For the red on your list

Brian Jones

I RECOMMEND Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy--written for teens but enjoyable at any age. The first book takes its title from the cruel, annual ritual imposed on the 12 districts of Panem--a new nation arisen in a post-apocalyptic North America--by the wealthy Capitol.

The Hunger Games are a brutal reality television show, broadcast to all of the districts, in which two contestants from each district (chosen by lottery) fight to death to feed their district. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old from the poorest district, ends up a contestant. But as the drama unfolds, she plays not to win, but to spread a Panem-wide rebellion that she is only gradually becoming aware of herself.

In the oldie-but-goodie category, I recommend the BBC TV series, The Office. Like the American show, the British series (which is the original) centers around the fragile ego of an insufferable manager at a mid-level paper company.

The co-creator and star, Ricky Gervais, is a master of cringe-worthy humor. But the real genius of this series (and what distinguishes it from the American counterpart) is its dark, visual poetry. It is funny, but haunting, too. The Office captures the alienation of "white-collar" working life. There's a lot of laughs, and quite a bit of protest compressed into these two short seasons, plus an essential post-series finale.

Finally, I have to admit I'm a sucker for the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, or don't take public transportation, you've probably seen The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in someone's hands. There's a reason: mystery, exposé of finance, anti-fascism, a little sex and a lot of anti-sexism (the title of the first book, in the original Swedish, was "Men Who Hate Women").

Larsson was a socialist, and his radical politics come through in this breezy, action-packed series. But don't take my word for it. Ask the person sitting next to you.

Helen Scott

EDWIDGE DANTICAT, one of the finest writers of our day, has a new book of essays, Create Dangerously, that move between Haiti and the U.S., past and present, in the spare, understated voice that characterizes her fiction. She writes:

[T]he immigrant artist must quantify the price of the American dream in flesh and bone...while we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere. People are buried under rubble somewhere. Survivors are living in makeshift tent cities and refugee camps somewhere, shielding their heads from the rain, closing their eyes, covering their ears, to shut out the sounds of military "aid" helicopters.

Another emotionally powerful book about the struggles and contradictions of immigrant life is the collection of short stories The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the award-winning novel about the Biafran war, Half of a Yellow Sun. These stories follow the lives of Nigerians trying to make a home in an often hostile and heartless America.

C.J. Sansom's Heartstone, the last of his Matthew Shardlake mysteries, set during the reign of Henry VIII, has been released in the U.S. and promises more of his signature historical detail and persuasive character development.

Also available is William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms, a gripping thriller that follows its protagonist, a trans-Atlantic academic mistakenly caught up in dangerous corporate/political intrigue in the precarious underworld of contemporary London.

A less realistic, but equally compelling, picture of that city can be found in the newly updated Sherlock Holmes, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The three-episode first season is now available to rent/buy or watch online. Don't expect any progressive politics--this is true to the original in its ideological allegiances--but plenty of clever character updates, entertaining dialogue, tortured plots, and a 21st century British urban landscape that is grimly Victorian.

GIVEN THAT we've just been through the third national "change" election in six years, it's worth getting a little historical perspective with Richard Hofstadter's classic The American Political Tradition. A one-time Marxist, Hofstadter provided a radical and revisionist look at major figures in American history, from Thomas Jefferson ("The Aristocrat as Democrat") to FDR ("The Patrician as Opportunist").

Hofstadter has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance as commentators have cited his essay "The Paranoid Style of American Politics" to explain the likes of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party. But The American Political Tradition reminds us how ideological claptrap often masks an elite consensus.

On the topic of environment, two recent books--Chris Williams' Ecology and Socialism and Heather Rogers' Green Gone Wrong--can be read side-by-side.

Ecology and Socialism applies Marxism to an understanding of the causes and solutions of the environmental crisis. Rogers' book is empirical, exposing the ways in which capitalism undermines sane environmental policies while co-opting many "green" initiatives. Both books show how corporate capitalism is the enemy of environmental sustainability and justice.

Since holidays involve lots of eating and some traveling, why not do both (vicariously) by spending a few hours with Anthony Bourdain and his popular Travel Channel show No Reservations? Bourdain, a New York chef-turned-bad boy critic of the restaurant industry, travels and samples food.

Besides his snarky persona and passion for pork, what sets this show off from the rest is Bourdain's generally left-of-center commentary and his sympathy with society's underdogs. In the more than 100 shows that have aired, my top picks are the ones on the Texas/Mexico border, Ghana, Laos, Ireland, Miami and a 2006 episode in Lebanon. The last one won an Emmy nomination because it turned from a light-hearted Beirut restaurant romp into a documentary on escaping Israeli bombardment during the 2006 war.

Anthony Arnove

THE BATTLE of Chile, directed by Patricio Guzmán, a brilliant documentary shot about the popular upheavals of Chile in the early 1970s and brutal repression that followed with the rise of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, is out in a special new four-DVD set.

On his new album National Ransom and Secret, Profane & Sugarcane released in 2009, Elvis Costello is just in brilliant form. With The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964, the invaluable Bootleg Series gives us a true gift: recordings of Bob Dylan laying down demo tracks of songs that revolutionized songwriting and music.

Michael Löwy is always an original and compelling writer, who distills insights in his short, challenging books. The new edition of The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution is an excellent book and great companion to his indispensable book The Theory of Revolution in Young Marx.

Two recent TV series have raised television to whole new level: The Wire and Friday Night Lights. Also, check out The Tillman Story by Amir Bar-Lev, narrated by Josh Brolin, still in select cinemas. No matter how much you think you know about Pat's story, you'll find yourself outraged all over again at the government's lies and cover-up and inspired by his family's challenge to it all.

Nicole Colson

ONE OF the most entertaining reads I've had all year is Kraken, the latest tour de force from fantasy author China Miéville. Combining giant squids, a strike of magical familiars (complete with a non-corporeal shop steward) and competing Armageddons, Miéville spins a sprawling tale of below-the-surface London whose ending had me wanting read the whole thing again immediately.

One warning to Star Trek fans: you might never look at the franchise the same way after Miéville's discussion of what it really means to be "beamed up."

For the little ones in your life, the 2008 book Forever Young by Bob Dylan, with illustrations by Paul Rogers, is a sweet, short picture book based on the beloved Dylan song, written to one of his sons in 1974. The illustrations shine--with Rogers placing clever references that will strike a chord with grown-ups (D.A. Pennebaker filming a peace march attended by Joan Baez; visual references to Woody Guthrie) in the background of vignettes that emphasize anti-racism and social justice.

Slightly older kids will get an important history lesson from Busing Brewster, by Richard Michelson, with collage illustrations by R.G. Roth, that tells the story of two African American brothers in the 1970s who find out they are to be bused to an all-white school across town, and the opposition that confronts them--including a crowd of whites who protest outside of their school on their first day.