New Socialism

A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for

The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.

Ronald Radosh's earliest memory is of being trundled off to a May Day demonstration by his Communist parents. Radosh grew up in the parallel universe of American Communism. When he entered the University of Wisconsin in the late 1950s, he became a founding father of the New Left and was on the center stage during the 60s.

A late-night visit to his Shanghai laneway house by China’s notorious secret police triggered a diplomatic storm which abruptly ended Michael Smith’s stint as one of Australia’s last foreign correspondents in China. After five days under consular protection, Smith was evacuated from a very different China to the country he first visited 25 years earlier.

Edward Bellamy was an American socialist and author who had a penchant for utopian thinking and a passion for discussing a better world and the way in which can build one. Nowhere in Bellamy’s work is this more evident that in The New Nation. First published in 1981, The New Nation is an inspiring and beautifully crafted piece of writing that is at one political and emotionally driven. Bellamy writes of the sheer necessity to build a new nation or remodel the old one in a completely new way for the benefit of the people.