The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad

by Andrew Hsiao (Editor), Audrea Lim (Editor), Tariq Ali (Preface)

Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have struggled against those in power and raised their voices in protest—rallying 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 today’s citizens that these traditions will never die.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Philosophy, Essays, Activism, Reference

400 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2010

Reviews

[Ruby Tombstone Lives!]

HYDRA ALERT!



The full review is available here on my blog, since the original was deleted by GoodReads for being "off-topic". I wouldn't want THIS book review to be deleted for being off-topic, so to that end, I've provided a few hundred words on the book. Stay with me...

I read this book from beginning to end. This is a bloody awesome book about dissent. What I liked most about this book about dissent were the examples. Haha! Fooled you. That's actually all there is. Examples. Starting with an example of dissent from around 1800BC, and illustrating how dissent has been with us throughout the ages. Well, up until about 2010 when the book was published. I'm guessing they couldn't go in and add the future examples of dissent, because that would just be silly. And involve bending time and space and shit. If they could have, I'm sure they would have included an example of the Hydra, which is, in my humble opinion, the best example of dissent yet. If you haven't heard about Hydra, you need to go and see Manny Rayner. Right now. I'll wait. I have not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER read a better one. Book about dissent, that is. Because that's what we're here to talk about. A book about dissent. You should totally buy this bloody awesome book about dissent, perhaps from Amazon, since they have been so nice in ensuring that all the reviews we see have been filtered of any off-topic content. So I read this book about dissent, which is, as I may have mentioned, a bloody awesome book about dissent. Okay, our captors have hopefully stopped reading by now, so I can probably get away with typing some random words: bookety, bookety, book about dissent. Opinion, opinion, opinion, opposing opinion, rebuttal, butt's a funny word, conclusion. Oh! Conclusion! Are we there already? Right. So in conclusion, this is a bloody awesome book about dissent even if it doesn't mention Hydra.

So yeah. My original review was censored for being off-topic. Not because it was critical of GoodReads' censorship policy at all, apparently, but because it talked about other things besides the actual book. Deleted for digression. I take this to mean GoodReads is intending to evaluate all of our book reviews from now on, in order to make sure they don't digress. After all, we wouldn't want a review that wanders into homage, satire or flash fiction now, would we? Just the product.. ahem... "book" review for us! So that's why I suggest that along with backing up our original reviews and re-posting them with the Hydra when they get deleted, we also help out poor old Kara & Co., by trawling through as many reviews as we can and flagging any that go off-topic. At all. In any way.

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Now here's my original review, so you can see what GoodReads is attempting to save us from:

Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, by J.M. Coetzee

Would GoodReads Censor A Review On A Book About Censorship? Let's find out, shall we...

I've been an active GoodReads contributor for a couple of years now. I review every book I read, I run a discussion group, I'm a GR Librarian. I spend countless hours every week, (well, they are probably countable but I can't be arsed), on this site creating content for GoodReads Amazon. I won't pretend I'm happy about that last bit.

When I first joined GoodReads, I spent a lot more countable-but-not-presently-counted hours up to my eyeballs in administrative tasks associated with the book data we all use. I stopped doing that when the mountains of data and content that I had created was sold to Amazon without my seeing a cent of the profits. Since Amazon have been here they've done some pretty shitty things, and they really don't seem to value the hard work I've done for them. They seem to be quite content making out that they are doing us all a favour, providing us with a free (albeit dripping-with-advertising) service - rather than acknowledging that they're making a fortune from our content and data.

Now it seems GoodReads has decided to go hard with a policy of deleting reviews and bookshelves* they don't like. I really can't be much more specific than that, because that's about as specific as GoodReads has been. From what little they have communicated to us, it seems to be "anything anyone working for GR thinks could offend anyone else or could potentially be perceived by anyone else as an insult to a writer". There is no way of knowing what that might be. We've been told that any posts or shelves focussing on the author's behaviour will be deleted. This includes authors who harass GoodReads users, and presumably precludes us from even discussing something likeMein Kampf. This is censorship, as if you need me to point that out, and that is a very slippery slope.

The author of this book, J.M. Coetzee is a famously reclusive, reportedly humourless bloke. Am I allowed to mention that anymore?

GoodReads made these policy changes sneakily: no emails to us, no warning or notification of any kind for the people having their reviews deleted, no response to our reasonable concerns. Reviews and shelves are quietly being deleted, and there have been plenty of screenshots around to prove it. So now I am not only outraged by the knowledge that our posts are actively being policed and censored, but I'm quite frankly creeped out by the whole thing. Who is making the decisions? What are their criteria? Why do they refuse to talk to us about it? Why are they doing it so stealthily? Why can't they notify someone who's about to have their content deleted?

