Verso End of Year Highlights 2016
>>> 90% off ALL our ebooks & 50% of ALL our print books until Jan 1st!
As we approach the end of what's been (politically) a pretty bleak 2016, we look back on a year of books that engage with the global crisis in which we find ourselves; ranging from the refugee and subsequent border crisis to the spread of broken-windows policing, Patrick Cockburn's ground-breaking analysis of the ongoing threat of ISIS, George Monbiot on climate change, and Wolfgang Streeck on the never-ending failure of capitalism.
Alongside this we have plenty of cultural and literary bestsellers; Mark Greif's brilliant collection of essays critiquing everyday life under twenty-first-century capitalism, Stuart Jeffries' biography of the Frankfurt School, and John Berger's companion volume to the critically-acclaimed Portraits - exploring what art tells us about ourselves.
See the guide below - split into sections such as US and UK politics, Architecture, Art, Fiction, Theory/Philosophy, to find a book that suits you.
Until Jan 1: ALL our print books are 50% off and ALL our ebooks are 90% off!
We also have free shipping worldwide and bundled ebooks when you buy a print copy (where available).
Both sales end on Jan 1 at midnight UTC.
Have a look at our Gift Guide for more excellent book suggestions! and we have more subject specific reading lists here.
CURRENT AFFAIRS / GLOBAL POLITICS
Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move
Reece Jones
A major new exploration of the refugee crisis, focusing on how borders are formed and policed.
“This book is the antidote to the world of walls that we live in, an argument for a world of humanity.” – Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East
Patrick Cockburn
From the award-winning author of The Rise of Islamic State, the essential story of the Middle East’s disintegration.
This book confirms Cockburn's reputation as a reporter and analyst.” – Max Hastings, Sunday Times
A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America
by Óscar Martínez. Translated by Daniela Maria Ugaz and John Washington. Introduction by Jon Lee Anderson
“A chilling portrait of corruption, unimaginable brutality and impunity” – Financial Times
Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings
Joshua Clover
Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an “age of riots” as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history.
The Verso Book of Dissent: Revolutionary Words from Three Millennia of Rebellion and Resistance
Edited by Andrew Hsiao and Audrea Lim. Preface by Tariq Ali
A compendium of revolt and resistance throughout the ages, updated for 2016 to include resistance to war and economic oppression from Beijing and Cairo to Moscow and New York City.
“The Verso Book of Dissent shows the many ways in which the constant struggle to create a better world has broken through the walls of apathy and acquiescence.” – Noam Chomsky
US POLITICS
Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter
Edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
Traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton; a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over—to deadly effect.
Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy
Lewis H. Lapham
America’s leading essayist on the frantic retreat of democracy, in the fire and smoke of the war on terror
UK POLITICS
Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
Richard Seymour
“One of our most astute political analysts turns his attention to Corbyn, and the result is predictably essential: not just to make sense of how we got to this unlikely situation, but for his thoughts on what the left might do next” – China Miéville
The Ministry of Nostalgia: Consuming Austerity
Owen Hatherley
“A brave, incisive, elegant and erudite writer, whose books dissect the contemporary built environment to reveal the political fantasies and social realities it embodies.” – Will Self
“A lively and gleefully argumentative book. Even when you disagree with Hatherley, he remains interesting. And there is a good chance, depressingly, that he is right about everything.” – Jon Day, Guardian
The EU: An Obituary
John R. Gillingham
“An excellent, up-to-date history of the EU which overturns many preconceived ideas and challenges the views of Eurofanatics and Eurosceptics alike.” – Ian Sked, London School of Economics
The BBC: Myth of a Public Service
Tom Mills
The BBC: The mouthpiece of the Establishment?
“Impressive ... a direct challenge to the notion of the BBC as a pillar of liberalism and social democracy” – Ivor Gaber, Time Higher Education
ESSAYS
Against Everything: On Dishonest Times
Mark Greif
[please note this book is not available from Verso in North America]
A brilliant collection of essays from one of the most highly acclaimed young writers in the US.
