The final cover design and blurb for Red Valkyries

Through a series of lively and accessible biographical essays, Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism century Eastern Europe. By examining the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the 19th and 20th centuries-the aristocratic Bolshevik, Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue, Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand, Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan turned scientist turned global women's activist, Elena Lagadinova-Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of socialist and communist women. None of these women were "perfect" leftists. Their lives were filled with inner conflicts, contradictions, and sometimes outrageous privilege, but they still managed to move forward their own political projects through perseverance and dedication to their cause. Always walking a fine line between the need for class solidarity and the desire to force their sometimes callous male colleagues to take women's issues seriously, these five women pursued novel solutions with lessons for activists of today. In brief conversational chapters-with plenty of concrete examples from the history of the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe and contemporary reflections on the status of women in the world today-Ghodsee renders the big ideas of socialist feminism accessible to those newly inspired by the emancipatory politics of insurgent left feminist movements around the globe.

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Coming in July 2022!

Just the book I needed

I ordered this gem through interlibrary loan and discovered many fascinating facts about sex and love in the Soviet Union. The author, Vladimir Shlapentokh, was a prominent sociologist before he emigrated to the United States in 1978. This was his first book published in his adopted country in which he argues that the Soviet citizen had become hedonistic in the extreme.

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Spent a day with August Bebel

Since it was raining here in Philly, I decided to spend a day reading Jürgen Schmidt’s fascinating biography of August Bebel. Many German working class families hung portraits of Bebel in their homes, and he was/is widely regraded as the father of German social democracy. I was fascinated to learn, however, that Bebel himself would have preferred to call the party “Democratic Socialist” rather than “social democratic,” but he was outvoted.

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Dos Entrevistas en Español

Excerpt in El País →

So I actually didn’t know this was going to happen, but it seems that Capitan Swing, my Spanish publisher, arranged to have an excerpt of the Spanish book published under my name in Spain’s second largest newspaper. It’s pretty weird to see my name on something that I had no idea about, but I suppose this is standard book promotion stuff. At least I like the photo they chose to accompany the excerpt.

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The Spanish media coverage begins →

The Spanish version of the book is about to be released on October 7, and El Español just did a substantive review of Por qué las mujeres disfrutan más del sexo bajo el socialismo: Y otros argumentos a favor de la independencia económica from Capitán Swing.