April 2026 Acquisitions

Books:

Brian Michael Bendis, Goldfish, 2022.

Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Harley Quinn: Wild at Heart, 2025.

Anthony O'Hear and Judy Groves, Introducing Jesus: A Graphic Guide, 2015.

Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, 1899, 1964.

Movies:

Big Bad Mama/Big Bad Mama II, 1999.

Earth Girls Are Easy, 1988.

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, 1975.

Lethal Ladies 2, 1999.

M, 1931.

Music:

Bangs and Talbot, Smokin' Aces, 2026.

British Electric Foundation, Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume One, 1982, 1991.

DJ Quik, Platnium & Gold Collection, 2004.

Dr Feelgood, Sneakin' Suspicion, 1977, 2025.

Hot Chocolate, An Introduction to Hot Chocolate, 2017.

Sly and the Family Stone, The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967, 2025.

Smothers Brothers, Sibling Revelry: The Best of the Smothers Brothers, 1988.

Steve White Trio, Soul Drums, 2026.

"In the 1935 Telling, Redistribution Was the Mechanism of Abundance"

"Even in those invocations of abundance, the stark differences between the socialist abundance movement of 1935 and the moderate abundance agenda of 2025 are apparent. The concept of 'production for use' is in contrast to the capitalist profit motive. In socialist thought, one of the core issues of a capitalist economy is that profit motives result in wealth accumulation becoming divorced from the creation of actual economic value. A production for use system makes production and allocation decisions based on need (or 'use value'), rather than market prices."

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis at The New Republic describes "An Altogether Different Kind of Abundance Agenda."

"To Restore a Fundamental Principle of Fairness to Our Economy"

"But the FTC's decision to stop enforcing it decades ago triggered a seismic shift in America. It gave massive chains like Walmart free rein to squeeze suppliers for unfair discounts. Walmart's expansion went unchecked; manufacturers consolidated and shuttered factories; jobs vanished; and thousands of small businesses folded, leaving hollowed-out Main Streets and food deserts in their wake. Outside of the collapse of US manufacturing, few economic forces have done as much damage to the American landscape in the past 50 years."

Ron Knox at The Nation discusses a revival of the Robinson-Patman Act.

"But They Disliked Democracy and Taxes and Regulation Far More"

"The aura of evil around the Nazis can make everything associated with them seem exotic and remote. It may be hard for us to imagine how respectable business leaders could enthusiastically support Hitler's election campaign. But their motives were mundane and familiar: pragmatism with a dash of ideological conviction."

Benjamin Hett at The New Republic argues that "[n]early a century later, many of our business leaders are blithely repeating the experiences of their German predecessors."

"Well-Written and Superb History"

"There is a role to play in the United States for a serious political left to challenge the assumptions of the center-left and center-right and raise issues the mainstream parties and movements would otherwise ignore. But, as Maurice Isserman's book reveals, the Communist Party USA could never have served that purpose—because a healthy left, unlike the CPUSA, would be a loyal opposition, acting in the best spirit of the American experiment rather than supporting its enemies."

Ronald Radosh at The Bulwark reviews Maurice Isserman's Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.

"It Is a Difficult Habit to Kick"

"The contradictions have frequently been noted: he was a socialist intellectual whose finest achievements included a mordant critique of the hypocrisy and double standards displayed by the socialist intellectuals of his day; a patriot who held most of his country's institutions in contempt; a passionate defender of historical truth who chose to write under an assumed name and who occasionally told lies; a self-styled champion of decency who backed causes that, had they prevailed, would have produced outcomes in which decency would have been difficult to discern; an atheist who decreed that his funeral should be conducted by the Church of England and that he should be buried in a rural parish churchyard. It is often the contradictions in an individual's character that give it distinction; in the case of Orwell, these were more marked and more numerous than in most, but it is not clear whether he was even aware of them. Yet it is these which explain why he is claimed by those on opposing sides—by socialists and libertarians, by conservatives as well as radicals, by patriots and internationally minded progressives. In a sense, he is up for grabs. All sorts of people can identify with him and claim him—or almost claim him—for their own and are keen, even desperate, to do so. The 'almost' is important: many of his admirers feel that if only he had fully grasped the implications of the part of his work of which they happen to approve there would be no doubt about the matter. Admirers, including this one, are eager to read the latest interpretation of his thought in the forlorn hope that this will confirm that he really would have been on their side."

Gerald Frost at The New Criterion discusses George Orwell in Spain.