Most importantly of all..... where will it end? That last question I CAN actually answer: A site where the bulk of the reviews are positive and critique-free - whether or not that book deserves it. Where any negative reviews are limited to "it's my fault for not picking a book which is more suited to my peculiar tastes". A site where people can't talk about the elephant of author behaviour in the room.
A site where all reviews are suspect.

The whole value of GR has been that we can see honest reviews from people we trust. If people can't write an honest review about their experience with the book (and its author), then that review has no value.

GOODREADS: Please just do the right thing. People have invested a lot of time and effort in this site. They will cooperate with you IF you treat them respectfully. Censorship, though..... obviously that's going to go down like a tonne of bricks on a literature site.

*For the benefit of people who don't use GoodReads - "bookshelves" on GoodReads aren't just used to sort our lists of books, they are a tagging function. They are what we use to comment succinctly on a range of issues relating to that book. They are also what we use to warn each other about spammers, abusive authors, sock-puppet (fake) accounts, and anything else that a potential reader/reviewer may need to know before they engage with that book. I say "engage" because even shelving a book as "want to read", alerts the author that you have shown interest and can open the door to that author targeting you.

[edit] Postscript:What annoys me no end, is that the media and some other commentators are portraying GR users as if we're simply refusing to accept the corporate reality of a "free-service" that Amazon are providing us with. What they don't seem to be aware of is that, unlike many other sites, it's the users that created this database, including the book data, as well as all the content, as well as taking care of a lot of their administration, as well as a big chunk of their "help" functions etc etc. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to have certain expectations of the site we built & maintain.

[edit] Please also see Carol's excellent summary of ways you can help spread the word about this issue: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

[edit] Must Read: Ceridwen's Brilliant Analysis of the Deleted Review Data: http://soapboxing.net/2013/10/by-the-...

This shows the authors associated with the deleted reviews & bookshelves as well as showing the real target of GR's censorship - The comments threads.

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[Updated 13 Oct 13] Just to be absolutely clear: Other GoodReads users have my permission to repost this content freely.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This tome is not an analysis or action plan for dissent, but rather a collection of quotations from the various moments in time requiring it. It is more like a reference book or a bathroom reader (I say this not to criticize but only so you know what to expect.) Each entry is short, 2 pages at most (more typically, an entry is a sentence or two) with a short bio. The entries are organized chronologically from 1800 BCE to 2013, spanning a global perspective, which I definitely appreciated. The editors explain that they "concentrated on dissenters and rebels who have attempted to move mountains, to improve, change, transform the world since the earliest times," so not the people working hard within the system, but more those working against it. The radicals. (And often, because it is from Verso, radically left more than radically right.)

I appreciated the range of types of dissenters - political activists, sure, but also poets, authors, ministers, journalists. I felt like I was revisiting friends in some cases (Assata Shakur has come up in at least 3 of the last 10 books I've read) and making lists of people to read more of in others (for me, mostly poets.)

One of my Goodreads groups is reading revolution this month, so I knew this would be perfect. Plus it suits my mood about the world lately, with its bright orange confrontational cover. I will let a brief sprinkling of what I marked speak for itself.

“Liberty, that nightingale with the voice of a giant, rouses the most profound sleepers… How is it possible to think of anything today except to fight for or against freedom? Those who cannot love humanity can still be as great as tyrants. But how can one be indifferent?” - Ludwig Boerne, 1831

“...Yet while we lament, asking
why our insignificant selves
were oppressed,
the rain still falls
heavily on the people.”
-Ohashi Genzaburo, 1892

“Don’t waste any time in mourning - organize.” - Joe Hill, 1915

“Sanity is always hardest to restore at the summit - the air there is rarefied. It seems to affect the brain. We can reassert it at the base. The people must take over - you must take over.” - Alex Comfort, 1955

“The people make revolution; the oppressors, by their brutal actions, cause resistance by the people.” - Huey P. Newton, 1967

“You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” -Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974, The Dispossessed

“To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/spiritual leap and become more human human beings. In order to change/transform the world, they must change/transform themselves.” - Grace Lee Boggs, 1993

“Radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people. By the public. A public who can link hands across national orders.”
Arundhati Roy, 2004

“[The administration] is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.” -Edward Snowden, 2013

Very last quote is from Bree Newsome, who was arrested in 2015 for removing the confederate flag from SC’s state house, just a few weeks before it finally was done officially.

[Viv JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Verso Book of Dissent is an anthology of dissenting voices. Starting circa 1800BCE with "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" it continues chronologically through to 2013 with Bree Newsome's "Now is the Time for Change". The collection includes extracts from books and speeches, but also song lyrics, poetry and even graffiti slogans. Most are a page or shorter, making this an excellent book to dip in and out of. I was impressed by the diversity of the representation - this is a real global collection and gives you a starting point to find out about lots of different revolutions, rebellions and uprisings from around the world.