“Mark Greif writes a contrarian, skeptical prose that is at the same time never cynical: it opens out on to beauty and the possibility of change.” – Zadie Smith
*not available from Verso in North America
MEMOIR
- Image from The Atlantic “White Privilege” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir
Ta-Nehisi Coates
[please note this book is not available from Verso in North America]
A small and beautiful epic of growing up in 1980s Baltimore, from the author of Between the World and Me.
“The intellectual heir to James Baldwin.” – Financial Times
A Life Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir
Benedict Anderson
An intellectual memoir by the author of the acclaimed Imagined Communities.
“Benedict Anderson transformed the study of nationalism … and was renowned not only for his theoretical contributions but also for his detailed examinations of language and power in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.” – New York Times
“Everything Anderson wrote was boldly original, challenging assumptions by uncovering a neglected or suppressed voice. He was never content to tell an audience what they wanted to hear.” – Guardian
CLIMATE CHANGE
How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
George Monbiot
Leading political and environmental commentator on where we have gone wrong, and what to do about it.
“A dazzling command of science and relentless faith in people … I never miss reading him.” – Naomi Klein
Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming
Andreas Malm
How capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power.
“The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject.” – Naomi Klein
ARCHITECTURE / HOUSING
Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers
Stephen Graham
A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet
“In this panoramic, at times jaw-dropping book, Stephen Graham describes how in recent years the built environment around the world has become dramatically more vertical – and more unequeal… Cities feel different once you’ve read it” – Guardian
Last Futures: Nature, Technology, and the End of Architecture
Douglas Murphy
Whatever happened to the last utopian dreams of the city?
“Murphy tells the story of this counter-revolution pithily and well. . . A fresh and haunting way of explaining what happened to the radical 60s and 70s as a whole, in Murphy’s view quite possibly the last chance the west had of creating a decent and environmentally sustainable society.” – Andy Beckett, Guardian
In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis
David Madden and Peter Marcuse
In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it?
Looking at the deep political and economic roots of the housing problem, this book detail the need for a radical response and progressive alternatives.
ART
Landscapes: John Berger on Art
by John Berger. Edited by Tom Overton
Landscapes - a companion volume to John Berger’s highly acclaimed Portraits - explores what art tells us about ourselves.
“John Berger teaches us how to think, how to feel how to stare at things until we see what we thought wasn’t there. But above all, he teaches us how to love in the face of adversity. He is a master.” — Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things
THEORY / PHILOSOPHY
Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School
Stuart Jeffries
This brilliant group biography asks who were the Frankfurt School and why they matter today.
“A towering work of staggering scholarship.” – Irish Times
“Attempts something rather daring ... An easily accessible, funny history of one of the more formidable intellectual movements of the 20th century ... an easy, witty, pacy read” – Owen Hatherley, Guardian
Utopia
by Thomas More. Supplement by Ursula K. Le Guin. Introduction by China Miéville
Five-hundred-year anniversary edition of More’s Utopia, with writing from major science fiction writers
“We can’t do without this book. We are all and have always been Thomas More’s children.” – China Miéville
Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
Peter Frase
“Frase injects a sorely needed dose of reality to the conversation, and the result is invigorating ... I lost sleep over it.” – Guardian
Reading Capital: The Complete Edition
by Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Rancière. Translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach
A classic work of Marxist analysis, available unabridged for the first time. The beautiful cover design (concept by Neil Donnelly and Sean Yendrys) has an indented (debossed) front cover with Marx's Capital on the inside.
Metaphilosophy
by Henri Lefebvre. Edited by Stuart Elden. Translated by David Fernbach
Available for the first time in English, Lefebvre's Metaphilosophy features this beautiful die-cut cover design (by Neil Donnelly).
An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army
by Fredric Jameson. Edited by Slavoj Žižek
Controversial manifesto by acclaimed cultural theorist debated by leading writers. With contributions from Jodi Dean, Saroj Giri, Agon Hamza, Kojin Karatani, Kim Stanley Robinson, Frank Ruda, and Kathi Weeks.
Crowds and Party
Jodi Dean
How do mass protests become an organized activist collective?
