2nd look

At the Barricades (1981) Radical Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett's autobiography covers the high spots of politics from the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. A reporter during World War II, Burchett was the first western journalist to report on the devastation of the Hiroshima bomb. His book details how the US military tried to cover up the extent of the damage and denied the existence of radiation poisoning which devastated the civilian population. Burchett's memoirs are particularly valuable because he covered the Cold War from the "enemy camp". For example, he documents the US army's use of biological weapons against North Korea during the Korean War, and provides a lot of useful material exposing the activities of both the French and US governments in the Vietnam Wars. Burchett also provides interesting insights into Australian politics of the period. An itinerant labourer during the Depression, Burchett documents the life conditions of rural workers and their militancy. Burchett was involved in a number of political movements during the 1930s, particularly anti-fascist work and the movement to support Republican Spain. In the 1950s he lost his Australian passport while in Cambodia. Repeated attempts to renew it were rebuffed by the then Liberal federal government on the pretext that Burchett "had severed his ties to Australia". In reality, they were keen to ensure that this trenchant critic of the Australian government's complicity in the Cold War, particularly in Vietnam, was gagged in Australia. This fascinating book is a must for all radicals. Try to get your hands on a copy. — John Nebauer Street Fighting Years (1988) Tariq Ali's book is an "autobiography of the '60s". It was released at a time when the establishment media were trying to minimise the importance of the 1960s radicalisation by reducing it to a question of the clothes, music and drugs popular at the time. In contrast, Ali's book is a political account of that period. Born in Pakistan, Tariq Ali studied law at Oxford University where he joined the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. A member of the Fourth International from the late '60s until 1987, Ali provides fascinating vignettes from the people and social movements of that period, for example his encounters with Malcolm X just a few weeks prior to his assassination; Marlon Brando, a supporter of the anti-Vietnam war movement; Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Marxist biographer of Leon Trotsky; and Bertrand Russell. Ali travelled to Prague and North Vietnam. He provides an interesting account of Prague just before the "Prague Spring", and offers a glimpse into the difficulties faced by North Vietnam during the war. He also visited Bolivia as part of a campaign to free Regis Debray (author of Revolution in the Revolution) who had contacted Che Guevara's guerrilla group and had been arrested by the Bolivian dictatorship. Ali's description of the events of May-June, 1968 in France quicken the pulse and his account of the revolutionary intellectuals and renegades of the '60s make the book a pleasure to read. Street Fighting Years is an extraordinarily optimistic work which imparts the conviction of those involved in the struggles of the 1960s that it was not only possible to change the world, but it was absolutely necessary. In today's political climate, the struggle for a better world can sometimes seem a utopian task. This book combines political education and entertaining reading in a way which may relieve today's militants suffering from 69>lack of campaign70> weariness. 97> John Nebauer