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Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California U.C. Press, 2007

Critical Resistance

More than one in every one hundred adults in the US is behind bars. What accounts for the 450% increase in the number of incarcerated people since 1980? Is it rising crime rates, or racism, or something else? Ruth Wilson Gilmore shared her analysis, and described anti-prison activism, before an audience at The Evergreen State College.

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Adrian Desmond & James Moore, Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009

Is it correct to say that Charles Darwin was a scientist par excellence, and that his theories were rooted solely in empirical study? Or might there have been another side to Darwin, a moral passion that spurred his research on evolution? James Moore contends that Darwin's obsession with human origins was fueled by his contempt for slavery.

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Richard McIntyre, Are Worker Rights Human Rights? U. of Michigan Press, 2008

Human rights and their violation are an insistent focus of many activists and organizations. But are there important limitations to rights-based politics? Because an individualist interpretation of rights holds sway, Richard McIntyre asserts that the rights revolution has failed to advance the collective strength of US workers.

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Peter Gowan, "Triumphing toward International Disaster: The Impasse in American Grand Strategy" Critical Asian Studies

Peter Gowan, "Crisis in the Heartland" New Left Review

Peter Gowan, a major intellectual force on the Left, died on June 12. Several months ago on ATG, Gowan talked about the postwar internationalist capitalist order fashioned by the US. That order, Gowan argued, has been in crisis for many years. What happened to US primacy, and why? In what ways has the US tried to restore its hegemony, and what obstacles has it encountered? Gowan talked about the evolving relationships among advanced capitalist nations.

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Lemkau and Strug, eds., Love, Loss and Longing: The Impact of U.S. Travel Policy on Cuban-American Families Latin America Working Group, 2007 

Socialism and Democracy

Fifty years ago, a dictator was ousted and socialism began to took root in Cuba. How do Cubans who supported the revolution then feel about it now? And how have Cubans coped with hardships brought on by, among other things, the USSR's collapse? Robert Arellano's novel Havana Lunar is about a young, idealistic Cuban doctor. David Strug has studied older Cubans' understandings of the revolution.

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Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest Routledge, 1995

Why does the US torture people who it knows have no actionable intelligence? What does paranoia have to do with torture conducted at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? What has the commentary surrounding the Abu Ghraib photographs crucially ignored? Anne McClintock weighs in on these and other matters.