“In this enthralling and exhilarating book, Jodi Dean shows that, contrary to neo-anarchist cliche, the party form and class struggle are very far from being outmoded. The revival of the party has produced a surge of enthusiasm in contemporary left politics” – Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism
RADICAL THINKERS
The latest set in our Radical Thinkers series focuses on Black Radicalism/Politics, with four classic works from leading black radical intellectuals.
If They Come in the Morning … : Voices of Resistance edited by Angela Y. Davis
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois. Introduction by Manning Marable
Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory by Michele Wallace
Beyond Black and White: From Civil Rights to Barack Obama by Manning Marable
HISTORY
The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650
John Rees
The gripping story of the Levellers, the radical movement at the heart of the English Revolution.
Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism
by Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg. Translated by David Fernbach
“This rich and poignant and often enthralling record traces the Yiddishland revolutionaries from their East European roots through the years of hope and struggle and hideous crimes to the heroic anti-Nazi resistance and beyond” – Noam Chomsky
ECONOMICS
How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System
Wolfgang Streeck
“Streeck writes devastatingly and cogently … How Will Capitalism End?provides not so much a … forecast as a warning.” Martin Wolf, Financial Times
“At the heart our era’s deepening crisis there lies a touching faith that capitalism, free markets and democracy go hand in hand. Wolfgang Streeck’s new book deconstructs this myth, exposing the deeply illiberal, irrational, anti-humanist tendencies of contemporary capitalism.” – Yanis Varoufakis
The City: London and the Global Power of Finance
Tony Norfield
“It is not every day you read a book about global finance by a banker who quotes Lenin approvingly on page two. Unlike many of those who produce Marxist critiques of financial capitalism, Norfield writes from a position of experience: he has worked in the belly of the beast, and the book is the better for it...In The City, he has done the research and pulled together the financial statistics that explain how the bloodsucking works.” – Financial Times
FICTION
The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness
by Walter Benjamin. Edited by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie, and Sebastian Truskolaski. Illustrated by Paul Klee
A beautiful collection of the legendary thinker’s short stories, gathered together for the first time.
"Benjamin’s fictions have never been published in a single volume. This makes the arrival of The Storyteller: Tales Out of Loneliness, the first collection of his narrative stories, something of an event, one that will raise familiar questions." — Guardian
We Want Everything: A Novel
by Nanni Balestrini. Introduction by Rachel Kushner
Explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary 1969 by leading Italian novelist
“A fine example of a literary use of expressions that were then burgeoning in factories and mass meetings, caught between student unrest and worker fury.” – Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose
FEMINIST CLASSICS
Rani of Jhansi Women's Regiment of the Indian National Army, training, early–mid 1940s. via End of Empire.
Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World
by Kumari Jayawardena. Foreword by Rafia Zakaria
For twenty-five years, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World has been an essential primer on the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of women’s movements in Asia and the Middle East. In this engaging and well-researched survey, Kumari Jayawardena presents feminism as it originated in the Third World, erupting from the specific struggles of women fighting against colonial power, for education or the vote, for safety, and against poverty and inequality.
Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression
by Christine Delphy. Translated by Diana Leonard. Foreword by Rachel Hills
A classic study of family, patriarchal ideologies, and the politics and strategy of women’s liberation. On the table in this forceful and provocative debate are questions of whether men can be feminists, whether “bourgeois” and heterosexual women are retrogressive members of the women’s movement, and how best to struggle against the multiple oppressions women endure.
FINALLY.... THE VERSO RADICAL DIARY 2017!
**PLEASE NOTE: this is now out of stock everywhere outside of America & Canada
A weekly planner with significant dates in radical history from worker revolts to #blacklivesmatter; the English Civil War to the American War of Independence; through to the Russian Revolution, slave rebellions, feminist activism, and Occupy. See more photos here!
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Until Jan 1: ALL our ebooks are 90% off and ALL our print books are 50% off. Ends Jan 1st at midnight UTC. We also have free shipping worldwide and bundled ebooks when you buy a print copy (where available). See here for more info (including our Christmas delivery deadlines).
See also our brilliant GIFT GUIDE to help you pick the best books for yourself and your pals! We also have further subject specific reading lists here.