Joseph Stiglitz is no radical. He is a mainstream “free market” economist who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. He served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Bill Clinton, starting in 1993. Globalization and Its Discontents is a fascinating insider’s look at the process of capitalist globalization.

Meghnad Desai is the director of the Centre for the study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, and Marx’s Revenge is his analysis of the glories of globalization, free trade and the everlastingness of capitalism.

William Gibson, best known for the sci-fi thriller Necromancer, in Pattern Recognition spins a post-9/11 tale of espionage and mystery set in the world of high-finance advertising.

A study of the diversity and complexity of African American poetry during the 1930s and 1940s, Smethurst’s The New Red Negro compellingly and subtly articulates a new view of this long-neglected period and genre of American letters.

In recent years, the conservative assault on the democratic values at the heart of our legal system has manifested itself in a range of sweeping repressive powers. In 2001, after Congress passed the dubious USA Patriot Act and the Department of Justice announced that it would authorize the federal government to monitor attorney-client conversations, George W. Bush signed a Military Order allowing the trial of non-citizens in military tribunals.

Robert Meeropol’s An Execution in the Family renders a fiery challenge to the family values of the right. It is a timely exposé of the violence that flows from the destruction of civil rights and liberties experienced by victims of the “McCarthy-era abuses of power.”

Close your eyes and imagine a scene from World War II. What do you see? US troops storming the beaches of Normandy? A Russian soldier placing the red flag of victory atop the German Reichstag in Berlin? The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The grim gray dawns of the years long siege of Stalingrad? Search the awful war-torn terrain. Among the scorched steel and rubble, the twisted trees and cratered earth, between the near ruined armies arrayed against each other in that titanic struggle, do you discern any faces of color?

Harry Potter is an annoying, conceited little brat. Anything that was likable about the character through the first four books of the Harry Potter series has been overshadowed now by his generally distasteful personality.

Clyde Prestowitz’s Rogue Nation is an important book, not necessarily because of what it says but because of what it represents. Prestowitz is a former Reagan Administration official, who was catapulted to prominence during the 1980s because of his scorching critique of Japan, and what he then saw as its unfair trading practices.

The preface of The Great Wells of Democracy sets the tone for establishing this book as a document for those who are unfamiliar with African American history and its struggles.

During the period between the first and second World Wars, two different intellectual doctrines vied for control of shaping the future of Black Americans: nationalism and Marxism. In his book Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars, Anthony Dawahare illustrates the influence of this struggle and provides an excellent and thorough examination of the two most influential ideologies of the Harlem Renaissance, historicizing the movements in their proper context.

A young woman looking for work as a live-in personal secretary in the Cosey household rekindles memories long since tucked away in the mind of the quiet neighborhood. Within the Cosey household, the arrival of this young woman, Junior Viviane, sparks suspicion and fear.

As a few corporate criminals are paraded before the press to show government concern for the kinds of deception practiced by some Enron officials, Vijay Prashad’s book, Fat Cats and Running Dogs, delves more deeply to reveal the true extent of their crimes.

In a March 2002 interview with Pacifica radio in Berkeley, then Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia made headlines.