Tag: book reviews

  • Ridgeway’s Blood In The Face

    Blood In The Face: Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of New White Culture James Ridgeway Published in 1995 (the year of the Oklahoma City Bombing), Ridgeway’s Blood in the Face was, was the first serious book I read on the rise of post-war neo-Nazi formations like Aryan Nations and Skinhead…

  • Coogan’s Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International

    Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International  Kevin Coogan When this book came out, I reviewed it for Maximum RockNRoll. I wish I could find that review now, but alas, it seems to have been lost in the pre-digital fog. However, with Evola and other post-war fascists back in the…

  • Leonard and Gallagher’s Heavy Radicals

    Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists Revolutionary Union / Revolutionary Communist Party 1968-1980 Aaron J. Leonard In the late sixties and early seventies, many young American leftists began drifting away from the amorphous politics of the mainstream anti-war movement and towards a sort of militant leftism influenced by Moa. They formed first…

  • Review: Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air

    Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che Max Elbaum In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Students for a Democratic Society dissolved, some young leftists took the path of nihilistic armed struggled and joining weatherman, and other such groups. Others decided to take their lessons from Lenin ad Mao…

  • 2016: My Year In Books

    In 2016, I embarked on a project where I tried to match my reading to the demographics of the U.S.* I set out to read 52 books broken down like this: 10 books (or ~17%) written by Latino writers 7 books (or ~13 %) written by writers from Africa or of African descent 3 books…

  • Review: Jemisin’s The Fifth Season

    The Fifth Season N.K. Jemisin The first volume in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. The story of a world beset by earth quakes and other natural phenomenon, which can be kept at bay (or instigated) by a group of people with the power to control the forces of the earth. Called Orogenes, these people are…

  • Review: Delany’s Straits of Messina

    Straits of Messina Samuel Delany A now out of print and dearly priced collection of Samuel Delany* writing about his own works, including detailed essays on Dhalgren, the controversial (and at the time of publication of this book, unpublished) Hogg, Nova, the Tales of Nevryon series, and more. If you’re a fan of Delany, (and…

  • Review: Weil and Bespaloff’s War and the Illiad

    I’m going to start by giving you a little hint: if you’re wandering through a used bookstore and you see a book published by the New York Review of Books, buy it. Don’t worry if it isn’t something you’ve heard of, or is about a subject matter you’re not particularly interested in. It doesn’t matter…

  • Review: Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees

    The People in the Trees Hanya Yanagihara If not the best novel I read this year, among them. Super-duper icky and disturbing, but deeply compelling story of a scientist who travels to a remote pacific island and finds a substance that can allows those who eat it to live forever. Basically (and intentionally), a b-movie plot…

  • Review: Enrique’s Sudden Death

    Sudden Death Alvaro Enrique As I’ve written elsewhere recently, my tolerance for difficult prose is at a bit of a low right now. But, if its coupled with a fascinating look at the politics of renaissance Italy, the life of the mysterious trouble painter Caravaggio, and the clever use of tennis as a narrative device,…