Les Incasables

He changed the course of history' Barack Obama'Lightning makes no sound until it strikes'This is the momentous story of the Civil Rights movement, told by one of its most powerful and eloquent voices. Here Martin Luther King, Jr. recounts the pivotal events in the city of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that propelled his non-violent campaign for racial justice from a movement of lunch counter sit-ins and prayer meetings to a phenomenon that 'rocked the richest, most powerful nation to its foundations'.As inspiring and resonant as it was upon publication, Why We Can't Wait is both a unique historical document, and an enduring testament to one man's wise, courageous and endlessly hopeful vision.

What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death. While many commentators have predicted its demise, the Left has always defied these bleak prognoses and risen from the ashes in the most unexpected ways. Nevertheless, we are witnessing today a global decline in organized movements on the Left, and while social struggles continue to challenge dominant political regimes, these efforts do not translate into support for traditional left parties or into the creation of dynamic movements on the Left.Bestselling historian Shlomo Sand argues that the global decline of the Left is linked to the waning of the idea of equality that has united citizens in the past and inspired them to engage in collective action. Sand retraces the evolution of this idea in a wide-ranging account that includes the Diggers and Levellers of seventeenth-century England: the French Revolution: the birth of anarchism and Marxism: the decolonial, feminist, and civil rights revolts: and the left-wing populism of our time. In piecing together the thinkers and movements that built the Left over centuries, Sand illuminates the global and transnational dynamics which pushed them forward. He outlines how they shaped the notion of equality, while also analysing how they were confronted by its material reality, and the lessons that they did – or did not – draw from this.This concise and magisterial history of the Left will appeal to anyone interested in the idea of equality and the fate of one of the most important movements that has shaped the modern world.