and analysts piece together the events that occurred that May night, unpicking their meanings for Israel’s illegal, three-year-long blockade of Gaza and the decades-long Israel/Palestine conflict more generally. Mixing together first-hand testimony, documentary record, and illustration, with hard-headed analysis and historical overview, Midnight on the Mavi Marmara reveals why the attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla may just turn out to be Israel’s Selma, Alabama: the beginning of the end for an apartheid Palestine.
Khuri-Makdisi: The Making of Global Radicalism
Nov 16, 2010
In this groundbreaking book, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi establishes the existence of a special radical trajectory spanning four continents and linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria between 1860 and 1914.
Grubacic: Don't Mourn, Balkanize!
Nov 15, 2010
Don't Mourn, Balkanize! Is the first book written from the radical left perspective on the topic of Yugoslav space after the dismantling of the country.
Dangl: Social Movements and States in Latin America
Nov 09, 2010
In the past decade, grassroots social movements played major roles in electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, but subsequent relations between the streets and the states remain uneasy. In Dancing with Dynamite, award-winning journalist Benjamin Dangl explores the complex ways these movements have worked with, against, and independently of national governments.
Elmi: Understanding the Somalia Conflagration
Nov 07, 2010
Somalia has been devastated by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion and years of civil war, and it has long been without a central government. Against this background of violence, Somali academic Afyare Abdi Elmi, attempts to explain the multiple dimensions of the conflict and find a peace-building consensus Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort. This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.
Sandhu: Left Wing Theory
Nov 01, 2010
Intellectuals and the People is extensively researched and engages with prominent theorists in order to intervene in contemporary debates about the relation of intellectuals to society. It sets out to demonstrate that discussions of the intellectual and society focus upon the vulnerability or declining authority of the intellectual and overlook the extent to which supposed differences between intellectuals and 'other people' support wider existing social and political inequalities. Angie Sandhu focuses on the implication of power and authority for intellectuals and their work and argues against the notion that intellectual autonomy is beneficial either for intellectuals or society. She places intellectuals in a more constructive and egalitarian relation to 'other people', and concludes by referring to the promising development in Latin America, in particular the Zapatistas, who are challenging inequalities and hierarchies within theory and practice.
Reitman: Sister of the Road
Oct 20, 2010
"Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks."
Baillargeon: Find Your Inner Chomsky
Oct 15, 2010
What is the relationship between democracy and critical thinking? What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful?
Baillargeon: Find Your Inner Chomsky
Oct 15, 2010
What is the relationship between democracy and critical thinking? What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful?
Baillargeon: Find Your Inner Chomsky
Oct 15, 2010
What is the relationship between democracy and critical thinking? What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful?
Baillargeon: Find Your Inner Chomsky
Oct 15, 2010
What is the relationship between democracy and critical thinking? What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful?
Dabashi: Iran, The Green Movement and the USA
Oct 14, 2010
This elegantly written book presents an Iran weak in domestic affairs, but strong in regional geopolitics and provides the reader with dynamic picture of the region, and a purposeful analytic of how to understand and deal with it.
Harvey: A Companion to Marx's Capital
Oct 09, 2010
Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.
Lebowitz: The Socialist Alternative
Oct 09, 2010
A new work in a theory of transition to socialism for the twenty-first century.
Ross: Race, Ethnicity, and Education
Oct 08, 2010
Race, Ethnicity and Education moves beyond traditional thinking and approaches to multicultural education to more accurately reflect the dramatically changing circumstances faced by North American schools in an age of globalization. The volumes address ways in which race and ethnicity affect learning across the life span, at all levels of formal education as well as in informal educational settings. Issues of school curriculum, instruction, and administration are examined. These volumes aim to address both the foundational assumptions and the practices of education in relation to changing conceptions of race and ethnicity. Volume One, Principles and Practices of Multicultural Education, examines issues of equity, school reform, teacher education, and school leadership. Volume 2, Language and Literacy in Schools, presents an overview of language and literacy learning for Latino and Asian American students, and gives general and specific recommendations for improved performance. The third volume, Racial Identity in Education, examines concepts of racial and ethnic identity and how they affect teaching and learning. The final volume, Racism and Antiracism in Education, looks at "color-blind racism;" "white supremacy" in the curriculum; race and testing; critical race pedagogy and anti-racist education; and globalization. Outstanding scholars contributing to this timely collection include: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva; George J. Sefa Dei; Donna Y. Ford; Vivian Gadsden; Carl A. Grant; Edmund W. Gordon; Joyce E. King; and Kevin K. Kumashiro.
Censored: Censored 2011
Oct 01, 2010
Each year, as it has for the past quarter century, Project Censored comes up with its list of the top twenty-?ve censored stories—the major new stories that were ignored or under-reported by a mainstream press too busy covering the latest junk food news story.
Chang: Bad Samaritans
Sep 30, 2010
In the 1950s, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. During his childhood, Chang (Kicking Away the Ladder), a respected economist at the U. of Cambridge, witnessed the beginnings of Korea's postwar economic miracle as Gen. Park Chung-Hee's dictatorship (despite its corrupt machinations) set the economic groundwork that would lift Korea out of poverty. Though Korea's strategies are heretical to first world, free-market economists, Chang argues that the world's wealthiest nations historically relied on the same heavy-handed protectionist approaches in their quests for economic hegemony. These wealthy, first world economies, which preach free market and free trade to the poor countries in order to capture larger shares of the latter's markets and to pre-empt the emergence of possible competitors are Chang's bad Samaritans. Chang builds his outsider stance through a history of capitalism and globalization and stories of other struggling countries' economic transformations. The resulting polemic about the shortcomings of neoliberal economic theory's belief in unlimited free-market competition and its effect on the developing world is provocative and may hold the key to similar miracles for some of the world's most troubled economies.
Levy: The Punishment of Gaza
Sep 26, 2010
The story behind Israel’s assault on Gaza, by acclaimed Ha’aretz journalist.
