The Midwifes Revolt

"On a dark night in 1775, Lizzie Boylston is awakened by the sound of cannons. From a hill south of Boston, she watches as fires burn in Charlestown, in a battle that she soon discovers has claimed her husband's life. Alone in a new town. Soon, word spreads of Lizzie's extraordinary midwifery and healing skills, and she begins to channel her grief into caring for those who need her." -- back cover.

A love affair tests a new nation's revolutionary ideals. In 1770s Boston, a prosperous merchant's daughter, Eliza Boylston, lives a charmed life--until war breaches the walls of the family estate and forces her to live in a world in which wealth can no longer protect her. As the chaos of the Revolutionary War tears her family apart, Eliza finds herself drawn to her uncle's slave, John Watkins. Their love leads to her exile in Braintree, Massachusetts, home to radicals John and Abigail Adams and Eliza's midwife sister-in-law, Lizzie Boylston. But even as the uprising takes hold, Eliza can't help but wonder whether a rebel victory will grant her and John the most basic of American rights.

From the author of the National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the WINNER of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings "An undeniable success.” — The New York Times Book Review A true triumph of voice and storytelling, The Book of Night Women rings with both profound authenticity and a distinctly contemporary energy. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they- and she-will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings, desires, and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. But the real revelation of the book-the secret to the stirring imagery and insistent prose-is Marlon James himself, a young writer at once breath­takingly daring and wholly in command of his craft.

"In 1794, Johnny Watkins returns to America from Barbados, intent on becoming a great statesman. Even his hero, John Adams, believes the gifted boy will go far. There's just one catch: Johnny must learn to pass for white. He finds a spirited and lovely confidante in Kate, one of the few who knows that Johnny's father had been born a slave. But as he moves closer toward the new city of Washington, Johnny leaves Kate behind, falling instead for a prominent Maryland heiress who may not have his best interests at hear. Embroiled in the vicious politics of the approaching election, Johnny lives every moment at the risk of being unmasked. Then, a discovery about Thomas Jefferson, one that could sway the election, imperils not only Johnny's future but also his life. In the end, Johnny learns who his real friends are--and the truth behind the great promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--Page 4 of cover.

In A Dialectical Pedagogy of RevoltBrecht De Smet offers an intellectual dialogue between the political theory of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and the cultural psychology of Soviet thinker Lev Vygotsky within the framework of the Egyptian 25 January Revolution. Their encounter affirms the enduring need for a coherent theory of the revolutionary subject in the era of global capitalism, based on a political pedagogy of subaltern hegemony, solidarity, and reciprocal education. Investigating the political and economic lineages and outcomes of the mass uprising of Tahrir Square, De Smet discusses the emancipatory achievements and hegemonic failures of the Egyptian workers’ and civil democratic movements from the perspective of their (in)ability to construct a genuine dialectical pedagogy.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This first modern study provides an original and balanced perspective of a theorist whom Lenin referred to as both ‘master of Marxism’ and ‘renegade’. Examining Kautsky’s political thought over a period stretching from the Paris Commune to the Second World War, the author argues for the consistency with which Kautsky developed his positions on socialism, democracy, political parties and the role of the proletariat. While Salvadori’s analysis is grounded in the debates within the Communist International and the German labour movement, Kautsky emerges as a distinctly modern thinker who produced a Marxist theory of the state, and originated critique of the USSR as a ‘state capitalist’ system. At this level, it provides a serious and measured exposition of the terms on which arguments for socialist strategy currently move.

In 1848, Karl Marx declared that a communist specter was haunting Europe. In 1994, Jacques Derrida considered how the spectre of Marx would haunt the post-Cold War world. In Specters of Revolt, Gilman-Opalsky argues that the world is haunted by revolt, by the possibility of events that interrupt and disrupt the world, that throw its reality and justice into question. But recent revolt is neither decisively communist nor decisively Marxist. Gilman-Opalsky develops a theory of revolt that accounts for its diverse critical content about autonomy, everyday life, anxiety, experience, knowledge, and possibility. The 1994 uprising of the Mexican Zapatistas set the stage for new forms of revolt against a newly expanded power of capital. In the 20 years since, including the recent phase of global uprisings that began in 2008 with the Greek revolts, insurrection has spoken in the "Arab Spring" in Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and in the U.S. in Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, and Baltimore, among other places. In light of recent global uprisings, Gilman-Opalsky aims to move beyond the critical theory of revolt to an understanding of revolt as theory itself. Making use of diverse sources from Raoul Vaneigem and Félix Guattari to Julia Kristeva and Raya Dunayevskaya, Spectres of Revolt explores upheaval as thinking, the intellect of insurrection, and philosophy from below.