by Harley Rustad In the midst of exploring Vancouver Island on the hunt for the oldest and largest trees, T. J. Watt, a photographer for an environmental organization, the Ancient Forest Alliance, stumbled upon a fresh clear-cut with an unusual feature: A solitary tree was left standing, and it happened to be one of the…
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by Noam Chomsky Fateful Triangle is Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the relationship among the US, Israel, and Palestine. While most of the book centres on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he talks about the history of conflict and subjugation within Israel, beginning with the country’s origins, moving through the expansionist period post-1967, and…
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by Sean Penn Well, this one’s awkward. Awkward’s probably the best way to describe it succinctly, anyway, and here I thought I’d be leaning more toward “weird” after reading what it’s about. By day, Bob Honey’s a septic tank salesman whose business savvy apparently allowed him to corner the Jehovah’s Witness slice of that market….
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by Chigozie Obioma Some time ago, I was discussing literature with a friend, when the topic turned to the comparison of Kevin Hardcastle’s writing to Cormac McCarthy’s in numerous blurbs and reviews, and how such an exercise usually sets him up for unreasonable expectations that tend to be crushed in due course. At the time,…
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by Noam Chomsky Presented with a massive sale on a large number of Noam Chomsky books, I recently found myself the proud owner of about a billion of them, so expect them to crop up in my reviews periodically, at least for the foreseeable future. (It was kind of hard to decide which of his…
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by Marius Kociejowski I made a mistake with this one––not a disastrous mistake, mind you, though it sure felt like it at first. You see, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus is Kociejowski’s follow up to his earlier work, The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool, a book which I have yet to read. I didn’t,…
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edited by Daniel Sinker We Owe You Nothing is a collection of select interviews from Punk Planet magazine from the late ’90s and early noughties. Most of the interviewees are musicians from punk bands, but also people from the ’biz side––people running record labels or distribution networks––as well as individuals and groups involved in politics…
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by Pierre Razoux The Iran-Iraq War is an in-depth exploration of the terrible conflict that wracked the Middle East through most of the ’80s. Razoux starts us off by thrusting us into the heated political climate in the region immediately before the war broke out, moves into the initial, largely ineffectual military campaigns, and then…
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edited by Anthony Arnove Iraq Under Siege is a collection of articles, essays, and interview transcripts documenting the deleterious effects of UN-imposed, US- and UK-backed economic sanctions placed on Iraq through the entirety of the ’90s. Written pre-9/11, the pieces portray the widespread suffering that befell the average Iraqi during the period while leaving members…
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by Payam Akhavan Akhavan was an Iranian immigrant to Canada in the late ’70s, and part of the religious minority that was soon to face the brunt of the hate and violence to come from the radical Iranian government that took charge after the revolution. He became a successful lawyer within the International Criminal Court…
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