I had the paperback version of this and it is a thing of beauty with gorgeous red-tipped pages, so I would definitely recommend that format above the e-book in this instance.

[Geoff Sebesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book occupies a brilliant position -- it's bathroom reading for liberal radicals. How perfect. It's just filled with paragraph after paragraph of somebody saying something cool and badass and radical, and then there's a little blurb about whoever they were.

I enjoy their taste in radicals, though it's fairly anti-American-Imperialism, which I suppose some people think is controversial.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[brisingr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Verso Books has all my money and my whole entire heart. Favourite publishing house - and this is a wonderful introduction for anyone looking into reading radical publishing!

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of people you already had reason to admire, lots you never heard of
(much) but appreciate now. If you carried this book and a soap box, you
could set yourself up on any street corner, open the book at random,
identify the dissenter, read his or her words, and possibly incite an overdue riot. Lively and excellent anthology. The historic sweep is stagggering.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many inspiring moments in history to reflect on in these present times.

[MichaelK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cool book. With its bold red cover and page edges, its quality paper and binding, with its grandiose title, The Book of Dissent feels important. And cool.

It feels like it should be the MacGuffin in an adventure story.

Two groups are searching the globe for this mysterious book, which has the power to ignite revolution wherever it is read. There's a ragtag band of rebels, from various backgrounds and championing different causes - they want to find the book to use its power to help them overthrow the corrupt establishment and bring about a better world. And the other group? The agents of the established order, who want to find the book and destroy it forever, so the status quo can never change. The adventure carries the groups across the world, as they trace the passage of The Book of Dissent through 3000 years of history.

They discover that the book appears to select people throughout history. It calls to them, until they find its resting place, it inspires for them for a while... and it grows. For when the one who holds The Book of Dissent dies, their voice, their dissent, is added to its pages, to forever cry out against injustice and call for a better world.

In the final confrontation, the Establishment Agents have found the current bookbearer; they have a gun to his head. The rebels arrive too late; they are stopped on entry, held to the ground by the agents.

The bookbearer's apartment is searched; the Book is found.

The villainous leader cackles first maniacally, then joyfully - for he knows without dissent then the happy life he and his elite friends have can continue forever.

He tosses The Book of Dissent into the fireplace.

The rebels cry.

It is now the bookbearer's time to laugh: he laughs loud and proud.

"You were a few minutes too late," he tells the agents. "I transcribed and uploaded it all. The Book is now all over the Internet."

Fade.

As the credits begin there is an extended epilogue showing a montage of protests, riots, and revolutions across the world.

Anyway.

The Book of Dissent that we have here is an anthology of dissenting voices spanning over 3000 years of history, although that history is very biased towards more recent centuries, when dissent was better recorded.

After 12 pages you've gone from 1800BC to 1000AD. Another 4 pages and you're into the 1500s AD. Another 4, 1600s. Another 7, 1700s. Another 13, 1800s. The remaining 300 pages are devoted to rebels from 1800 to the present day.

Each piece in this anthology is very short, most are less than a page, some are only 1 or 2 lines. Each is accompanied by a very short biography of the rebel being quoted.

It is very interesting and very diverse, in terms of where the rebels are from and the causes they are fighting for - racism, colonialism, imperialism, fascism, Stalinism, feminism, police brutality, inequality, oppression, gay rights, civil rights, trans rights, Internet freedom, etc. It is, however, published by Verso, so it is naturally biased to the political left - there are few rightwing rebels here!

It's not a book I could sit and read for long stretches. It's a dip-into-for-a-minute-or-so book, which unfortunately does not match by reading pattern, so it took me nearly a full 11 months to finish this. Not that I read some of it every week, or even every month.

But it is a cool book. Worth checking out.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for a few years now staring at me (I have a terrible habit of buying things to 'read later' rather than 'read now') so I was glad to actually start this.

The book is a collection of statements of a dissenting nature including writings, poems, communiqués going back centuries.

One thing the book tries to do well is cover dissenting voices from a truly global perspective, what I appreciated is that this isn't a European or American focused book. The dissenting voices typically cover national liberation struggles, class struggle, environmental issues, race, gender, sexuality perspectives.

I have seen one critique in that 'only left wing voices are presented'. It seems quite the silly thing to say considering right wing 'dissent' when articulated in this way is a thinly veiled demand for more exploitation and more privilege. That criticism aside, an attempt to cover the history of dissent invariably leads to a high degree of omission and selective biases. There are perhaps many omissions in areas I am less familiar with but I found rather too many 'Marxist/ Leninist revolutionaries' in the pages, only a single animal rights perspective, very few anarchist voices, very few prisoner voices. There were several writers / notable persons who I was expecting and didn't find.

(What is obvious is that there are a number of scumbags in the book, from slavers to tyrants, including the odd 'pro-democracy campaigner' who turned out to be pretty vile.)