"First-Aid to Clear Thinking"

"She thus drew a line between 'political and economic' freedom–the kinds of freedom that democratic nations traditionally seek to uphold–from 'freedom of mind'. For Stebbing, freeing one's own mind is, uniquely, one's own personal responsibility, and is, she explains, hindered by ignorance. People might appear to be free, because they live in a liberal democracy, but this apparent freedom can be illusory. Genuine freedom consists in individuals knowing how to think freely."

At Aeon, Peter West discusses philosopher Susan Stebbing and her 1939 book, Thinking to Some Purpose.

"They Recognized That He Was One-Eighth Indian, but He Had Served the Interests of White People for a Long, Long Time"

"'The one thing that might have lightened the persecution of Curtis was that he was half white,' Brooks says. 'He's light-complected, he's not dark-skinned like a lot of Kanza. His personality wins people over—unfortunately, racists can like a person of color and still be a racist, and I think that's kind of what happened with Charlie. He was just a popular kid.'" 

Livia Gershon at Smithsonian discusses Charles Curtis, the first Native American to become Vice President of the United States.

"A Much More Ambitious Vision of a Thriving Creative Sphere"

"Artists in the middle of the twentieth century flourished not because the economy was inherently favorable to them, but as a result of powerful economic winds and the groups that joined in an attempt to harness them. Together, creative class groups wielded the crowbar of politics in an attempt to pry some autonomy out of consumer capitalism."

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein at The New Republic reviews Shannan Clark's The Making of the American Creative Class: New York’s Culture Workers and Twentieth-Century Consumer Capitalism.

"The Necessary Resource if History Was to Be Understood as a Theatre of Revolutionary Possibility"

"It was Walter Benjamin, the Berlin-born literary and cultural critic who sustained an important affiliation with the Institute, who tried to explain the relationship between Marxism and religion with a memorable image: Marxist theory, he wrote, is like the chess-playing automatism first presented at the imperial court in 18th-century Vienna, whose movements seemed to be governed by nothing but the mechanical operation of levers and wheels. But the true animus of Marxist theory is theology, which in the modern era must hide itself from public view but still lends Marxism its apparently autonomous power, much like the individual who was cleverly concealed within the chess-player's cabinet and assured its victory." 

Peter E. Gordon at New Statesmen explores the relationship the Frankfurt School had with religion.

"To Quantify the Unquantifiable"

"But Lindsay Rogers might have had a more fundamental critique than that: The idea of political polling was broken to start with. It was a falsely scientific way to put numbers on a concept that can't be measured in the first place, and which changes shape every time you try. And indeed, it is the very elusiveness of political opinion—its resistance to being pinned down—that makes democracy necessary. When we measure mass or distance, we know we can do so accurately. But our values, attitudes and opinions are not concrete but fluid. They change with time—in the days and weeks before an election, as well as in the years in between them. Which is precisely why democracy requires that every few years, we vote anew."

David Greenberg at Politico recalls "The Political Scientist Who Warned Us About Polls."

And at Vox, Dylan Matthews interviews David Shor about contemporary polling problems.

"For the Nation"

"Amery's point on September 2, 1939, in the wake of Hitler's invasion of Poland, was that there are times when the Loyal Opposition needs to speak not just for the opposition, but for the country. There are times when country comes first, when a government of one's own party has utterly failed and needs to be called to account on behalf of the nation as a whole.
"This is such a time in America, in 2020."

At The Bullwark, William Kristol calls on Joe Biden to "speak for America."

Trump's Bonus

"The early 1930s resembled the present moment in some striking ways. The nation's economy was in free fall, connected to a global economic downturn, with no clear end in sight. Previous years of national prosperity had badly deepened economic inequality, making the crisis all the more severe for those left behind during the boom times. At home and abroad, authoritarian movements were on the march, demonizing ethnic and racial minorities and trashing liberal democratic values. Dissatisfaction was rampant, but it remained unclear who or what would replace the status quo."

Sean Wilentz at Rolling Stone compares Donald Trump to Herbert Hoover.

Proto-Cointelpro

"Yet, in all its activities, the government offered the rationale of 'national security,' claiming that internal dangers were sufficient to discard constitutional guarantees. In responding to criticism over the prosecution of the Christian Front, Hoover had retorted: 'It took only 23 men to overthrow Russia.' Administration reasoning in World War II set a precedent for far more massive government spying during the Cold War, particularly against civil rights organizations and opponents of the Vietnam conflict. The very Smith Act used in 1944 against domestic fascists was used with far more severity against Communists during the Cold War, the law's scope only being limited by the Supreme Court in 1957."

