Skip to main content

World that Never Was

By

The opening for this book is fascinating. This is the English edition (review linked above) -- the American edition is much more sedate. Surprisingly large amount of the text is available online:

http://www.amazon.com/World-That-Never-Was-Anarchists/dp/037542511X#reader_037542511X

Comments

  1. TripplerNovember 19, 2010 at 5:05 PM

    Appears to be a very interesting read. However, it also appears much of it deals with Europe rather than the USA. The library has a couple of copies and I'll give it a look.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsNovember 19, 2010 at 5:12 PM

    Yes, it is largely European from what I can tell, although we have had our share of anarchists, spies, and Pinkertons, too. Like labor and other social-justice issues, these bigger picture questions tend to transcend national boundaries.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonNovember 22, 2010 at 7:23 AM

    There was another book on anarchism that I enjoyed sometime back called Demanding the Impossible,

    http://books.google.lt/books?id=QDWIOL_KtGYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=demanding+the+impossible&source=bl&ots=2iNuPNSqur&sig=x5ppy2IWlMcZfVf0zpYLgA-r3IE&hl=lt&ei=3f3pTNm2EY2VOu_53MoK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

    It was quite exhaustive and even included a section on anarcho-capitalism and the policies of Reagan and other Right Wing leaders.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonNovember 22, 2010 at 8:22 AM

    Also worth noting is Homage to Catalonia, in which Orwell tells of the promising but all too short anarchism experiment in Barcelona.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonNovember 23, 2010 at 1:55 PM

    More specifically,

    Anarchism in America,

    http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/anarchism-in-america/

    ReplyDelete
  6. avrdsNovember 23, 2010 at 3:27 PM

    What I think _may_ be of interest is his contrasting the methods of the Pinkertons et al. with those they were allegedly protecting the country from. But I haven't read this one yet, so not sure.

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsNovember 23, 2010 at 3:31 PM

    Thanks for the film link, Gintaras. Another one for these long winter nights -- we're in a blizzard situation up here now, so it's time to start watching movies again.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more