Books published by Verso Books

Angelo Quattrocchi describes the events of the May 1968 revolt which spread from Nanterre to Paris, aiming to show how ideas that had been the province of radical philosophers became springs of action for millions. Tom Nairn provides an analysis of the causes and consequences of the May events.

Covers the recording industry, from Edison's talking tin foil of 1887 to the age of the compact disk. The book asks: what goes on in the recording industry; how does it affect the music; and do we listen to music differently from our forebears because of reproduction?

What have been the major changes in the intellectual landscape of the left since the mid seventies? Have they on balance represented an emancipation or a retreat for socialist culture as a whole? In the Tracks of Historical Materialism looks at some of the paradoxes in the evolution of Marxist thought in this period. It starts by considering the remarkable and variegated growth of historical materialism in the Anglo-American world, spreading across a broad field from history to economics, politics to literature, sociology to philosophy. By contrast, the same years have seen a drastic recession of Marxist influences in the Latin cultures where it was traditionally strongFrance or Italy. Its main theoretical challengers there proved to be successive forms of structuralism and post-structuralism. The common coordinates of thesetracing the outer bounds of the work of Levi-Strauss or Lacan, Foucault or Derridaare surveyed and criticized, in the light of the inherent limitations of the language model from which they derived. In Germany, on the other hand, the theoretical scene has been largely dominated by the accumulating work of Habermas, with its roots in the Frankfurt School. Yet Habermas’s philosophy also reveals unexpected affinities with the trend of prevalent Parisian concerns, in its unifying emphasis on communicationwhile at the same time diverging from them in the constancy of its political commitments. The historical background of international class struggles against which these variant fates of Marxism in the west were played out is then explored, with special attention to the interconnection between the destinies of Maoism and Eurocommunism. What, finally, is the nature of the relationship between Marxism as a theory and socialism as a goal? A conclusion reviews the wider issues posed for the labour movement by the rise of the peace movement and the women’s movement, and suggests a range of priorities for the further development of Marxist thought in the eighties.

Offers a new perspective on contemporary arguments for animal rights, social justice and environmental protection. Benton brings together modern political ecology, debate about the moral status of animals, and critical social theory.

For 45 years the expatriate Goytisolo has been both widely acknowledged as Spain's greatest living writer and its most scabrous critic. This two-volume autobiography, first published in the 1980s, broke new ground in Spanish letters with its introspective sexual and emotional honesty.

Corporate sponsorship and involvement in the visual arts has become increasingly common. Wu's book is a detailed analysis of this infiltration since the 1980s. Her analysis questions the role of museums, galleries and also the function of art in public places.

This volume launches a new sub-discipline of the human science, "mediology". It includes a new way in which to analyze and think about the media from the city state to the Internet. It is also an examination of the work of Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, C.S. Peirce and Marshall McLuhan.

The radical colonels, courageous communists and burnt-out Ba'athists failed to establish a stable and just democratic republic, thus enabling a return visit by imperialism.

Exploring the relationship between film and other art forms, this book looks at new approaches to thinking about film. Peter Wollen's new book is based on the premise that there are no fixed ways of writing about cinema, but, rather a plethora of paths leading in very different directions.

This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukcs, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this traditionLukcsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpeanare compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it.

One of the major works of the new American Marxism, Wright’s book draws a challenging new class map of the United States and other, comparable, advanced capitalist countries today. It also discusses the various classical theories of economic crisis in the West and their relevance to the current recession, and contrasts the way in which the major political problem of bureaucracy was confronted by two great antagonistsWeber and Lenin. A concluding essay brings together the practical lessons of these theoretical analyses, in an examination of the problems of left governments coming to power in capitalist states.

Originally published in 1954, this biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine that sought to expunge Trotsky from the annals of the Soviet Union. This is the last volume of three.

Originally published in 1954, this biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine that sought to expunge Trotsky from the annals of the Soviet Union. This is the second volume of three.

The author develops a critique of market socialism by tracing it back to its roots in early political economy. He ranges from Adam Smith to Malthus and concludes with an incisive consideration of recent writers, such as Alec Nove.

This work posits that nation-building movements from 1750 to 1990 have saved the world from imperial barbarism. Contrary to many gloomy prognoses following the Soviet and Yugoslav collapses, Nairn claims that the chaos feared by so many observers is neither endless nor one-sidedly destructive.

In eighteenth-century London the spectacle of a hanging was not simply a form of punishing transgressors. Rather it evidently served the more sinister purpose - for a privileged ruling class - of forcing the poor population of London to accept the criminalization of customary rights and new forms of private property.

In this wide-ranging book Ali challenges assumptions on both sides, arguing that Islamic civilization has an important role in Western modernity, and that what we have experienced with the rise of fundamentalism is the return of history in an horrific form.