By Joseph .J. Ellis

From the Preface: The pages that follow are concerned with the American Revolution, with the generation of Americans that came of age during the revolutionary crisis, with the expectations they harbored for the future of American culture, and with their responses when that future failed to materialize. After attempting to identify the rapidly changing social conditions and values of revolutionary America, I try to tell thestory offour men whoselives grew out of thatsocial context: Charles Willson Peale, an artist; Hugh Henry Brackenridge, a novelist; William Dunlap, a dramatist and theater manager; and Noah Webster, an educator, linguist, and all-purpose polemicist. Each of these men believed that the American Revolution was more than a war for colonial independence. Each expected the Revolution to alter American society in fundamental ways. Each thought that the Revolution would remove long-standing constraints to national development and thereby unleash vast reservoirs of untapped energy within American society and within individual personalities…….Expectations this excessive, you might say, are doomed from the start……

NY. W.W. Norton. 1979. 267p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

Edited with Introduction, Biographical Sketch and Notes by Roger N. Baldwin

From the introduction:” Kropotkin's confidence in the capacity of mankind to achieve such a socicty may seem naive. But evidence is not lacking, even in this violent and confused era, to sustain a belief in it. Personal freedom, voluntary association, and democratic control of power are still vital forces in political thought and practical struggles.”

NY. Dover. 1970. 137p.

By Michael Welch

The “Bastille Effect” refers to the unique ways that former sites of political imprisonment are transformed, physically and culturally. In their afterlives, these sites represent sustained efforts to hold perpetrators accountable for state violence. For that narrative to surface, the sites must be cleansed of their profane past. In some cases, clergy are even enlisted to perform purifying rituals that grant the sites a new identity as memorials. Around the globe, carceral sites have been dramatically repurposed into places of enlightenment that offer inspiring allegories of human rights. Interpreting the complexities of those common threads, this book weaves together a broad range of cultural, interdisciplinary, and critical thought to offer new insights into the study of political imprisonment, collective memory, and post-conflict societies.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. 239p.

By Tadros, Mariz

This paper is about the struggle to combat gender-based violence in public space in Egypt through the sustained collective action of vigilante groups who organically formed to respond to the increasing encroachment on women in public space from 2011 onwards. The study examines the emergence of a distinct form of collective action (informal youth-led activism aimed at addressing sexual violence in public space) at a very distinct historical juncture in the country’s history: the phase after the ousting of President Mubarak in February 2011 through what became known as the 25th of January Revolution and up to the ousting of President Morsi in what became controversially known as the 30th of June Revolution of 2013.

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2014. 35p.

By Lesley Gill.

Popular Struggle, Counterinsurgency, and Human Rights in Colombia. In A Century of Violence in a Red City Lesley Gill provides insights into broad trends of global capitalist development, class disenfranchisement and dispossession, and the decline of progressive politics. Gill traces the rise and fall of the strong labor unions, neighborhood organizations, and working class of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, from their origins in the 1920s to their effective activism for agrarian reforms, labor rights, and social programs in the 1960s and 1970s. Like much of Colombia, Barrancabermeja came to be dominated by alliances of right-wing politicians, drug traffickers, foreign corporations, and paramilitary groups. These alliances reshaped the geography of power and gave rise to a pernicious form of armed neoliberalism. Their violent incursion into Barrancabermeja's civil society beginning in the 1980s decimated the city's social networks, destabilized life for its residents, and destroyed its working-class organizations. As a result, community leaders are now left clinging to the toothless discourse of human rights, which cannot effectively challenge the status quo. In this stark book, Gill captures the grim reality and precarious future of Barrancabermeja and other places ravaged by neoliberalism and violence.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 302p.