In a 2017 Daily Beast article, Justus D. Doenecke looks at civil liberties under Franklin Roosevelt.

"At Least a Few Wise and Well-Meaning Persons Found Plenty to Disagree With, and Even Dislike, in St. George"

"Orwell was moderately obsessed with class. He would probably have noted that the explosive growth of inequality in the United States over the past four decades has closely paralleled the explosive growth of the diversity industry, and would have drawn some conclusions. He might have asked: If there were two societies with the same Gini coefficient, but in one of them, the proportion of billionaires by race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other? Or: If the ratio of CEO to median employee earnings was the same in two societies, but in one of them the proportion of CEOs by race and gender matched that of the general population, would that society be morally better than the other? I’m pretty sure that most diversity bureaucrats would answer 'yes' to both questions, and that Orwell would have answered 'no.'"

George Scialabba at Commonweal imagines George Orwell in the twenty-first century.

"1984 Is Watching You"

"We are living with a new kind of regime that didn't exist in Orwell's time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment. The state of mind that the Party enforces through terror in 1984, where truth becomes so unstable that it ceases to exist, we now induce in ourselves. Totalitarian propaganda unifies control over all information, until reality is what the Party says it is—the goal of Newspeak is to impoverish language so that politically incorrect thoughts are no longer possible. Today the problem is too much information from too many sources, with a resulting plague of fragmentation and division—not excessive authority but its disappearance, which leaves ordinary people to work out the facts for themselves, at the mercy of their own prejudices and delusions."

George Packer at The Atlantic reviews Dorian Lynskey's The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984.

"His '21st Century Economic Bill of Rights'"

"Most of these measures aren't socialist, in the proper sense of the word, and many of his ideas overlap with those of various campaign rivals who do not use that word at all (though you could argue that his rivals are merely paying lip service to some of the more progressive items they've endorsed). The proposals could be described, accurately, as the application of New Deal principles to ease contemporary forms of wealth inequality, or as a turn away from the neoliberal politics that have dominated the Democratic Party since Reagan.
"But they could also be described as a means of using government power to rein in capitalism—thus preserving it. That's what FDR did, and that’s why many actual socialists hated him. Though Sanders is tinkering with one proposal that could resemble collective ownership of the means of production, it's not the main thrust of most of his policy plans, which—like FDR's—piss off capitalists while preserving the core of the capitalist system."

Jim Newell at Slate reacts to Bernie Sanders's "major address on how democratic socialism is the only way to defeat oligarchy and authoritarianism."

John Nichols at The Nation interviews Sanders.

And Yascha Mounk at The Atlantic reacts to the speech.

"After Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Most Significant Political Personality of His Day"

"Throughout American history, he says, populist voters have felt 'a sense of a loss of control about what was going on in their society. Things were happening and things were changing, and the change was unsettling, but they couldn't do anything about it. It was almost like they were being acted on from above.' That feeling has engendered the rise of parties and leaders, conservative or progressive, that promise to fight the system on behalf of average Americans."

Annika Neklason at The Atlantic compares Donald Trump to Huey Long.

"It Has Touched Almost Every Aspect of Cultural and Commercial Production"

"The school's founding proclamation made no mention of industry or new technology. Instead, it called for 'a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists!' It aimed to break down barriers between art and different forms of craft. It dreamt of 'a new building of the future that will unite every discipline', which would 'rise to heaven from the hands of a million workers as a crystal symbol of a new faith'."

Rowan Moore at The Guardian marks the centennial of the Bauhaus.

"Who Could Have More Riches Than That?"

"Burnett was something of a hot ticket on the academic circuit. In 1931, he and his wife, Martha Foley, had founded Story magazine, which they still ran, and their acumen for spotting new talent had made their hundred-page monthly a must-read for the big New York publishers. In its first few years, Story had featured debut works by William Saroyan, Nelson Algren, Conrad Aiken, Kay Boyle, John Cheever, Wallace Stegner, and Carson McCullers—an eye-popping list that would soon include Norman Mailer, Jean Stafford, Richard Wright, Joseph Heller '50GSAS, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams.
"But little did Burnett know, in the spring of 1939, that the writer who would become Story's most fabled discovery was seated in the back row of room 505."

Paul Hond at Columbia Magazine tells the story of J. D. Salinger's first publisher.