Books published by Verso Books

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a philosopher, writer and literary critic who had an enormous impact on the thinking of Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. This book examines Bataille's oeuvre against the backdrop of his life, showing that the essence of his life and work were defined by transience and effacement.

A comprehensive guide to the core recordings of some of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians on the planet. It surveys the musical universe of a particular artist, group or genre by way of a contextualizing introduction and a thumbnail guide to the most essential recordings.

Analyzing the context in which thirty years of war and revolution wracked the European continent, this title emphasizes the backwardness of the European economies and their political subjugation by aristocratic elites and their allies.

The emergence of the book was an event of world historical importance, and heralded the dawning of modernity. This title presents the history of that process, combining technological history, sociology and anthropology, with the study of modes of consciousness to root the development of printing in the ideological struggles of Western Europe.

In September 1910, the human rights activist and anti-imperialist Roger Casement uncovered an appalling catalogue of abuse: nearly 30,000 Indians had died to produce 4,000 tonnes of rubber. This title presents the story of colonial exploitation and corporate greed with contemporary resonance.

Explores the historical experiences and needs out of which the new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a modern form of society was just coming into its own, this book shows how the ideal of authenticity - of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness.

NATO’s war on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 was unleashed in the name of democracy and human rights. This view was challenged by the world’s three largest countries, India, China and Russia, who saw the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo as a naked attempt to assert US dominance in an unstable world.In the West, media networks were joined by substantial sectors of left/liberal opinion in supporting the war. Nonetheless, a wide variety of figures emerged to challenge the prevailing consensus. Their work, gathered here for the first time, forms a collection of key statements and anti-war writings from some of democracy’s most eloquent dissidents—Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, Edward Said and many others—who provide carefully researched examinations of the real motives for the US action, dissections and critiques of the ideology of ‘humanitarian warfare’, and chartings of the unnecessary tragedy of a region laid to waste in the pursuance of Great Power politics.This reader presents some of the most important texts on NATO’s Balkan crusade and forms a major intervention in the debate on global geo-political strategy after the Cold War.

Questioning the common belief that Russia is in transition to capitalism, this book looks behind the political and ideological debates to focus on the development of the real lives of the workers. It includes an analysis of the role of trade unions in the former Soviet system.

Argues that the subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left to the fundamentalists. This book also argues that the foundation of a politics of universal emancipation can be found in St Paul, finding an unlikely ally in the reinvention of a twenty first century Marxism.

Explores the relations between fantasy and ideology and the antagonism between the ever greater abstraction of our lives - whether through digitalization or the market - and the deluge of pseudo-concrete images which surround us.

Intends to recover the notion of culture as a collective, hybrid and plural experience, in light of the political imperative that rules us. In bringing together some of the figures most closely associated with Said and his scholarship, this volume looks at Said, the literary critic and public intellectual, Palestine and Said's intellectual legacy.

In a dusty, ramshackle town lives A'ida. Her insurgent husband Xavier has been imprisoned. Resolute, sensuous and tender, A'ida's letters to the man she loves tell of daily events in the town, and of its motley collection of inhabitants whose lives flow through hers.

Presents an examination of Thomas Paine's thought and legacy.

Presents a radical assessment of Hegel. This title reveals the problems and limitations of sociological method.

Part of "Radical Thinkers" series, this work presents key texts by philosophers and thinkers. It features an autobiography by the founding figure of the Situationist International.

Part of "Radical Thinkers" series, this work presents key texts by philosophers and thinkers. It offers an account of Leninism.