Shane Burley

In reviewing new titles for September, we were able to check in on some great new releases from earlier this year and can highlight some especially notable releases. With the horror genres expanding so rapidly, and particularly sub-genres like New Lovecraftian and folk horror that were previously left to the

Halfway through August this year, something familiar happened. More than four hundred and twenty gallons of crude oil spread across Galveston Bay, a major water body close to Houston, which, while frightening, is still one of the smaller incidents in recent memory. The story largely disappeared because the coast of

While figures like Blake Masters are turning heads with their open nationalist agenda and Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to criminalize trans people on a nationwide scale, one far-right celebrity race has gotten lost in the shuffle. Internet personality and ultra-right candidate Laura Loomer ran for Congress in Florida's 11th

The summer has seen such a density of horror releases that it has been hard to keep up, but I wanted to keep a log of some of the favorites we are closing out August with. In the coming months we know that even more genre titles will be coming

If anarchists know Jewish history at all, it is likely the role of Jewish radicalism in the political battles of the early 20th century. Jews made up huge portions of the anarchist and socialist movement as Ashkenazi immigrants flooded New York City’s Lower East Side or London’s East

In my time in and around radical politics, Francis Fukayama has always been the archetypal picture of an almost threatening level of stasis. His 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man posited that history had effectively ended: debates over ideology, different forms of government, and social organization

Into July this year, horror comics continue to crowd out the standard narrative fair, something that is likely to continue as major horror books hit Local Comic Shops over the next few months. We are also noting that authors who had previously been relegated to genre publishers and numerous anthologies

We are taking a slight diversion from our regular publishing today to tell you about this new book, edited by me (Shane Burley), and featuring a great cast of characters. Back in 2018 I had an idea to pull together a large-scale antifascism anthology, and for the last four years

Amidst the flurry of news about the Highland Park, Illinois shooting this 4th of July, one video stood out. The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band kept playing, uninterrupted as an increasingly frantic crowd ran the other direction, splitting on both sides of the float the band was nestled in. The klezmerists

When our politics is dotted with tumorous grotestequires, caricatures comes naturally. The cartoonist Eli Valley has made a name for himself lapooning the growing excesses of the American (and Israeli) Jewish establishment, especially gargantuan political figures weilding accusations of antisemitism against desenters at a rapid fire pace. Inherently critical of

One of the challenges that has emerged in both scholarship and journalism on the far-right is the confusing self-understanding both far-right organizations and the social movements that contain them have. There is often a break between stated ideologies and internal ones, political proposals and practical action. This has become especially

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As part of this month’s roundup of horror fiction, I leaned into the renaissance of horror comics that is happening at our Local Comics Shops. While horror comics have a long and storied history with the EC comics originals like Tales from the Crypt (and its own role in

Since the arrival of Donald Trump, the eruption of national populism across Europe, and the violent emergence of the alt-right, fascism is all the rage. This has been the largest uptick in scholarly and popular publishing on the subject in decades, with many careers being built entirely on their research

Like most of the fantastical genres, horror literature has its own “inner circle''. Beyond the bestselling authors, there is a growing community of literary horror giants who many outside of the boundaries of genre publishing may simply be unaware of. Amongst the most celebrated is the Bram Stoker award winning

If there is something that defines Jewish history it is less the continuity of rituals, which have changed and evolved over time, but instead the centrality of a good story. The Torah, more than just a list of laws that govern Jewish life, is a narrative about how the world

The world of Antisemitism Studies is a shifting terrain derivative of the political and social context that each individual journal, institute, or editorial board comes from. The Indiana University’s Institute for the Study Contemporary Antisemitism Studies and the The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at

With our horror spotlights we are hoping to bring a mix of older titles rediscovered as well as new releases, giving a spread of what is happening in the world of literary horror. In an effort to focus more acutely on small and independent press, the books from this month

The first time I heard someone suggest that artists should not have the urge to “think politically” when creating their work it was Oliver Stone responding to the notion that his 1994 film Natural Born Killers was irresponsible. The fear persisted that the film, a critique of mass consumer and

Counting the Omer is one of the more involved forms of observance, traditionally left to the Orthodox who check off, with certain prayers, observances, and obligations, the forty-nine days (seven weeks) between the start of Pesach and the beginning of Shavuot. Rabbi Isacc Luria suggested that these seven weeks correspond

If there was any pair that determined what qualified as legitimate cinematic art and what was unjustifiable schlock in the 1980s, it was Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert. They iconicized their “thumbs up” rating on their syndicated Siskel & Ebert show, a place where they debated the merits of recent

For those who grew up reading comics in the 1990s, the DC Comics announcement in 2018 that Vertigo was coming to an end was bittersweet. Vertigo emerged out of a trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s where some select books, mostly in the realm of superheroes, started being

On October 26th, the Board of Education for the San Diego Unified School District passed a resolution determining that anti-Zionism should be understood as largely synonymous with antisemitism, part of the multi-millenium hatred of Jews. This ruling is only significant when seen as one of hundreds of similar rulings, from

There is a line said by white nationalist Greg Johnson, the purveyor of the largest alt-right publishing house in the U.S., that struck a nerve when I was watching The Batman late at night in a crowded theater. “A superhero should be presumed right-wing, until proven otherwise.” He was