Reviews

Daisy, aged 15, is sent from New York to England to stay with her Aunt Penn and her cousins Edmund, Isaac, Osbert and Piper. Daisy starts to enjoy her stay although she is soon going to find out that this will last a lot longer than she expected.

A new war starts in Britain, Daisy and her cousins are cut off from Aunt Penn and Daisy's parents. Daisy is forced to grow up quickly and experiences terrible things, as well as new-found love for her cousins. When she is separated from Isaac, Osbert and Edmund she becomes a mother to Piper…

Not long after the discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, Winston Churchill instigated a programme to convert the British navy from coal-to oil- powered vessels. Control over the oilfields of the Middle East - including, of course, those of modern-day Iraq - became a major priority of western foreign policy, and to a large extent has shaped the face of the peace movement today.

Jon Sack's Iraqi Oil for Beginners is a comic history of Iraq which takes us through the fascinating (and for many activists largely unknown) history of Iraq,…

This series of academic papers focuses on how gender relations - masculinities and femininities - have been represented in the “war on terror”, exploring how gendered narratives were used in the US to justify both the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and domestic measures taken to control those perceived as a threat to security.

Perhaps the most accessible example is the assertion - used by the Bush administration following 9/11 to sell “the war on terror” - that the (initial) attack on Afghanistan would free Afghan women from…

On first approach, Hollow Land appears to be very much an academic study, aimed at architecture/political science/anthropology students.

The language is convoluted, and challenging and demands much of the reader's existing understanding of both post-modern academic discourse and the history and context of the Israeli occupation.

But stick with it. Hollow Land deconstructs and reconstructs architecture and archaeology as never neutral - but instead fundamentally political - practices, used as tools of war and identity building…

If the phrase “war comics” conjures up for you images of magazines with names like “Warlord” and “Commando”, and simple-minded celebrations of militarism and empire, then, please, just ignore the title.

Indeed, the first two selections in this wonderful collection - Keiji Nakazawa's “I Saw It!” (precursor to his epic account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, Barefoot Gen) and Raymond Briggs' “The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman” - are as anti-war a pair of comics as you are likely to find.

Other…

Living in an area being ravaged by development in the name of the Olympics, in a London changing fast with the influx of foreign capital, I recognised a lot in this study of the experience of seeing much of the heart and soul removed from your community.

Written from within, and at the height of, “the siege”, this book reads as a call to action to those whose lives will be fundamentally affected to take control over the forces of change.

Solnit mixes anecdote, research and a significant amount of personal involvement, with the…

I must declare a bias here: I hate cars.

Hate what they do to the environment, hate the way they destroy our communities, hate that my three-year-old isn't safe even on the pavement, hate the hours I spend waiting to cross the road whilst streams of cars shoot past, belching out filthy fumes and deafening me with their roar.

Lynn Sloman clearly isn't keen either (and manages to live in rural Wales without a car), but she has managed to produce a readable - not ranting - book about how life - for all of us, car-drivers and not…

The privatisation of so much of the US military machine has been more than just a subplot of the Iraq war, and Jeremy Scahill's comprehensive study of the rise of mercenary company Blackwater is a useful guide to the reconfigured military-industrial complex the anti-war movement now faces.

Blackwater was founded by Christian conservative Erik Prince in 1997 to meet the “anticipated demand for outsourcing” in the US military.

From a relatively low-key initial training role, it has grown to a 20,000-strong mercenary army under…

Award-winning BBC business correspondent Paul Mason has set out on an important task in this, his first book: to keep alive the epic and inspirational stories of workers' struggles of days gone by and pass them on to the growing ranks of exploited working classes being created by the current expansion of global capitalism. Mason picks an international selection of key historical moments from the era of the first Industrial Revolution, and pairs them with examples of present day struggles in which the global workforce are facing problems of…

Following the “collapse” of the Taliban in November 2001, Afghanistan fell off the radars of most anti-war activists. Consequently, many of us have quite a bit of catching up to do - which makes the publication of Bleeding Afghanistan extremely welcome.

Written by two US activists whose work with the Afghan Women's Mission - a non-profit organisation raising funds and awareness for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) - pre-dates 9/11, this is probably the book for activists to read on…

A US State Department lawyer once explained the goal of kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment of “terrorist suspects”: to “find the legal equivalent of outer space”. That this goal has been largely achieved is illustrated by Clive Stafford-Smith, in a first-hand account of his legal visits to Guantanamo Bay. He describes the torture suffered by his clients, the conditions they endure, and the risible legal process offered to them.

This book, whilst deadly serious and a great resource for activists, has unexpected…

These two books are moving and compelling explorations of the lives of Iraqi women. One is a work of fiction; the other an oral history. While the narrative forms allow an intimate and detailed view of individual lives, both books are suffused with an understanding of how the political situation of Iraq has always gone to the core of how life is experienced.

Haifa Zangana weaves together the stories of five women exiled in London during the late 1990s. Despite differences of politics, background and age, the women are drawn to each…

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In Do It Yourself the Trapese Collective have succinctly compiled a practical snapshot of DIY culture: the idea that we can build meaningful social change ourselves, here and now.

At 300 pages the book does not set out to comprehensively cover all areas, but instead invites readers to feast on numerous practical suggestions and fill in the blanks with their “insurrectionary imaginations”. By its own admission, the book neglects important areas such as transport, housing, economics, race and gender, but, true to the Trapese Collective…

The fundamental premise of this surprisingly gripping book is that “individuals rather than governments or companies are going to be the driving force behind reductions in greenhouse gases.”

Annual UK CO2 emissions amount to 12.5 tonnes per person, roughly half of which is generated by individuals running their houses, cars and taking transport. The other half is generated by activities such as agriculture, industry, and transporting goods. By a closely examining the emissions generated by heating houses, driving cars, etc. Goodhall…