In their new book Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It, Kevin Young, Tarun Banerjee and Michael Schwartz offer some counterintuitive advice to activists looking to make political change. While the book offers a rich and thought-provoking illustration of corporate political power, its strategic advice to activists needs to be scrutinized.

Klein has produced a compelling call to arms, reminding us that the mobilization needed today is well within our capabilities, that we accomplished something much more difficult through our collective efforts during World War II, and that Canadians are ready for today’s battle. What’s lacking is political leadership.

Although Philip Resnick did not run into any cyclopses in his life’s journey, the tale that he recounts is as fascinating as that of Odysseus. Part of the reason is that, like Homer’s Odyssey, his writing is also quite poetic, both in the way that he writes and also in the feelings and images that he calls up. This style is one of the reasons why his book is such a pleasure to read.

The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World is a new book by American journalist and writer Vincent Bevins that tells the history of how the United States developed its regime toppling program during the first decades of the Cold War, unleashing a wave of violence to ‘align’ the Non-Aligned Movement.

This volume provides essential ideas that are critical in overcoming the multi-faceted challenges that threaten humanity, especially the ecological crisis, racism, and pandemics. Organizing in cities can help us to be democratic and provide the groundwork for the national and international cooperation that is needed if humanity is to have any hope.

Planet of the Humans is not without its faults, but I hope the debate it has sparked will come to embrace a thorough discussion of the bankruptcy of green capitalism and the need for solutions based on principles of social and economic justice which genuinely challenge overconsumption and unlimited economic growth.

The title of this both intelligent and highly accessible book made me suspect it would simply advocate an anti-capitalist theology and present a vision of Jesus as a socialist. But in effect, Jesus and the Politics of Mammon by Hollis Phelps, does something a little different than simply presenting a socialist Christ.

In 2020, Joe Biden finds himself as the pick of the Democratic establishment for the US presidential primaries. Their case for Biden is a “return to normalcy” as the strategy to beat Donald Trump in the general election. In Branko Marcetic’s Yesterday’s Man, however, there is a strong case to be made against the 77-year-old’s presidential candidacy by looking into Biden’s legislative record.

Minor shortcomings aside, Latin America’s Pink Tide is, without exaggeration, the richest and most complete overview of the region’s leftist experiments to date. The volume is an essential starting point for debate on progressive governments’ legacy and strategic lessons for counter-hegemonic processes everywhere.

Ronald Purser’s new book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality presents a stunning takedown of a mindfulness that has been hijacked and manipulated by capitalist culture to neuter its political potential and make it useful to the corporate world.