Books published by Verso Books

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the emergence of the peasant as citizen, juridically and politically independent, accounts for much that is remarkable in Athenian political institutions and culture. From a survey of historical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of which distorted later debates, Wood goes on to take issue with influential arguments, such as those of G.E.M. de Ste Croix, about the importance of slavery in agricultural production. The social, political and cultural influence of the peasant-citizen is explored in a way which questions some of the most cherished conventions of Marxist and non-Marxist historiography.

Isaac Deutscher is widely recognized as one of the foremost political biographers of the twentieth century, and his full-scale studies of Trotsky and Stalin, translated into many world languages, have played a major role in elucidating the character and fate of the Russian Revolution.This collection of essays, hitherto unpublished or out of print, provides a clear idea of the range and force of Deutscher’s literary activity over a period of more than thirty years. It also demonstrates his essential consistency of purpose: from his sharp denunciation of the first Moscow Trial in 1936, through his resistance to the Cold War tides of the fifties, to his sober analysis of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. His fidelity to the Marxist method and firm grasp of socialist history allowed him to penetrate to the core of events without ever falling into the blind apologetics or feverish disavowals that blighted so many left-wing intellectuals of his generation.Deutscher’s own origins in the Polish communist movement are here reflected in his famous interview on the tragedy of the Polish CP, while his major essay on bureaucracy is one of the few sustained attempts to grapple with this key theoretical and practical problem of the socialist movement.This volume is designed both as a lasting collection of some of Deutscher’s best-known and most powerful texts, and as an introduction for readers approaching his work for the first time. A specially written preface by Perry Anderson assesses this selection in relation to Deutscher’s overall achievement, and Tamara Deutscher’s introduction passes on to the reader the often fascinating personal background to certain of the essays.

Ibn Khaldun, the most celebrated thinker of the Muslim Middle Ages, is the subject of this intriguing study. Lacoste opens with a general description of the Maghreb in the later Middle Ages, focusing primarily on mercantile trade, especially in gold, and the social and economic structures of tribal life. He unravels Khaldun’s fascinating biography—born of an aristocratic family in Tunis in 1332, he had an extraordinary diplomatic and military career in the turbulent wars and politics of Western Islam in the fourteenth century; withdrew to a desert retreat in 1375, and finally emigrated to Egypt.Lacoste then turns his attention to Ibn Khaldun’s majestic Universal History, arguably the greatest single synthesis produced by medieval thought anywhere. His account of Ibn Khaldun’s thought is a remarkable, sympathetic work of recovery, not only uncovering its basic categories but exploring its contemporary relevance to an understanding of the Arab world.Thinkers as diverse as Ernest Gellner and Arnold Toynbee have paid tribute to the lasting fertility of Ibn Khaldun’s work. English-speaking readers now have an opportunity to appreciate some of the richness and diversity of the Arab intellectual heritage.

The films of Hitchcock, Welles and Godard; the aesthetics of photography and the technology of cinema; art and revolution in Russia and in Mexico; the avant-gardes in film and in painting—these are among the many topics of Peter Wollen’s essays. Interwoven with fictional treatments of such themes as memory, dream, sexuality and writing, they compose a remarkable, perhaps unique, volume.These "readings and writings" are informed by Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the history of art itself. Their concern is with signification: with the ways in which meanings are produced in dominant art forms and with the counter-strategies by which these meanings may be questioned or dislodged, in the practice of politically and aesthetically radical alternatives. A concluding retrospect reviews the political, intellectual and aesthetic avant-garde currents of the fifteen years over which these texts were written, outlining some perspectives for oppositional art today.

While highlighting the obstacles blocking women's entry not only into space, but into the general fields of science and technology, the book shows how women have nevertheless managed to get into space both imaginatively and literally, as through "Star Trek", NASA and Biosphere 2.

An introduction to the experience of women in former state socialist countries, which attempts to unravel the legacy of state socialism in relation to women. The book explores women's status in East Central Europe, both before and after 1989.

This text presents a series of case studies - including classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and the Portuguese and Spanish empires - to show how the historical-materialist analysis of societies is a better guide to understanding global systems than the theories of standard international relations.

