Historian Andrew Hartman returns to This Is Hell! to discuss his new book from University of Chicago Press, Karl Marx in America. "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview.
Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon.
Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:
Refusal of Work: Post-Work Theory & Practice - David Frayne [Zed Books]
Metropolis, the hometown of Superman, has a new hero: Donald Trump - Sarah Kendzior [The Guardian]
Extinction: A Radical History - Ashley Dawson [OR Books]
Why Your Water Could Be Worse Than Flint’s - Laura Orlando [In These Times]
On this day in 1863 – (153 years ago) — in Richmond, Virginia — capital of the Confederacy during the US Civil War — bread riots broke out in the center of town as thousands of people broke into shops and looted food, clothing, and other merchandise. The rioters, mostly women, were angered by the same shortages of bread and other staples that were making similar riots a common occurrence across the American South that spring. Hungry troops on both sides of the Civil War had been stripping local farms of their crops and livestock during their movements from one battle to the next. To make matters worse, runaway inflation was making Confederate currency increasingly worthless. In Richmond, the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, came out and pleaded with the rioters to disperse. He even threw them the money he had in his pockets. But the rioters ignored Davis until he finally called in the militia and threatened to have them open fire on the crowd.
On this day in 1982 – (34 years ago) — Argentina launched an amphibious invasion of a nearby South Atlantic archipelago known to the Argentines as the Islas Malvinas, and to the British as the Falklands. These cold, windswept islands — where less than three thousand people lived mostly by fishing and sheep farming — had been ruled by Britain for some 150 years, but Argentina had never given up its own claim to them. And now, Argentina’s ruling military junta had ordered an invasion in the hope of distracting that country’s increasingly discontented populace from their economic woes and lost civil liberties. The Argentine generals were gambling that the Brits would not use military force to keep the islands — and at first, it seemed that their bet would pay off, as the Argentine invaders met little resistance from the islands’ tiny self-defense force, bolstered by a few dozen British troops. But when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent a major naval task force to retake the islands, it led to a war that lasted more than two months, killed some nine hundred people, and ultimately caused the downfall of the Argentine junta. The Falklands remained firmly in British hands — and Port William, the territory’s busiest ship harbor, remains heavily mined to this day.
Rotten History is writtern by Renaldo Migaldi.
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com
Chloe is author of From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the Postindustrial City from Harvard University Press.
Janaé is one of the authors of the BYP100 report Agenda to Build Black Futures.
Michelle wrote the article Spring Break’s Cleanup Crew for Slate.
Robin and Leila are authors of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War from Pluto Press.
Michael will explain how distrubutors and franchises are capitalizing on the cache of craft beer's limited supply.
Found this phrase in a tweet by Hollywood creep Chuck Woolery, hopefully just a coincidence!
Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:
From Steel to Slots: Casino Capitalism in the Postindustrial City - Chloe E. Taft [Harvard University Press]
Agenda to Build Black Futures - Black Youth Project 100
Spring Break’s Cleanup Crew - Michelle Chen [Slate]
Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War - Robin Yassin-Kassab, Leila Al-
On this day in the year 752 – (1,264 years ago) – in Rome, Pope Stephen II died of a stroke just three days after being elected to succeed the former Pope Zacharias. To this day, Stephen II holds the record for the shortest time in office of any Catholic pope.
On this day in 1812 – (204 years ago) – the city of Caracas, Venezuela, was struck by two major seismic tremors within a half hour. The earthquakes leveled the city, along with five nearby towns, and killed some fifteen to twenty thousand people. The tremors were so severe that they created a new lake and permanently changed the courses of several rivers and streams in the area. Since Venezuela was fighting its war of independence at the time, local representatives of the Spanish crown viewed the earthquakes as divine punishment for the colonial rebellion — and the Catholic archbishop of Caracas pronounced the deadly cataclysm “terrifying, but well-deserved.”
On that SAME DAY in 1812 – (again, 204 years ago) – the Boston Gazette published a political cartoon that ridiculed how electoral districts in the state of Massachusetts had been redrawn in such a bizarre and contorted way as to benefit candidates of the state party organization led by Governor Elbridge Gerry. Noting that the long, strange, twisting boundaries on the map of one new district made it resemble the shape of a salamander, the cartoonist labeled it a “Gerry-mander,” after the governor and party boss. The name stuck, and more than two hundred years later, “gerrymandering” remains a favorite practice of party leaders and politcos across America who seek to create inpenetrably “safe” electoral districts for their favored career legislators.
On this day in 1969 – (47 years ago) – having suffered for months from severe depression and paranoia after his novel The Confederacy of Dunces was rejected by two major publishers, the author John Kennedy Toole committed suicide by running a garden hose from his car’s exhaust pipe into the car. It was almost ten years later that his mother finally managed to browbeat the famous novelist Walker Percy into reading her dead son’s unpublished manuscript. Percy was wowed, the book was published in 1980, and Toole was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981, twelve years after his death.
On this day in 1998... read more
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com
Keeanga is author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation from Haymarket Books.
Sarah wrote the recent articles Who won the Midwest? Not the people who live in it for the Globe and Mail and Trumpmenbashi: What Central Asia’s spectacular states can tell us about authoritarianism in America for The Diplomat.
Brian will be talking about the Brasilwire piece Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff: It’s Class War, and Their Class is Winning and his own most recent writing Rio Olympics: A City within a City.
Mark and Paul wrote the new book This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century from Nation Books.
Shiyam is author of the article Syrian Protests Bloom During Lull in Bombings posted at Warscapes.
This is maybe about Garry Shandling. Or maybe about Rob Ford. Hopefully not about Phife Dawg.
