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