Historian, Teacher, Writer

Review essays

The Socialist Minimum

What would it take to build a global challenge to neoliberal capitalism? How might socialists from different countries join together and devise collective solutions to problems that transcend national borders? Talbot C. Imlay provides a historical answer to these questions in his important new book The Practice of Socialist Internationalism: European Socialists and International Politics, 1914-1960 (OUP, 2018). Check out my review essay in H-Diplo. It turns out that pragmatic Read More

Inflatable Marx

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. Gareth Stedman Jones’ recent biography, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, gives us the chance to take stock of Marx’s legacy. Do his theories still speak to our twenty-first century world? Stedman Jones doesn’t think so. My review essay in H-Ideas reconstructs the book’s arguments in the context of its author’s own intellectual biography. The image we get is of an inflatable Read More

Minecraft! Reflections by Two Scholars Who Should Know Better

– Co-authored with Jennifer L. Allen – When the full version of Minecraft, a computer game by Mojang, turned one year old last month, we thought that it would be fun to share our experiences of and reflections on this thing that’s been haunting our dreams. We should begin by admitting that we’ve only tried single-player mode; entering into a war of all against all in multi-player mode struck us Read More