Books published by Verso Books

A deft and caustic takedown of the new prophets of profit, from Bill Gates to Oprah As severe environmental degradation, breathtaking inequality, and increasing alienation push capitalism against its own contradictions, mythmaking has become as central to sustaining our economy as profitmaking. Enter the new prophets of capital: Sheryl Sandberg touting the capitalist work ethic as the antidote to gender inequality; John Mackey promising that free markets will heal the planet; Oprah Winfrey urging us to find solutions to poverty and alienation within ourselves; and Bill and Melinda Gates offering the generosity of the 1 percent as the answer to a persistent, systemic inequality. The new prophets of capital buttress an exploitative system, even as the cracks grow more visible.

Beginning on the eve of the 2008 US presidential election, The Notebook evokes life in Saramago's beloved Lisbon, revisits conversations with friends, and offers meditations on the author's favorite writers. Precise observations and moments of arresting significance are rendered with pointillist detail, and together demonstrate an acute understanding of our times. Characteristically critical and uncompromising, Saramago dissects the financial crisis, deplores Israel's punishment of Gaza, and reflects on the rise of Barack Obama. The Notebook is a unique journey into the personal and political world of one of the greatest writers of our time.

The fall of Communism has been an epoch-making event. The distinguished contributors to After the Fall explain to us the meaning of Communism's meteoric trajectory - and explore the rational grounds for socialist endeavour and commitment in a world which remains dangerous and divided.The contributors include the Italian political philosopher Norberto Bobbio, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, the French economist André Gorz, and the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas. Eduardo Galeano explains how the now world looks from the South, Diane Elson explores how the market might be socialized, Ralph Miliband writes on the harshness of Leninism, Hans Magnus Enzenberger argues that the capitalist 'bad fairy' granted the Left's wishes in disconcerting ways. Lynne Segal looking at the condition of women sees no reason to abandon her libertarian, feminist and socialist convictions, while Maxine Molyneux considers the implications for women of the fall of Communism. Giovanni Arrighi asks whether Marxism understood the 'American Century', Fredric Jameson pursues a conversation on the new world order, Iván Szelényi explains who will be the new rulers of Eastern Europe, and Robin Blackburn reflects on the history of socialist programmes, with the benefit of hindsight. Fred Halliday and Edward Thompson disagree about how Communism ended but share worries about what is in store for the post-Communist countries. Alexander Cockburn regrets the death of the Soviet Union. And Göran Therborn eloquent proves that it is still possible to imagine a future beyond capitalism... and beyond socialism?

An indictment of the architect of New Labour, Gordon Brown. It shows how Brown came to preside over a bankrupt country on the brink of economic and political breakdown. Taking us on a tour of Britain, it explores the ever-widening disparity between rich and poor, and how manufacturing was replaced by 'retail, entertainment and recreation'.

The impact of the US Civil War on Karl Marx, and Karl Marx on America.

Offering a kaleidoscopic journey into the experiences of modernization, the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world, this title dexterously interweaves an exploration of modernism in art, literature, and architecture.

A novel by the Booker prize winning author.

A comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. Building on a work analyzing the class system in the developed world, as well as exploring the problem of the transition to a socialist alternative, it reconstructs the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors.

Discusses the art's importance in viewing the world in which we live. This title looks at the relationship between art and social reality, arguing that truthful art must both reflect reality in its flaws and imperfections, and help show how change and improvement might be brought about. It focuses on the individual's need to engage with society.

The metropolis is a site of endless making and unmaking. From the attempt to imagine a city-symphony to the cinematic tradition that runs from Walter Ruttmann to Terence Davies, this book traces the idiosyncratic character of the metropolitan city from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first-century megalopolis.

These essays (and a ballad) have their origins in Terry Eagleton’s continuing engagement with the possibilities of a literary criticism that is both materialist and open to diverse currents of thought in the human sciences.Eagleton’s combative intelligence here explores the encounter between Marxism and contemporary European and American literary theory. Included are a survey of the Althusserian contribution to literary analysis; thoughts on the fraught relations between Marxism and poststructuralism; and a brilliant evocation of the affinities and tensions between Wittgenstein, Derrida and Bakhtin.Intellectual figures in this wide-ranging topography include Jacques Derrida; the radical critic Fredric Jameson; the apostle of deconstruction, Paul de Man; the liberal humanist John Bayley; Bertoit Brecht; William Empson and Pierre Machersy. The volume also includes Eagleton’s brilliant reading of Conrad’s The Secret Agent.Against the Grain is an excellent introduction to the range of Terry Eagleton’s thought and his considerable body of work. It is also a useful primer for all readers interested in the vitality of literary theory today.

Few terms in the vocabulary of politics are so confused as "imperialism." Does it refer essentially to colonial rule? Or is it primarily an economic phenomenon, connected to the export of capital? What is its relation to nationalism? Which societies, in the past or present, can be properly described as imperialist?Giovanni Arrighi resolves these ambiguities by the construction of a formal model that integrates all of them into a single structure. He shows how a coherent paradigm of imperialism can be derived from Hobson’s classic study of imperialism at the turn of the century, and illustrates it with a series of geometrical figures. The genesis of English imperialism is traced, from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Then the pattern of German and American imperialism are compared and contrasted. Arrighi looks at the consequences of the rise of multinational corporations for the traditional versions of the concept of imperialism and concludes that they transform its meaning.In a new afterword, Arrighi responds to his critics and sketches a reconceptualized theory of "imperialism" as a struggle for world hegemony.

In 1916, in a remote cottage on the west coast of Ireland, an unlikely collection of fugitives gathers. Ludwig Wittgenstein has run away from Cambridge and English insularity. His traveling companion, Nikolai Bakhtin (brother of the Marxist aesthetician), has been through the gamut of revolutionary sects and is now devoting himself to gluttony. Into their retreat stumble James Connolly, now on the run from the British government, and Leopold Bloom, fleeing Ulysses and his broken marriage. Being men of ideas, they begin to talk. And then, being men of principles, they begin to argue ...

A riveting expose of the US-led destruction of democratic government in Haiti.

Starting from the premise that 'everything has meaning', this title analyzes Hitchcock's films, ranging from "Rear Window" to "Psycho", and their ostensible narrative content and formal procedures to discover a proliferation of ideological and psychic mechanisms at work.