Z Books
Recent Z Books
Roy: Listening to Grasshoppers
Jun 20, 2010
Combining fierce conviction, deft political analysis, and beautiful writing, this is the essential new book from Arundhati Roy
Conant: A Poetics of Resistance
Jun 19, 2010
"Being a true tale of a possible better world in its first untamed imaginings."
Ondrias: Democracy vs Communism
Jun 10, 2010
The book describes an unbelievable destruction power of capitalistic democracy on the society (economy and culture) in the former socialist countries after 1990. This statement is concluded from statistical data summarized in 112 graphs.
Fake: Darfur Intervention & U.S.A.
Apr 13, 2010
"Kevin Funk and Steven Fake have written a devastating critique of the ‘humanitarian’ response of the United States to the Darfur crisis, while offering a genuine humane alternative that would lessen the ordeal, if not bring it to an end. Well-researched, easy to read, and utterly convincing, a crucial book for anyone concerned about achieving a morally and politically acceptable U.S. foreign policy." –Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of Law Emeritus, Princeton University
Sitrin: Horizontalidad
Apr 13, 2010
Una historia oral de los nuevos movimientos sociales que surgieron en Argentina después de la crisis económica de 2001.
Sitrin: Horizontalism
Apr 13, 2010
An oral history of the popular rebellion and social creation in Argentina after the 2001 economic collapse.
Obi: The Rise of China and India in Africa
Apr 08, 2010
This book examines in detail the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing presence of China and India in Africa, and proposes critical interventions that African governments must undertake in order to negotiate with China and India from a stronger and more informed platform.
Patel: The Value of Nothing
Mar 25, 2010
Opening with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system. If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world’s worth. If we don’t want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common. This short, timely and inspiring book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics. While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate and economic crises is a political one. If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn’t often said who gets to make them. The Value of Nothing offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.
Davis: In Praise of Barbarians
Mar 20, 2010
In Praise of Barbarians Essays Against Empire by Mike Davis
Postman: End of Education
Mar 12, 2010
The End of Education is a book by Neil Postman about public education in America. The use of the word "end" in the title has two meanings: primarily, as a synonym for "purpose", but also as a prediction about the future of public schools if they do not successfully identify and communicate an inspiring, unifying narrative about their purpose within our culture.
Allen: The Lord's Resistance Army
Mar 11, 2010
Authoritative but provocative, The Lord's Resistance Army provides the most comprehensive analysis of the group available, dismantling numerous myths and providing a wealth of information that is not widely known.
Vltchek: Oceania
Mar 04, 2010
"André Vltchek has compiled a stunning record in evoking the reality of the contemporary world, not as perceived through the distorting prisms of power and privilege, but as lived by the myriad victims. He has also not failed to trace the painful - and particularly for the West, shameful - realities to their historical roots. In this work, Vltchek extends his penetrating gaze to a lovely, desecrated, almost forgotten vast area of the world, Oceania, which he shows to be "a microcosm of almost all major problems faced by our planet. He brings to light the strength and courage of the people, and their achievements, and explores the hopes for decent recovery and survival if the powerful can allow themselves to comprehend what they have done, and to accept the responsibility of actually protecting their victims instead of mouthing comforting and self-serving slogans." - Noam Chomsky
Vltchek: Oceania
Mar 04, 2010
"André Vltchek has compiled a stunning record in evoking the reality of the contemporary world, not as perceived through the distorting prisms of power and privilege, but as lived by the myriad victims. He has also not failed to trace the painful - and particularly for the West, shameful - realities to their historical roots. In this work, Vltchek extends his penetrating gaze to a lovely, desecrated, almost forgotten vast area of the world, Oceania, which he shows to be "a microcosm of almost all major problems faced by our planet. He brings to light the strength and courage of the people, and their achievements, and explores the hopes for decent recovery and survival if the powerful can allow themselves to comprehend what they have done, and to accept the responsibility of actually protecting their victims instead of mouthing comforting and self-serving slogans." - Noam Chomsky
Laird: The Price of a Bargain
Feb 26, 2010
The story of the rise of the bargain in consumer culture and how dependent they are on: cheap oil, abundant cheap labor, and massive spending.
Shah: The Fever
Feb 23, 2010
An urgent, far-reaching examination of one of the deadliest diseases in history. In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names—and opened their pocketbooks—in hopes of stopping the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a pathogen that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly one million of them? In The Fever, journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer those questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we’ve invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wartimes and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria’s jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it. With distinguished prose and original reporting from Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere, The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity. Sonia Shah is an investigative journalist and the critically acclaimed author of The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients and Crude: The Story of Oil. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New Scientist, The Nation, and elsewhere. Available from Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux in July 2010 Available at Amazon.com and elsewhere.
Jones: Intro to Politics
Feb 18, 2010
Politics 101 in plain English.
Vltchek: Oceania
Feb 13, 2010
"André Vltchek has compiled a stunning record in evoking the reality of the contemporary world, not as perceived through the distorting prisms of power and privilege, but as lived by the myriad victims. He has also not failed to trace the painful - and particularly for the West, shameful - realities to their historical roots. In this work, Vltchek extends his penetrating gaze to a lovely, desecrated, almost forgotten vast area of the world, Oceania, which he shows to be "a microcosm of almost all major problems faced by our planet. He brings to light the strength and courage of the people, and their achievements, and explores the hopes for decent recovery and survival if the powerful can allow themselves to comprehend what they have done, and to accept the responsibility of actually protecting their victims instead of mouthing comforting and self-serving slogans." - Noam Chomsky
Vltchek: Saya Terbakar Amarah Sendirian
Feb 13, 2010
Pramoedya Ananta Toer telah memutuskan untuk berhenti berkarya dan buku ini membeberkan alasan mengapa keputusan itu diambil. Pramoedya membeberkan alasan-alasannya yang tidak lain merupakan kelanjutan dari apa yang sudah ditulis dalam buku-buku Pram - sikap membangkang, menolak, menantang, tak kenal kompromi menyangkut kebebasan dan nalar serta individualisme yang disebut ``pramisme``.
Vltchek: Western Terror
Feb 13, 2010
Western Terror is a book of essays and political commentaries by Andre Vltchek that revisits many complex regional conflicts on our planet, including in the United States, Iraq, India, East Timor, Indonesia, and Latin America.
Vltchek: Point of No Return
Feb 13, 2010
Point of No Return shows the world through the eyes of a war correspondent, visiting places that are rarely covered by the mainstream media, offering provocative points of view about the pitiful state of today's world, its disparities and scandalous post-colonial arrangement - including global market fundamentalism and neo-conservative culture that are overthrowing democratic principals that humanity has fought for over the centuries.The narrator of Point of No Return struggles to document many of these crises and scandals, all the while trying to sort out his complicated life - including his love for a possibly unreachable woman, and the level of his personal involvement in the stories he covers. By the end of the novel, he has gone all the way, in his personal, professional, and political life as well. This global novel vividly describes reality, the state of the world, and the grievances and hopes of people the world over.
