Waging Peace in Vietnam: US Soldiers & Veterans Who Opposed the War
Edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright & Barbara Doherty
New Village Press, 2019, 239 pp., $51.00
Winter Warrior: A Vietnam Vet’s anti-war odyssey
By Eve Gilbert (telling the story of Scott Camil)
Fantagraphics Books, 2019, 96 pp., $29
At the height of the US invasion of Vietnam, about 500,000 US military personnel were involved in the conflict. Of those, more than 50,000 lost their lives -- and the US lost the War.
Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: The Life of Karl Marx and the Development of His Work
Volume 1: 1818-1841
By Michael Heinrich
Monthly Review Press, 2019
390 pp., $46.00
In the opening lines of this book Michael Heinrich quotes from an 1868 letter in which Karl Marx mentions a publisher’s request for a biography. “Not only did I not send one”, said Marx, “I did not even reply to the letter.”
Maryanne & Leonard, Words of Love
Documentary film directed by Nick Broomfield
In cinemas
As I emerged from the media preview for this film, I heard another viewer mutter that it was “the most self-indulgent film I’ve ever seen”.
So, beware! This documentary about Leonard Cohen’s personal and artistic life will cut the sheep from the goats of fans and detractors – much like his music and atonal singing have always done.
How to Read Donald Duck
By Ariel Dorfman & Armand Mattelart, translated by David Kunzle
Pluto Press, 2019
192 pp, $17.00
Today, as the streets of Chile burn with rebellion, it is timely to look back on this book, which was burned by the military during the 1973 overthrow of the socialist Salvador Allende presidency.
Mrs Lowry & Son
Directed by Adrian Noble
Starring Vanessa Redgrave & Timothy Spall
In cinemas as part of the MINI British Film Festival
This film adaptation of the stage play by Martyn Hesford shows the early life of one of the titans of modern British art, L. S. Lowry, famous for his paintings of “matchstick people” going about their lives in working class northern England.
His simplistic style evokes beauty in what was considered squalid and lower class.
Finding Evald Ilyenkov: How a Soviet philosopher who stood up for dialectics continues to inspire
By Corinna Lotz
Lupus Books, 2019
57 pp., $8
Order online
The Report is based on the real-life work of US Senate staffer Daniel Jones, who led the investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s international torture program that followed the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks.
The makers of this documentary advocate using psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms and an African hallucinogen called iboga in the treatment of opioid addiction and other drug dependencies.
In 2011, retired British lawyer Rupert Grey and his wife Jan set off on a driving tour of India — in a 1936 Rolls Royce that he had inherited from his father. Filmmaker Oliver McGarvey tagged along for the six-month journey across mountains, deserts, through civil war zones and bureaucratic snafus.
Martin Monath is one of the great, though barely known heroes of World War II. A German-Jewish Marxist, he fled the Nazis and operated underground, first in Belgium and then in France.
