An English translation of a Persian poem remembering the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran – mostly people, both secular and religious, who supported the revolution but then faced repression by the new regime. Published by a small, new, not-for-profit, left publisher run by women of colour in Toronto, Trace Press. I read this …
A scholarly history of the social and cultural origins of sound reproduction. Very much not an effort to tell a straightforward, linear story about the history of telegraphy, telephony, broadcasting, and recording, but rather draws selectively and nonlinearly from the decades before such tech was introduced and the early decades after to push readers to …
A company history published by a Scottish insurance firm on the occasion of its centenary in 1905 – so, most definitely not my usual fare! This Goodreads entry is for a contemporary reprint by one of those outfits that do print-on-demand for old books, but I actually read an original edition which had belonged to …
History. Published 25 years ago, this is an early book by a prominent historian of US social movements. Examines everyday resistance and/or cultural politics and their interface with more formal social movements in a number of African American contexts across the 20th century, from everyday struggles on public transit in Birmingham under Jim Crow, to …
A short, thoughtful, and somewhat meandering book about the politics of memory and legacy and, specifically, archives. The author was part of the New Left in the UK – he went by “Dr. John” in those years and was a central figure in the London Street Commune – and went on to become “a cultural …
Alvin Finkel is a history professor at Athabasca University and the author of thirteen books, most recently Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy (Red Globe Press, 2019). He is also the president of the Alberta Labour History Institute (ALHI), a grassroots organization devoted to preserving and sharing the stories of Alberta’s working people and …
Just finished talking with Alvin Finkel about the work of the Alberta Labour History Institute and its work to preserve and popularize histories of workers’ struggles in that province, and about his new book *Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy*. Listen for it on Talking Radical Radio in September! Originally posted to Scott’s author page on Facebook.
Laura Cuthbert is an organizer who has a keen interest in history. She is a central part of Populous Map, a grassroots project that aims to preserve and share marginalized histories from communities large and small across British Columbia, in ways that respect autonomy, privacy, and reciprocity. Scott Neigh interviews her about those histories and …
A really great little book combining movement history and radical analysis. The goal seems to be to clarify some current debates by creating a resource to allow a more robust understanding of the Combahee River Collective, whose famous statement from the 1970s is both a crucial document in the Black feminist tradition and also foundational …
A fascinating book about how humanity went from being entirely comprised of peoples who were organized in relatively small, mobile groups who met their needs via a bunch of different practices generalized as “hunting and foraging,” through the beginnings of sedentary living, agriculture, and the eventual formation of states. To the extent that we think …