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Category: Books

Fiction, US Domestic Policy

The Terrifying World of 2025

I’ve just wrapped up my shift at BurgerBoy and I don’t have much time before the weekly self-criticism session at town hall. This hour with my diary is precious, especially when I have to make a big decision. Writing used to be my job, but it’s so much more difficult after eight straight hours on… Continue reading The Terrifying World of 2025

Books, Fiction, Human Rights

Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism in the Twilight of the Pandemic

I went to a birthday party recently. The celebrants greeted each other with hugs on the patio. After an outdoor barbeque dinner, we stood shoulder to shoulder around the island in the kitchen, eating cake from small paper plates. We sang “Happy Birthday.” Ordinarily, an event like that wouldn’t be worth noting, but these aren’t… Continue reading Bracing for a Surge of Trumpism in the Twilight of the Pandemic

Books, Fiction

Songlands

Now available in paperback and in ebook. 2052. The world is a mess. The climate change meltdown has triggered an endless cycle of natural disasters. Nationalist paramilitaries battle against religious extremists. Multinational corporations, with their own security forces, have replaced global institutions as the only real power-brokers. Waves of pandemics have closed borders with such… Continue reading Songlands

Books, Non-Fiction, US Foreign Policy

The Pandemic Pivot

If the current pandemic is a test of the global emergency response system, the international community is flunking big time. It has done just about everything wrong, from the failure to contain the virus early on to the lack of effective coordination thereafter. As the predicted second wave begins to build — the world is… Continue reading The Pandemic Pivot

Books, Fiction

Frostlands

It’s 2051 and Arcadia is under attack. As the stand-alone sequel to Splinterlands begins, the sustainable compound in what was once Vermont is on high alert. Arcadia’s defense corps is mobilized against what appears to be a routine assault, one of many that the community repulses from paramilitary forces every year. But as sensors record… Continue reading Frostlands

Books, Fiction

The Energy of Delusion Podcast

The Energy of Delusion brings you the latest imaginative writing from John Feffer, author of the Splinterlands series, the thriller Foamers, and numerous works of non-fiction. At the $1 level, The Energy of Delusion brings you the latest installment — in both print and audio versions — of The Third Return, a new thriller that involves two spies, the two Koreas, and… Continue reading The Energy of Delusion Podcast

Blog, Books, Eastern Europe, Non-Fiction

Aftershock

Now out from Zed Books. Available here. A quarter of a century after the fall of communism, novelist and journalist John Feffer returned to Eastern Europe to track down the hundreds of people he spoke to in the initial atmosphere of optimism as the Iron Curtain fell. Aftershock is the sensational account of that journey. Revealing the… Continue reading Aftershock

Books, Fiction, Security, Uncategorized

A Fairy Tale from 2050

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I testified before the great assembly of our land. When I describe this event to children today, it really does sound to them like a fairy tale. Once upon a time — a time before the world splintered into a million pieces and America became its current disunited… Continue reading A Fairy Tale from 2050

Art, Books, Fiction

My Novel (Accidentally) Predicted Trump

It’s terrifying when your dystopian nightmares begin to come true. Donald Trump is consolidating a circle of extremist advisers. Hardline restrictions on immigration are going up, regulations on Wall Street are tumbling down, and ordinary Americans can no longer agree on simple truths, let alone politics. Abroad, Europe may be splintering, too, Asia looks volatile,… Continue reading My Novel (Accidentally) Predicted Trump

Books, Eastern Europe, Fiction

Splinterlands

Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer’s striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. The European Union has broken apart. Multiethnic great powers like Russia and China have shriveled. America’s global military footprint has virtually disappeared and the United States remains… Continue reading Splinterlands

Books, Non-Fiction

Crusade 2.0

My latest book, Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War against Islam, will be published this March by City Lights Press. You can order it here. Next book event: Firedoglake Book Salon, August 4, 2012 Some background information In his offical response to the attacks of September 11th, George W. Bush invoked the Crusades, tapping into… Continue reading Crusade 2.0

Books, Non-Fiction

All Over the Map

All Over the Map: The Best of World Beat Now available at Smashwords for $4.99 And at Barnes and Noble. Foreign policy analyst John Feffer looks at global affairs in the Obama era. This collection of more than 125 Foreign Policy In Focus columns covers war, peace, terrorism, global economics, culture, democracy, and the environment.… Continue reading All Over the Map

Books, Non-Fiction

North Korea/South Korea – U.S. Policy and the Korean Peninsula

War is looming on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has declared that it possesses nuclear weapons. The United States is tightening an economic noose around the country in an attempt to force a regime change. The Bush administration is also keeping a military option on the table, a prospect that terrifies all the countries of East Asia, particularly South Korea.

