Paul Buhle

Under the Banner of King Death is a tale of mutiny, bloody battle, and social revolution, bringing to life an itinerant community of outsiders behind today's legends. This graphic novel breaks new ground in our understanding of piracy and pirate culture, giving us real reasons to love the rebellious and stouthearted marauders of the seas.At the pinnacle of the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy, three unlikely companions are sold into servitude on a merchant ship and thrust into a voyage of rebellion. They are John Gwin, an African American fugitive from bondage in South Carolina; Ruben Dekker, a common seaman from Amsterdam; and Mark (a.k.a. Mary) Reed, an American woman who dresses as a man.When the crew turn to mutiny, they and the freed slaves establish democracy aboard The Night Rambler. This new dispensation provides radical social benefits, all based on the documented practices of real pirate ships of the era: democratic decision-making, a social security net, health and disability insurance, and an equal distribution of spoils taken from prize ships. But before long the London elites enlist a war-hungry captain to take down The Night Rambler in a war that pitches high society against high-seas freebooters.Adapted from the scholarship and research of celebrated historian Marcus Rediker, Under the Banner of King Death is an inspiring story of the oppressed steering a course against adversity and injustice.

C.L.R. James was a protean 20th century Marxist intellectual, widely recognized as a pioneering scholar of slave revolt; a leading voice of Pan-Africanism; a peripatetic revolutionary and scholar who was active in US and UK radical movements; a novelist, playwright, and critic; and one of the premier writers on cricket and sports. This intellectual portrait was written by James's longtime interlocutor and comrade Paul Buhle, and initially published in 1988. With a new final chapter, updated bibliography, a new foreword by historian Robin D.G. Kelley and a new afterword by philosopher Lawrence Ware, this long-awaited revised edition of a classic biography will be a key resource in the James revival.

This collection brings together the labor and cultural studies of the author over the past 20 years, during which time the fields of social history, women's history, ethnic studies, public history, and oral history have all been transformed. The essays, some rewritten or newly available and the rest original to this volume, offer important examples of historical analysis, comment on changing scholarly perceptions, and the public uses of history. By drawing upon his own research in popular culture, Yiddish periodicals, interracial unionism, oral history and a variety of other sources, the author demonstrates how the field of labor specialists has become the domain of social historians exploring a rich American past.

One of the main problems of theoretical physics concerns the unification of gravity with quantum theory. This monograph examines unification by means of the appropriate formulation of quantum gauge invariance. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of physics, the treatment requires a basic knowledge of quantum mechanics.Opening chapters introduce the free quantum fields and prepare the field for the gauge structure, describing the inductive construction of the time-ordered products by causal perturbation theory. The analysis of causal gauge invariance follows, with considerations of massless and massive spin-1 gauge fields. Succeeding chapters explore the construction of spin-2 gauge theories, concluding with an examination of nongeometric general relativity that offers an innovate approach to gravity and cosmology.

Executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, for his role in organizing the Easter Rising, James Connolly was one of the most prominent radical organizers and agitators of his day. Connolly became a leading socialist writer and theoretician, founding and editing newspapers. This pamphlet, the first graphic treatment of Connolly s life, is issued on the centenary of the Easter Rising."

A crown jewel of New Left historiography, this overview of U.S. Marxism was hailed on its first publication for its nuanced storytelling, balance and incredible sweep.Brimming over with archival finds and buoyed by the recollections of witnesses and participants in the radical movements of decades past, Marxism in the United States includes fascinating accounts of the immigrant socialism of the nineteenth century, the formation of the CPUSA in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of American communism and of the hugely influential Popular Front in the 1920s and '30s, the crisis and split of the '50s, and the revival of Marxism in the '60s and '70s.This revised and updated edition also takes into account the last quartercentury of life in the U.S., bringing the story of American Marxism up to the present.With today's resurgent interest in radicalism, this new edition provides an unparalleled guide to 150 years of American left history.

