From the much-loved, witty and excoriating voice of journalist Nick Cohen, a powerful and irreverent dissection of the agonies, idiocies and compromises of mainstream liberal thought.

 Nick Cohen comes from the Left. While growing up, his mother would search the supermarket shelves for politically reputable citrus fruit and despair. When, at the age of 13, he found out that his kind and thoughtful English teacher voted Conservative, he nearly fell off his chair: 'To be good, you had to be on the Left.'

 Today he's no less confused. When he looks around him, in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, he sees a community of Left-leaning liberals standing on their heads. Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam that stands for everything the liberal-Left is against come from a section of the Left? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the Left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? Why is Palestine a cause for the liberal-Left, but not, for instance, China, the Sudan, Zimbabwe or North Korea? Why can't those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a liberal literary journal as in a neo-Nazi rag? It's easy to know what the Left is fighting against - the evils of Bush and corporations - but what and, more to the point, who are they fighting for?

 As he tours the follies of the Left, Nick Cohen asks us to reconsider what it means to be liberal in this confused and topsy-turvy time. With the angry satire of Swift, he reclaims the values of democracy and solidarity that united the movement against fascism, and asks: What's Left?

What's Left? - How Liberals Lost Their Way

The uncompromising Nick Cohen exposes the reality behind the freedoms we enjoy in the book that won Polemic of the Year at the 2013 Political Book Awards.

 After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.

 'You Can't Read This Book' argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.

You Can’t Read This Book - Censorship in an Age of Freedom

Les preuves du réchauffement climatique d'origine humaine sont aussi définitifs que la preuve d'Auschwitz.

Londres est l'un des centres mondiaux de journalisme arabe et d'activisme politique. L'échec de la gauche et de la droite, l'établissement et son opposition, à monter des arguments de principe contre la réaction de bureau ont eu des ramifications mondiales. Des idées frappées en Grande-Bretagne - l'idée qu'il est fanatique de s'opposer au fanatisme; «Islamophobe» pour s'opposer aux religieux dont le premier désir est d'opprimer les musulmans - tourbillonne à travers la presse et le filet vers des terres où ils peuvent faire du mal.

Personne n'est aussi meurtrier «islamophobe» que les islamistes.

Les anciens gauchers peuvent gagner sa vie dans les médias en attaquant leurs ex-comlayés - je le ferais moi-même si le prix était correct.

L'antisémitisme est unique parmi les haines religieuses. C'est une théorie du complot raciste façonnée pour les besoins de dirigeants messianiques et brutaux, comme l'ont montré les dictateurs des tsars aux islamistes en passant par les nazis. De nombreuses autres « haines » religieuses présumées ne sont pas des haines au sens propre du terme. Si je critique les attitudes islamiques, juives orthodoxes ou catholiques envers les femmes, par exemple, et qu'on m'accuse d'être sectaire, je hausse les épaules et dis que ce n'est pas sectaire de s'opposer au sectarisme.

L'uniformité peu profonde n'est pas un accident mais une conséquence de ce que les marxistes appellent de manière optimiste le capitalisme tardif.

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