New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work by Kevin Doogan (Wiley Press, 2009)
The subtitle of this book is slightly misleading: the book’s focus is not so much the transformation of work in recent years, but rather the distance between the discussion of work by academics, journalists, and politicians, and the material reality of work in the [...]

Fordlandia: the rise and fall of Henry Ford’s forgotten jungle city by Greg Grandin, Metropolitan Books, New York 2009
This book uncovers the complex history of Henry Ford’s attempt to create a secure source of natural latex in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1920s and ‘30s.  But it also reveals the complex and often contradictory character [...]

Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market and Public Private Partnerships by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books 380 pp

Dexter Whitfield’s book is a resource that can help a myriad of groups, organisations and even states if they so wish, to understand the impact, dynamics and inequalities of the privatisation of public [...]

Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates, by John Gerassi, 2009, Yale.
Central to Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism is the concept of Bad Faith, the idea that humans avoid taking responsibility for their actions by pretending they have no choice in how they behave. This can manifest itself in a range of behaviours, such as making [...]

When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, by Andy Beckett. Faber and Faber, 448 pp.
About a quarter of the way into Guardian journalist Andy Beckett’s impressive account of Britain in the 1970s, self-satisfied Labour Party politician Denis Healey, who served as Harold Wilson’s chancellor of the exchequer, observes that he knew “bugger [...]

With the ongoing instability of the devolved institutions and the degeneration of the relationship between the First and deputy First ministers, it is an apposite time to revisit a rather under-rated monograph from the beginning of the year.
‘The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007‘ by Cambridge historian, Martyn Frampton, is a necessary [...]

As a classical musician involved in pro-Palestinian activism, I frequently encounter the assumption that I am an unconditional admirer of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO). My reservations on this score tend to produce shocked disapproval: How could I not enthuse about such an idealistic project, particularly since it was co-founded by the late Edward Said, [...]

Roger Casement’s life does not fit neatly into one book.  As the child of a mixed marriage his early years are an account of rural Ulster life in the late 19th century.  His encounters with the vicious exploitation of rubber workers in the Belgian Congo and South America are tales of moral courage and physical [...]

As I started to read Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools” I grabbed a stack of Post-it notes to mark interesting passages and key points for easy reference later. The trouble is, after 40 pages it became clear that marking ever page, or every other page, was not a good way to go back to reading [...]

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Penguin, 2009). xvii + 331 pp.
This brilliant book demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that economic equality is good for society. In doing so, it exposes the complete falsity of the dominant view that massive inequalities are a necessary [...]