It has been 35 years since Pulitzer-Prize winner Terkel first documented American workers' hopes and dreams. Now, his masterpiece has been turned into a comic book by Harvey Pekar, author of the award-winning comics series American Splendor. Brilliantly scripting and arranging Terkel's interviews, Pekar collaborates with established comics veterans as well as the brightest new talents. Readers will find a visual palette of influences from Mexican, African American, superhero and feminist art that will delight Terkel fans.

Tim Hector (1942-2002) played many roles—political philosopher, educator, literary and music critic, cricket administrator, political leader, and newspaper editor. Best known for his editorship of the newspaper Outlet and his cofounding of the Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement, Hector struggled for the independence of his native island Antigua. As a disciple of C. L. R. James, he was one of the Pan-African movement's most vital figures, and his regular column ""Fan the Flame"" in Outlet was followed avidly throughout the Caribbean. His insights into regional history, politics, cricket, and literature were eagerly awaited. Biographer Paul Buhle traces Hector's intellectual development and explores how the editor-activist's political philosophy evolved from an early island nationalism and militant Marxism into an embrace of democratic self-determination and of political union in a future Caribbean nation. Hector's Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement labored to make Black Nationalism into a generous vision of collective pride and historical destiny, with no one excluded. His trials and travails—loss of a teaching career, arrests, destruction of his printing press, the murder of his wife, betrayal by the political leaders he supported—were frankly revealed in his columns. Hector's life and work offer a saga of Caribbean achievement and anxiety, at once racial, political, economic, and ecological. Through the lens of Hector, Buhle gives the reader insight into the radical movements in the British West Indies. Hector's story unfolds in a region full of turmoil but also full of promise. Paul Buhle, the authorized biographer of C. L. R. James, is a senior lecturer in history and American civilization at Brown University. A prize-winning author-editor and frequent contributor to the Nation, the Village Voice, TIKKUN, and the San Francisco Chronicle, he has published twenty-eight previous volumes including The Life and Work of C. L. R. James, Encyclopedia of the American Left, C. L. R. James's Caribbean, four other biographies, and five volumes on the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist.

The contribution by Jews to American popular culture is widely acknowledged yet scarcely documented. This is the first comprehensive investigation of the formative Jewish influence upon the rise and development of American popular culture, drawing upon extensive oral histories with several generations of Jewish artists, little-utilized Yiddish scholarship, and the author's own connections with today's comic-strip artists. Buhle shows how the rich legacy of Yiddish prepared would-be artists to absorb the cultures of their surrounding environments, seeing the world through the eyes of others, and producing the talent required for theater, films, television, popular music and comics.Buhle suggests that "premodern" and "postmodern" are arbitrary designations here, because the self-reflective content has always radiated an inner Jewishness. From Sholem Aleichem (who died in the Bronx) to Gertrude Berg, Woody Allen and Tony Kushner, from John Garfield to Roseanne Barr and Rube Goldberg to Cyndi Lauper, the cutting edge is never too far from home and humane antidotes to the pains of a troubled world. Contradictions between Jewish avant-garde and kitsch, mogul and artist, orthodoxy and heresy are given new sense here in the scope of cultural output adopted by ordinary Americans as their own. Illustrated with the work of Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Ben Katchor, Trina Robbins and others, From the Lower East Side to Hollywood is full of humor and insight into the power of popular art to spark insight and encourage the endless quest for freedom.

When he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (1911-1999) was labeled 'a very dangerous citizen' by Harold Velde, a congressman from Illinois. Lawyer, educator, novelist, labor organizer, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer. The "New York Times" called his blacklisting the single greatest loss to American film during the McCarthy era, and his expressed admirers include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, and Harry Belafonte. In this first critical and cultural biography of Abraham Polonsky, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner present both an accomplished consideration of a remarkable survivor of America's cultural cold war and a superb study of the Hollywood left. The Bronx-born son of immigrant parents, Polonsky - in the few years after the end of World War II and just before the blacklist - had one of the most distinguished careers in Hollywood. He wrote two films that established John Garfield's postwar persona, "Body and Soul" (1947), still the standard for boxing films and the model for such movies as "Raging Bull" and "Pulp Fiction"; and "Force of Evil" (1948), the great noir drama that he also directed. Once blacklisted, Polonsky quit working under his own name, yet he proved to be one of television's most talented writers. Later in life he became the most acerbic critic of the Hollywood blacklist's legacy while writing and directing films such as "Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here" (1970). "A Very Dangerous Citizen" goes beyond biography to help us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture and to uncover the effects of U.S. anticommunism and anti-Semitism. Rich in anecdote and in analysis, it provides an informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most intriguing personalities of twentieth-century American culture.