(It's also obvious, as anarchists have pointed out forever that when a Marxist revolutionary gets control in any state they become enemies of the people - this book shows the history of revolution and with a critical eye shows the futility of 'Communist states').

I could have done without a few song lyrics, but overall there is a lot to like. There are a number of absolute inspiring statements and quotes, many of which are thought provoking and relevant today and what turns this 2 star into a 3 star is that I will dip into it again now and then.

Verso gave themselves an impossible job and I don't think they succeeded, their biases shine through a little but the attempt is welcome. Trying to cover all history and all struggles is a mammoth task. I know this has undergone at least one revision and I hope they continue, not just to keep adding as the years go by but also to include missing voices and critique further the actions of people who once spoke of liberation but caused immense harm when given power.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on its description, I thought this book would have a smaller quantity of longer excerpts. Instead, it sticks to rather shorts snippets, most of which are less than a page. That said, I quite enjoyed the material that was presented, and got almost as much from the explanatory text after each excerpt (it's interesting to note that until very recent times many if not most of the authors were executed for their writings). This anthology does tend towards anti-imperialism but that's not too surprising based upon the time-frame of the writings covered. As someone educated in the US school system, I found this book to be invaluable to learn about the sufferings of the less powerful, and to read excerpts from a thousand years ago asking for the same rights and freedoms that people still long for today. This book will open your eyes to the treatment of the poor and marginalized across history, much of it by governments that are now thought of as beacons for freedom and liberty.

[Madalina · Rating 2 out of 5]

way too of an ambitious title for a collection of (short) quotes from various radical voices, most of them forcefully denouncing a (neo)colonial reality. its value comes from meddling most with less famous. should you go on a picnic having lost the current issue of your go to weekly, this might replace it successfully. a great help for name droppers wannabes.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ambitious in scope. The selection are global and really wide ranging. There are notable absences. The selections are very brief, to the point of being aphoristic in many cases, but the brief notes after each selection fills in historical context and provides a wonderful venue for the editors' voice.

Big fan of this.

[brinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

some good moments but i think the undertaking is too vast and random to make any of it feel cohesive. passages have too many ellipsis and not enough context to make any sense or feel any ways about a lot of them. i also thought the background of the writer/ passage the quote came from should have come before and not after.

[Yaniv Greenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, too radical left for me.
I don't have a problem with the far left examples, I have a problem with how one sided this book is, including terrorist groups but with no one dissenting against the left apparently.

[Gareth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfect toilet book for quick snippets!

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of quotes. Usually succeeds at being global in scope, but there’s a definite western bias in the section of quotes.

[Aolbain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very anglo-american

[Nick D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of quotes that made me feel the entire emotional spectrum.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and succinct. Only knock is the overly political nature of the passages. Then again, that is perhaps what dissent most often targets.

[Brizna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tengo muchas cosas que investigar, vuelvo en un rato.

[ricardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

una antología increíble; pude encontrar una versión física y definitivamente me ayudo a leerla con mayor facilidad, formada a través de frases y trascendencias, el disentimiento es vital

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I attended public schools in the United States from k-12. I am not surprised that my high school education did not include many of the figures and movements highlighted in this anthology (thank you conservative Boards of Education). I dog-eared most of the pages of Book of Dissent to learn more about the revolutions and revolutionaries chronicled. A great read for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of human struggles for liberty, dignity, and freedom, as well as anyone looking to reflect on historiography.

[Diogo Almeida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although clearly biased and left-leaning (personally I don't consider freedom and anti-power movements a privilege of what's typically known as left) the book is an interesting chronological compilation of dissent statements and actions.

[Sav]

Not as much of a guide as a true anthology of various quotes from dissenters throughout time. I like that the editors agreed upon reflecting dissent that isn't oppressive, but instead liberation-focused.

[Onyango Makagutu]

Where are the revolutionaries of today? This is a wonderful collection of dissenters world over covering several epochs. It is great reading into some of the revolutionary thought that have attempted to cause change in the world.

[Lenore]

Awesome.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was surprisingly readable, not just a good reference book.

[Zoe Eileen]

A lot of this I really liked.

What is missing for me then- and I guess is the reason I don't read quotes books generally, was the context. Many of the more recent writers I was familiar with, and many I love. But it was the inclusion of people such as Andrea Dworkin and Peter Singer who have (respectively) been actively challenged by marginalised groups for being vitriolically anti-trans, and for horrific comments about people with disabilities, that made me question their inclusion in this anthology at all. There would of course also be others I am less familiar with.

I realise that a lot of people who have done meaningful and important work aren't always perfect, but to not to attempt to engage with this in any way made me uneasy, especially given that there is comment on the individual authors and their work.

I really like Verso but these are my thoughts on this collection and I think a more critical engagement with whose voices are being amplified and with the provision of what context needs to be done.