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Purpose in the Struggle: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back

Diana Block's memoir, Arm the Spirit: A Woman's Journey Underground and Back, is an example of a leftist making sense of the world around her, attempting to act with integrity, and searching for political strategy and home. In prose as engaging as a good novel Block depicts her childhood, her politicization, her coming out, her search for the right political program, her experiences with partnering and parenting, and the day to day details of life underground. At the same time the book offers a wealth of history lessons.

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Unpredictable Futures: Stories From Worker-Run Factories in Argentina

Following the social upheaval in Argentina in 2001-2002 a book was published in Spanish that a lot of activists and independent journalists in the country began trying to get their hands on. It wasn't in all of the bookstores, but news about it traveled like wildfire. Now the legendary book, Sin Patron: Stories From Argentina's Worker-Run Factories, is translated and available to the English-speaking world.

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Brazil: GM’s Rainforest Racket

Jonas de Souza
I am standing in the shadow of General Motors' $1 tree. It's a native guaricica, with pale white bark and a spreading crown that looms about 40 feet above my head. Hanging from its trunk is a small plaque that identifies it as tree No. 129. I've come here, to the verdant chaos of Brazil's Atlantic forest, to understand the far-reaching and politically explosive controversies taking shape in diplomatic corridors thousands of miles away over the fate of trees like this one.

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Rebel Witches and the Creation of Capitalism

Silvia Federici's brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers and in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against injustice.

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Globalization Unchecked: How Western Media Suffocates Real Culture

A Muslim family sits across of me in café, in a largely Muslim Asian country. An older woman shyly hunches over, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with the giant plasma screen TV, blazing loud music on the popular music video channel, MTV. The scantily dressed presenter introduces her 'top song' for the week. Beyonce, dressed in so very little, annoyingly reiterates that she is "a single lady." The older woman's son is mesmerized by what he sees.