"Mike Alewitz's art has given eloquent voice to the aspirations of working people throughout the world."Martin Sheen The most prolific U.S. labor muralist since the 1940s, Alewitz illuminates the hidden spaces where connections between the U.S. workforce and its extended relatives across the planet are to be found. Insurgent Images contains murals for the Teamsters, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, the Communications Workers, United Electrical Workers, the United Farm Workers, as well as the Highlander Folk School and other labor institutions. Other works respond to dramatic events such as the 1984 strike of P-9 workers in Austin, Minnesota, the 1991 rebellion in Los Angeles, and the tragedy at Chernobyl. Altogether, this collection presents an inspiring artistic reading of our epoch."

In this original, colorful history of "business unionism," Paul Buhle explains how trade union leaders in the United States became remote from the workers they claimed to represent as they allied with the very corporate executives and government officials who persistently opposed labor's interests. At the center of the tale are three of the most powerful labor leaders of the past century: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and Lane Kirkland, successive presidents of the American Federation of Labor and its descendent, the AFL-CIO. Many other labor leaders, from John L. Lewis to Walter Reuther, receive in-depth treatment. Taking Care of Business demonstrates how a union hierarchy heavily populated by former radicals thwarted women and people of color from joining unions, suppressed shop floor militance, and colluded with business and government at home and abroad. Buhle shows how these leaders defeated generations of radical union members who sought a more democratic, class-based approach for the movement.

This collection brings together the labor and cultural studies of the author over the past 20 years, during which time the fields of social history, women's history, ethnic studies, public history, and oral history have all been transformed. The essays, some rewritten or newly available and the rest original to this volume, offer important examples of historical analysis, comment on changing scholarly perceptions, and the public uses of history. By drawing upon his own research in popular culture, Yiddish periodicals, interracial unionism, oral history and a variety of other sources, the author demonstrates how the field of labor specialists has become the domain of social historians exploring a rich American past.

Williams' controversial volumes, The Tragedy of AmericanDiplomacy, Contours of American History, and other works have established him as the foremost interpreter of US foreign policy. Both Williams and others deeply influenced by him have recast not only diplomatic history but also the story of pioneer America's westward movement, and studies in the culture of imperialism. At the end of the Cold War, when the US no longer faces any great enemy, the lessons of William Appleman Williams' life and scholarship have become more urgent than ever before. This study of his life and major works offers readers an opportunity to introduce, or re-introduce, themselves to a major figure of the last half-century.

For more than half a century, C. L. R. James (1901-1989)-"the Black Plato," as coined by the London Times-has been an internationally renowned revolutionary thinker, writer, and activist. Born in Trinidad, his lifelong work was devoted to understanding and transforming race and class exploitation in his native West Indies, as well as in Britain and the United States. In C. L. R. James's Caribbean, noted scholars examine the roots of both James's life and oeuvre in connection with the economic, social, and political environment of the West Indies. Drawing upon James's observations of his own life as revealed to interviewers and close friends, this volume provides an examination of James's childhood and early years as colonial literatteur and his massive contribution to West Indian political-cultural understanding. Moving beyond previous biographical interpretations, the contributors here take up the problem of reading James's texts in light of poststructuralist criticism, the implications of his texts for Marxist discourse, and for problems of Caribbean development.

Essays trace the rise of an intellectual New Left from 1950 to 1970