The big interview

Commie Girl in the OC
Laurie Penny interviews Rebecca Schoenkopf, the ‘queen bee/black widow of alternative journalism’, about politics, life, feminism – and getting ‘finger-fucked’ by Hillary Clinton

George Bush’s joint
And in this extract from her new book Rebecca Schoenkopf goes inside the federal propaganda machine against marijuana

COMPETITION: Win a Commie Girl t-shirt

Waiting for the barbarians

The so-called ‘war on terror’ has created a global bonanza for commercial military suppliers, writes Red Pepper correspondent Solomon Hughes in this exclusive extract from his new book War on Terror, Inc

Anti-semitism and the Israel lobby
In this extract from his book, If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew, Mike Marqusee says that no one should be deterred from criticising the Israel lobby by charges of anti-semitism

Reviews

This is what you do
This piece began as a review of Eyal Weizman’s book Hollow Land, commissioned – but then not published – by the Jewish Quarterly, the leading Anglo-Jewish review of new writing and ideas, writes Michael Kustow

Planetary mythology
Soundbite science and self-help manuals would have you believe that men and women can’t communicate. Deborah Cameron’s new book shows that the real issues are to do with power, writes Romy Clark

You’re booked
Sports books fill the bestseller lists every Christmas. Anne Coddington and Mark Perryman examine the rise and rise of the new sports writing

American interest
John Mersheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy offers a brilliant account of US economic and military support to Israel, writes Richard Kuper. Its flaws lie not in an alleged anti-semitism, but in overstating the influence of the lobby over a US administration that is out of step on a broad range of foreign policy issues

Racism today
Hostility towards migrants is on the increase. David Renton reviews a new book by Arun Kundani that puts contemporary racism in perspective

Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land
Ever felt like you couldn’t finish a book, not because it was badly written or researched, but because it made you squirm with shame about your ignorance and complicity? Readers of two of Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist’s recent books, Exterminate All the Brutes and A History of Bombing, will know the feeling

Alternate realities
China Mieville has turned the traditionally reactionary world of adult heroic fantasy upside down. Can he do the same trick with the increasingly popular (and sometimes equally hidebound) world of children’s fiction?

God is Not Great
Matthew Gray reviews Christopher Hitchens’ audiobook version of God is Not Great

More interviews

Selfish capitalism is making us ill
Mat Little interviews psychologist and writer Oliver James about his book, The Selfish Capitalist

Disturbing family order
Laurie Penny interviews the Turkish feminist and author Meltem Arikan

After shock
From Poland to Iraq and from China to New Orleans, neoliberalism has risen on the back of what Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism’. She spoke to Oscar Reyes about her book, The Shock Doctrine, and new forms of resistance

Reclaiming our past
Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason’s Live Working or Die Fighting sets the experience of modern factory workers in the global South alongside some of the classic narratives of labour history. He spoke to Hilary Wainwright about the insights he gained in examining a neglected part of our heritage

Murder in Samarkand
In 2002, while political attention was focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, a troubled British diplomat was exposing the UK’s casual attitude to human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. Marcus Williams talks to Craig Murray about trying to tell the truth about torture and being branded mad by the Foreign Office