From her operational-base-cum-family-home, Commie Girl brings you this brave and brilliant journal of daily life in a land where no liberal-humanist sentiment has been detected since the dawn of Reaganism. Whether working her way through a syphilis scare or puzzling in vain over the philosophical conundrum of taking Arnold Schwarzenegger seriously, Commie Girl finds the inner solidarity to hoist the red flag everywhere it isn't welcome. And the ferocious gaiety with which she defends herself from the Versace-decked, HumVee-crashing, Chardonnay-addled denizens of the USA's ultimate evil paradise will draw gasps of astonishment and admiration from all those who think it really can't be that bad.

De-Centering Cold War History challenges the Cold War master narratives that focus on super-power politics by shifting our analytical perspective to include local-level experiences and regional initiatives that were crucial to the making of a Cold War world. Cold War histories are often told as stories of national leaders, state policies and the global confrontation that pitted a Communist Eastern Bloc against a Capitalist West. Taking a new analytical approach this book reveals unexpected complexities in the historical trajectory of the Cold War. Contributions from an international group of scholars take a fresh look at historical agency in different places across the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. This collaborative effort shapes a street-level history of the global Cold War era, one that uses the analysis of the 'local' to rethink and reframe the wider picture of the 'global', connecting the political negotiations of individuals and communities at the intersection of places and of meeting points between 'ordinary' people and political elites to the Cold War at large. Essential reading for all students of Cold War history.

Music.

A young man sets out on a quest to find his biological father. Along the way, he falls in with a plucky band of environmental activists, who call themselves eco-ops, operating in the wilds of Orange County. Each one among them possesses unique abilities. And one is The Dreameran individual with a singular destiny: to weave, at a sub-conscious level, the totality of present and past world events. The murder of a prominent industrialist and Orange County developer catapults eco-ops into motion. Investigating the murder while trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities, eco-ops uncovers a nefarious plot to overthrow the government. A cynical, wealthy televangelist is engaged in a power grab to implement his sociopathic agenda and impose it on unsuspecting millions. Can eco-ops expose the plot before he and his minions can close the deal? Sleeping Gods is a mystical adventure thriller combining action and reflection, humor and pathos. It finds unlikely heroes and dastardly villains on a collision course in a world where reality is inextricably intertwined with the magical and mythical.

Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently, a gilded archipelago of private islands known as “The World” is literally being added to the ocean. In Medellín and Kabul, drug lords—in many ways textbook capitalists—are redefining conspicuous consumption in fortified palaces. In Hong Kong, Cairo, and even the Iranian desert, burgeoning communities of nouveaux riches have taken shelter in fantasy Californias, complete with Mickey Mouse statues, while their maids sleep in rooftop chicken coops. Meanwhile, Ted Turner rides herd over his bison in 2 million acres of private parkland. Davis and Monk have assembled an extraordinary group of urbanists, architects, historians, and visionary thinkers to reflect upon the trajectory of a civilization whose deepest ethos seems to be to consume all the resources of the earth within a single lifetime.