Recommendations based on "The Ecology of Oil Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938"

Gaza in Crisis is Noam Chomsky's clear-sighted analysis of an area in a desperate impasse.From the targeting of schools and hospitals, to the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, Israel's conduct in 'Operation Cast Lead' has rattled even some of its most strident supporters.In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé survey the fallout from that devastation, and place the massacre in Gaza in the context of Israel's long-standing war against the Palestinians. It is a rigorous, historically informed and much-needed analysis of the situation and will be welcomed by all those eager for Chomsky's and Pappé's insights into yet another political catastrophe.'Noam Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet today' The New York Times Book Review'Ilan Pappé is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian' John PilgerNoam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Interventions, What We Say Goes and Hopes and Prospects, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton/Penguin. Ilan Pappé is Professor of History at the University of Exeter, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, director of the Palestine Studies Centre at the University of Exeter, and the author of various books, including the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld).

Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine. On Palestine is the sequel to their acclaimed book Gaza in Crisis.Noam Chomsky is widely regarded to be one of the foremost critics of US foreign policy in the world. He has published numerous groundbreaking books, articles, and essays on global politics, history, and linguistics. Since 2003 he has written a monthly column for the New York Times syndicate. His recent books include Masters of Mankind and Hopes and Prospects. Haymarket Books recently released updated editions of twelve of his classic books.Ilan Pappé is the bestselling author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: A History of Modern Palestine and The Israel/Palestine Question.Frank Barat is a human rights activist and author. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. His books include Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Gaza in Crisis, Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation, and On Palestine.

Quicksilver War is a panoramic political history of the wars that coursed through Syria and Iraq in the wake of the 'Arab Spring' and eventually merged to become a regional catastrophe: a kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting conflict involving many different parties and phases. William Harris distils the highly complex dynamics behind the conflict, starting with the brutalizing Baathist regimes in Damascus and Baghdad. He charts the malignant consequences of incompetent US occupation of Iraq and Bashar al-Assad's self-righteous mismanagement of Syria, through the implosion of Syria, and the emergence of eastern and western theatres of war focused respectively on future control of Syria and the challenge of ISIS. Beyond the immediate arena of conflict, geopolitical riptides have also been set in motion, including Turkey's embroilment in the war and the shifting circumstances of the Kurds. This sweeping history addresses urgent questions for our time. Will the world rubber-stamp and bankroll the Russian-led 'solution' in Syria, backed by Turkey and Iran? Is the 'Quicksilver War' about to reach an explosive finale? Or will ongoing political maneuvering mutate into years of further violence?

The territory of Napa County, California, contains more than grapevines. The deepest roots belong to Wappo-speaking peoples, a group whose history has since been buried by the stories of Spanish colonizers, Californios (today's Latinos), African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Euro Americans. Napa's history clearly is one of co-existence; yet, its schoolbooks tell a linear story that climaxes with the arrival of Euro Americans. In "This Land was Mexican Once," Linda Heidenreich excavates Napa's subaltern voices and histories to tell a complex, textured local history with important implications for the larger American West, as well.Heidenreich is part of a new generation of scholars who are challenging not only the old, Euro-American depiction of California, but also the linear method of historical storytelling—a method that inevitably favors the last man writing. She first maps the overlapping histories that comprise Napa's past, then examines how the current version came to dominate—or even erase—earlier events. So while history, in Heidenreich's words, may be "the stuff of nation-building," it can also be "the stuff of resistance." Chapters are interspersed with "source breaks"—raw primary sources that speak for themselves and interrupt the linear, Euro-American telling of Napa's history. Such an inclusive approach inherently acknowledges the connections Napa's peoples have to the rest of the region, for the linear history that marginalizes minorities is not unique to Napa. Latinos, for instance, have populated the American West for centuries, and are still shaping its future. In the end, "This Land was Mexican Once" is more than the story of Napa, it is a multidimensional model for reflecting a multicultural past.

The plight of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims has made international news in recent years. Reports of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are commonplace. The Rohingyas have been denied citizenship and are widely discriminated against. Hundreds of thousands have been internally displaced by violence, or have sought refuge in neighbouring or friendly Muslim countries. This conflict has become a litmus test for change in this country in transition, and current assessments are far from positive. Whitewashing by the military, and a refusal by Aung San Suu Kyi's government to even use the name 'Rohingya', adds to international scepticism. Exploring this long-running tripartite conflict between the Rohingya, Rakhine and Burman ethnic groups, this book offers a new analysis of the complexities of the conflict: the fears and motivations driving it and the competition to control historical representations and collective memory. By questioning these competing narratives, offering detailed sociopolitical analysis and examining the international dimensions of the conflict, this book offers new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable conflict.