Who speaks for science in a technologically dominated society? In his latest work of cultural criticism Andrew Ross contends that this question yields no simple or easy answer. In our present technoculture a wide variety of people, both inside and outside the scientific community, have become increasingly vocal in exercising their right to speak about, on behalf of, and often against, science and technology.Arguing that science can only ever be understood as a social artifact, Strange Weather is a manifesto which calls on cultural critics to abandon their technophobia and contribute to the debates which shape our future. Each chapter focuses on an idea, a practice or community that has established an influential presence in our culture: New Age, computer hacking, cyberpunk, futurology, and global warming.In a book brimming over with intelligence—both human and electronic—Ross examines the state of scientific countercultures in an age when the development of advanced information technologies coexists uneasily with ecological warnings about the perils of unchecked growth. Intended as a contribution to a ¿green¿ cultural criticism, Strange Weather is a provocative investigation of the ways in which science is shaping the popular imagination of today, and delimiting the possibilities of tomorrow.

Galvano Della Volpe was the dominant philosopher of Italian Marxism for twenty years after the Liberation. His most important book was a work of aesthetic theory—Critique of Taste. Della Volpe, proponent of a robust materialism in all his writings, was concerned to rehabilitate the inherently rational and intellectual nature of art. Opposing both the sociological reductionism of Plekhanov or Lukács, and the formalist irrationalism of Croce or New Criticism, Della Volpe’s aim was to demonstrate that conceptual meaning is always inseparable from aesthetic effect.Whether he is discussing Pindar or Góngora, Cleanth Brooks or Roland Barthes, Goethe or Mallarmé, Della Volpe is always challenging, always illuminating. Critique of Taste represents one of the major crossroads of twentieth-century aesthetics.

President Bush has made the war against drugs the number one issue on the contemporary American political agenda. In this revised edition of his classic book, available for the first time in paperback, Edward Jay Epstein argues that the president has adopted the strategy of his forebear, Richard Nixon, in using the drugs war to blame foreigners for the crisis in America’s cities, and to provide a smokescreen for unrelated political activity designed to bolster executive power.The drugs crackdown has seen an almost hundredfold increase in the federal budget for narco-politics in the fifteen years since Agency of Fear was first published, while statistics on drug-running have been massaged. Epstein points out that, despite the massive budgets and public relations brouhaha, drug importation, as measured against wholesale price, has in fact grown.

"An intellectual of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and a US-based journalist produce a sympathetic portrait of the Party. Without being critical offers history and context of PT's phenomenal growth in 1980s. Title is an awkward translation of Lula's1989 campaign slogan"--Handbook of Latin Ameri

Provides a kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and radical subcultures of the twentieth century, and explains how artistic statements of the era redrew the line between high and low art.

Part of "Radical Thinkers" series, this work presents key texts by philosophers and thinkers. It offers a postmodernist philosopher's tour-de-force contemplation on sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the 'orgy' of the 1960s.

Examining how the conflict has drawn in national, regional, and global forces, this book deconstructs the powerful Western lobby's persistent calls for a military response dressed up as a 'humanitarian intervention'. It presents an account of Darfur crisis within a broad context of Sudan's history.

On October 7th 2001, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan. Bringing together some of the contemporary writers, this anthology, from reportage and "faction" to fiction, explores the impact of this "long war" throughout the world, from Palestine to Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the curtailment of civil liberties and manipulation of public opinion.

A philosophical and political exploration initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. This work focuses on the construction of popular identities and how 'the people' emerges as a collective actor. It offers a critical reading of the literature on populism, demonstrating its dependency on the theorists of 'mass psychology'.

Many people who look at art decry it for the lack of craft skill in its production, whether it be painting, photography or sculpture. This work sheds light on this obsolescence of traditional craft skills in contemporary art, exploring the technological and social developments that gave rise to those postmodern theories.

Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), the founder of the Vietminh and President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was the archetypical Communist and anti-colonial revolutionary of the twentieth century. Part of the "Revolutions" series, this volume shows why Ho Chi Minh should be read by anti-colonialists the world over.