Books, Non-Fiction

Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11

A concise dissection of the new U.S. unilateralism, Power Trip is the first book-length critique of this fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy to consolidate and extend U.S. global control. Exploring the transformation of U.S. foreign policy begun by the Bush administration when it took office in 2001 and implemented with greater ease and heightened zeal after September 11, Power Trip introduces the cast of characters responsible for the new U.S. power trip and wrestles with the consequences of the new trends in U.S. foreign policy.

Books, Non-Fiction

Living in Hope: People Challenging Globalization

"Living in Hope is an Inspiring collection of stories about people who are creating economic alternatives on the ground. Their work and their lives are a sign of hope for us all."

Books, Fiction

Foamers

I wrote Foamers under the pseudonym Jon Berson. It's a thriller about trains and train fans published by Scribners in 1997.

Books, Non-Fiction

Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict

In the short period since the end of the Cold War, Europeans have witnessed the rebirth of nationalism as a harrowing threat to stability on the continent. The collapse of Yugoslavia, the newly-won independence of the Baltic states, the unification of Germany, the bloody civil wars in Bosnia, and Georgia, Chechnia's abortive attempt at independence, and state-sanctioned xenophobia in France all attest to the rapid expansion of nationalist fervor in Europe.

Books, Non-Fiction

State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile

Co-editor with Richard Caplan This look at the first months of the Clinton administration, published in cooperation with the Institute for Policy Studies, is the first of an annual series. The collection of 14 essays written by such authorities as Barry Commoner and Ralph Nader evaluates the administration’s record in key policy areas as it… Continue reading State of the Union 1994: The Clinton Administration and the Nation in Profile

Books, Non-Fiction

Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions

“Feffer examines each country’s unique conditions and dissident movements, yet shows how all the dissidents are linked.” Utne Reader Click here to to buy Shock Waves.

Books, Non-Fiction

Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options

“This is a report prepared for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization. Aimed at the informed general reader, the book argues that the recent shifts in Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev result from domestic imperatives. Whether or not this positive trend in the cycle of detente is sustained depends on timely American responses… Continue reading Beyond Detente: Soviet Foreign Policy and U.S. Options

Highlighted Articles

  • What’s Up with the Herd? FPIF
  • Death and the Economy: A Dialogue, FPIF
  • COVID-19 and the Global Economy, Inference
  • Revisiting the Goldilocks Apocalypse, TomDispatch
  • A Global Green New Deal Could Defeat the Far Right—And Save the Planet, Newsweek
  • The Widening Rift Between the US and China, The Nation
  • Between Rocks and a Hard Place, Foreign Policy
  • Deserts vs. Development in China, Global Post
  • Infantilizing North Korea, Hankyoreh
  • Jeju Island: Paradise with a Dark Side, Washington Post
  • Waiting for the Curtain, Washingtonian
  • My Backlogged Pages, New York Times
  • Starting Where North Korea Is, 38North
  • Will Facebook Remake the World? Harvard International Review
  • Are We All North Koreans Now? TomDispatch
  • Bringing a Living Wage to the Farm, Alternet
  • Writers from the Other Asia, The Nation
  • The Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki, World Policy Journal
  • The Politics of Dog, American Prospect
  • Containment Lite: U.S. Policy toward Russia and Its Neighbors, FPIF
  • The Costs and Dangers of NATO Expansion, FPIF
  • The Selling of the Russian President, 1993, Z Magazine
  • The Age of Diminished Expectations (Review), Commonweal
  • Poland’s Solidarity: Who Is in Charge? Z Magazine
  • Corruptions of Empire (Review), Philadelphia City Paper

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