An incisive and inspiring call to look beyond capitalism to chart a road map for a planet ravaged by pandemics, climate crisis, and wars.

Prompted by trenchant questions by international solidarity organizer Frank Barat, renowned author and activist Vijay Prashad shows that the path toward hope and liberation lies in looking closely at myriad, under covered struggles being waged all across the world by workers in countries such as India, Kenya, Peru, Tunisia, and Argentina. A marvelously global but grassroots perspective.

Prashad also examines pressing topics such as debt cancellation, a wealth tax, austerity, the pandemic, the arms industry, the climate crisis, socialism, working-class social movements and much more.

The Arab Spring captivated the planet. Mass action overthrew Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. The revolutionary wave spread to the far corners of the Arab world, from Morocco to Bahrain. It seemed as if all the authoritarian states would finally be freed, even those of the Arabian Peninsula. People’s power had produced this wave, and continued to ride it out.

In Libya, though, the new world order had different ideas. Social forces opposed to Muammar Qaddafi had begun to rebel, but they were weak. In came the French and the United States, with promises of glory. A deal followed with the Saudis, who then sent in their own forces to cut down the Bahraini revolution, and NATO began its assault, ushering in a Libyan Winter that cast its shadow over the Arab Spring.

This brief, timely analysis situates the assault on Libya in the context of the winds of revolt that swept through the Middle East in the Spring of 2011. Vijay Prashad explores the recent history of the Qaddafi regime, the social forces who opposed him, and the role of the United Nations, NATO, and the rest of the world's superpowers in the bloody civil war that ensued.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History, and professor and director of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books, including Karma of Brown Folk and, most recently, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.

• American playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) burrows beneath the skin of Donald Trump.
• Danish Husain, Indian storyteller and actor, finds himself recounting the story not only of Indian
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but also of the ascension of the extremism of the Sangh Parivar.
• Burhan Sönmez, Turkish novelist, ferrets about amidst the bewildering career of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
• Lara Vapnyar, Russian-American novelist and journalist, ponders the Stalinist origins of the Supreme Leader of All the Russias.
• Ninotchka Rosca, Filipina feminist novelist, unravels the macho world of Rodrigo Duterte.
  
  These essays do not presume to be neutral. They are by partisan thinkers, magical writers, people who see not only the monsters but also a future beyond the ghouls. A future that is necessary. The present is too painful.