The shortlist for this year’s Bread and Roses radical book prize, organised by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers has now been announced.
Tim Gee Counterpower
(NI, 2011; £9.99)
An accessible primer on power and rebellion, Counterpower asks why some campaigns succeed while others fail and provides today’s activists with inspiration for the future.
David Graeber Debt: The First 5,000 Years
(Melville, 2011; £21.99)
Human beings didn’t start with barter, discover money, and then develop credit systems. In fact, exactly the reverse is true, and - whether we recognise it or not – debt has been at the heart of our political and moral systems ever since.
Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made It
(OR Books, 2011; £8.00)
The story of the Egyptian uprising – through the toppling of Mubarak – by the people who made it, told in 140-or-fewer-character Tweets. A masterpiece of editing.
Owen Jones Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
(Verso, 2011; £14.99)
Already a bestseller in radical bookshops around the UK, Chavs argues that Britain’s elites wilfully promote notions of the working class as an object of fear and ridicule to deflect blame from their own role in increasing inequality
Andy Merrified Magical Marxism
(Pluto Press, 2011; £17.99)
Drawing on Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and Gabriel García Márquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude, Andy Merrifield imagines a liberatory Marxism that moves beyond stale debates on class and the role of the state.
Laurie Penny Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent
(Pluto Press, 2011; £12.99)
Whether filing a report from inside a police kettle in Whitehall or analysing the feminist implications of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Laurie Penny’s writing is always sharp as a knife.
Nicholas Shaxson Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World
(Vintage, 2011; £8.99)
A gripping exposé of the mechanics of tax havens and an essential primer for anyone trying to understand today’s global economy.
PN reviews editor Gabriel Carlyle was a reader for the Bread and Roses prize. More info:
www.bread-and-roses.co.uk