The Verso Book of Dissent : Revolutionary Words From Three Millennia of Rebellion and Resistance

Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protestrallying others around them and inspiring uprisings in eras yet to come. Their echoes reverberate from Ancient Greece, China and Egypt, via the dissident poets and philosophers of Islam and Judaism, through to the Arab slave revolts and anti-Ottoman rebellions of the Middle Ages. These sources were tapped during the Dutch and English revolutions at the outset of the Modern world, and in turn flowed into the French, Haitian, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions. More recently, resistance to war and economic oppression has flared up on battlefields and in public spaces from Beijing and Baghdad to Caracas and Los Angeles. This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent will become an invaluable resource, reminding todays citizens that these traditions will never die. This Volume Contains Some 400 Quotations And Excerpts Ranging From An Egyptian Peasant Protesting A Noble's Seizure Of His Donkey In Ca. 1800 Bce To Henning Mankell, A Swedish Mystery Writer Who Participated In The Aid Flotilla To Gaza That Was Fatally Attacked By The Israeli Military (an Account Of The Slave Uprising Led By The Spartacus And The Words Of Mohammed Al-zaidi, The Iraqi Journalist Who Threw His Shoes At George W. Bush In Protest Of The Invasion Of Iraq, Are Included, So The Alliterative Subtitle Is Not Very Misleading). In Between, One Finds Excerpts Of Poems, Stories, Songs, Pamphlets, Speeches, Etc. From A Broad Range Of Dissenting Figures, Including A 14th Century Judge In Palestine Satirizing The Law, A 15th Century Vietnamese Aristocrat Fighting Against The Chinese Ming Dynasty, The 16th Century French Writer François Rabelais, Abigail Adams Appealing To Her Husband John To Remember The Ladies As He Worked On The New Code Of Laws For The Newly-independent United States, Thomas Paine, French Revolutionary Pierre-joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels, Russian Socialist Alexander Herzen, Sojourner Truth, American Anarchist Luci Parsons, Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Marxist Playwright Bertolt Brecht, African-american Poet Langston Hughes, Jean-paul Sartre, South African Anti-apartheid Activist Steve Biko, Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah, And Chinese Human Rights Activist Liu Xiaobo, To Cite A Handful Of Examples. Preface By Tariq Ali ; Edited By Andrew Hsiao And Audrea Lim. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Fully updated compendium of revolt and resistanceThroughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest-rallying others around them or, sometimes, inspiring uprisings many years later. Their echoes reverberate from Ancient Greece, China and Egypt, via the dissident poets and philosophers of Islam and Judaism, through to the Arab slave revolts and anti-Ottoman rebellions of the Middle Ages. These sources were tapped during the Dutch and English revolutions at the outset of the Modern world, and in turn flowed into the French, Haitian, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions. More recently, resistance to war and economic oppression has flared up on battlefields and in public spaces from Beijing and Cairo to Moscow and New York City. This anthology, global in scope, presents voices of dissent from every era of human history: speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos. Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book of Dissent should be in the arsenal of every rebel who understands that words and ideas are the ultimate weapons. A sparkling anthology of revolt and resistance to orthodoxy and repression.