Global refugee numbers are at their highest levels since the end of World War II, but the system in place to deal with them, based upon a humanitarian list of imagined "basic needs," has changed little. In Refuge, Paul Collier and Alexander Betts argue that the system fails to provide a comprehensive solution to the fundamental problem, which is how to reintegrate displaced people into society. Western countries deliver food, clothing, and shelter to refugee camps, but these sites, usually located in remote border locations, can make things worse. The numbers are stark: the average length of stay in a refugee camp worldwide is 17 years. Into this situation comes the Syria crisis, which has dislocated countless families, bringing them to face an impossible choice: huddle in dangerous urban desolation, rot in dilapidated camps, or flee across the Mediterranean to increasingly unwelcoming governments.Refuge seeks to restore moral purpose and clarity to refugee policy. Rather than assuming indefinite dependency, Collier-author of The Bottom Billion-and his Oxford colleague Betts propose a humanitarian approach integrated with a new economic agenda that begins with jobs, restores autonomy, and rebuilds people's ability to help themselves and their societies. Timely and urgent, the book goes beyond decrying scenes of desperation to declare what so many people, policymakers and public alike, are anxious to hear: that a long-term solution really is within reach.

For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

How the rhetoric of terrorism has been used against high-profile movements to justify the oppression and suppression of Indigenous activists.New Indigenous movements are gaining traction in North America: the Missing and Murdered Women and Idle No More movements in Canada, and the Native Lives Matter and NoDAPL movements in the United States. These do not represent new demands for social justice and treaty rights, which Indigenous groups have sought for centuries. But owing to the extraordinary visibility of contemporary activism, Indigenous people have been newly cast as terrorists—a designation that justifies severe measures of policing, exploitation, and violence. Red Scare investigates the intersectional scope of these four movements and the broader context of the treatment of Indigenous social justice movements as threats to neoliberal and imperialist social orders.In Red Scare, Joanne Barker shows how US and Canadian leaders leverage the fear-driven discourses of terrorism to allow for extreme responses to Indigenous activists, framing them as threats to social stability and national security. The alignment of Indigenous movements with broader struggles against sexual, police, and environmental violence puts them at the forefront of new intersectional solidarities in prominent ways. The activist-as-terrorist framing is cropping up everywhere, but the historical and political complexities of Indigenous movements and state responses are unique. Indigenous criticisms of state policy, resource extraction and contamination, intense surveillance, and neoliberal values are met with outsized and shocking measures of militarized policing, environmental harm, and sexual violence. Red Scare provides students and readers with a concise and thorough survey of these movements and their links to broader organizing; the common threads of historical violence against Indigenous people; and the relevant alternatives we can find in Indigenous forms of governance and relationality.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive history of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victim's decades-long quest for justice. • Thompson served as the Historical Consultant on the Academy Award-nominated documentary feature ATTICA“Gripping ... deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians ... Makes us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost.” —The New York Times On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men—hostages as well as prisoners—and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors and the families of the men who had been killed.   Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century.(With black-and-white photos throughout)

This incisive study reveals the fundamental, paradoxical weakness of colonialism and the enduring power of anticolonial resistance. Resistance is everywhere, but everywhere a surprise, especially when the agents of struggle are the colonized, the enslaved, the wretched of the earth. Anticolonial revolts and slave rebellions have often been described by those in power as “eruptions”—volcanic shocks to a system that does not, cannot, see them coming. In Anticolonial Eruptions, Geo Maher diagnoses a paradoxical weakness built right into the foundations of white supremacist power, a colonial blind spot that grows as domination seems more complete.  Anticolonial Eruptions argues that the colonizer’s weakness is rooted in dehumanization. When the oppressed and excluded rise up in explosive rebellion, with the very human demands for life and liberation, the powerful are ill-prepared. This colonial blind spot is, ironically, self-imposed: the more oppressive and expansive the colonial power, the lesser-than-human the colonized are believed to be, the greater the opportunity for resistance. Maher calls this paradox the cunning of decolonization, an unwitting reversal of the balance of power between the oppressor and the oppressed. Where colonial power asserts itself as unshakable, total, and perpetual, a blind spot provides strategic cover for revolutionary possibility; where race or gender make the colonized invisible, they organize, unseen. Anticolonial Eruptions shows that this fundamental weakness of colonialism is not a bug, but a permanent feature of the system, providing grounds for optimism in a contemporary moment roiled by global struggles for liberation.