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Slightly off-mint

Slightly off-mint.

As the Cairo bureau chief of the New York Times from 2011 to 2015, Kirkpatrick arrived in Egypt shortly before the popular uprising against the Mubarak regime; he watched as a new president was elected and then deposed in a military coup that brought a ferocious crackdown on dissent. This eyewitness account of the turmoil combines analysis of Egyptian politics with the author’s experiences among ordinary people caught up in perplexing and heartbreaking events.

Alfred Leete’s iconic image of Lord Kitchener pointing over the slogan ‘Your Country Needs You’ is a design classic which was widely imitated, for instance in the American designer James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam poster. James Taylor explores its influence on the propaganda posters of Allied countries in the First World War and beyond, while arguing that, since it originated as a magazine cover and postcard, its direct effect on enlistment was smaller than is commonly believed.

In 2018 Latvia’s politicians released KGB files seized when the Soviet Union collapsed almost three decades earlier. Alongside eyewitness interviews, they form the basis of this disturbing account of 50 years of tyranny that saw dissidents tortured and killed and 45,000 exiled to the gulags.

Formed in 1938, the ‘Propagandakompanien’ (Pk) comprised motorized units of reporters, film cameramen and photographers, all with military training and attached to Wehrmacht, Waffen SS or Luftwaffe forces. Reproducing many of the unit’s wartime photographs, this volume gives a full account of the organization of the Pk and describes their work in print, film and radio during campaigns in Poland, France and on the Eastern Front.

During the Second World War, the Ministry of Information (MOI) was created to issue ‘national propaganda’, including books, pamphlets, postcards and posters that would maintain morale at home and influence opinion abroad. In 2000, the Ministry’s archive of wartime publications was deposited in the British Library. Drawing on that material, and illustrating 139 examples, Welch’s book demonstrates the range and inventiveness of MOI’s output, whether mobilizing for war, promoting thrift and well-being, celebrating victories or rousing people against the enemy.

Conversation topics in this collection of wide-ranging interviews with broadcaster David Barsamian include American exceptionalism, the nature of activism, opposition to political orthodoxy and the need for solidarity.