Welcome to installment #34 of Books (and more) by Friends, December 2024:

Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing, by Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise, tells the story of the “transformation of Jewish Voice for Peace from a local anti-occupation Jewish organization into an international anti-Zionist Jewish organization leading a revival of Jewish leftist traditions.”

In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Anti-Racist Education, by Jesse Hagopian, is a much needed reckoning with the roots of this current wave of censorship and an urgent call to action.

War, Global Capitalism and Resistance, by Bill Robinson: “Always thought-provoking and challenging, this compilation of his writings offers a compelling analysis of the changing nature of global capitalism today and how it has spawned mass migration, war, the rise of fascism and the climate crisis.”

How We Win: Energizing Strategies, Voters and Agendas includes chapters by Maurice Mitchell, Saru Jayaraman, Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, Anat Shenker-Osorio and many other radical activists and analysts. “A theoretically and empirically informed handbook for activists, voters, their organizations, unions, and communities.”

Homegrown, directed and produced by Michael Premo, is an “unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other.” To find a scheduled screening or arrange one for your school or organization, go here.

Terry Tarnoff’s novel, The Bone Man of Benares, is based on an eight-year journey that the author, one of a new generation of expatriates fed up with the Vietnam War and their own culture, began in 1971. If you missed its original release in 2004, you get another chance with this 20^th anniversary edition.

Crashing Into America: A Radical Passage from India, by Robbie Orr, tells the story of Jamie, the son of Scottish and American missionaries in newly independent India. It follows Jamie from his childhood fear of being left alone in an Indian boarding school to his going back to “his America” in the throes of the Vietnam war.   

Finally, as Trump 2.0 looms and the Gaza genocide continues, the political lessons which fill the pages of Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections, published in 2022, remain relevant. The volume was edited by Linda Burnham, Maria Poblet and me; seven chapters in Spanish are also available to download free of charge here.  

Peace on Earth, Good Will to All,

Max