Permanently Deleted
If I'm not mistaken that's the same person who also started lemmy.ml
When you have friends in the Pentagon and the CIA, you're pretty safe for mass consumption...
https://libcom.org/history/john-deutch-chomskys-friend-pentagon-cia
All college textbook prices are soaring because of in elastic demand. You buy the textbook or you fail, so anything that’s regularly used as a textbook has a linearly increasing price over time.
Would love to see Verso or some other publisher do a collected works of Michael Parenti
Most people that read books like those are probably professors who can afford it
Parenti writes for a mass audience in a non-academic style so I'm sure plenty of average people would appreciate affordable copies of his popular works
We should all reach out and see if we can get publishing rights to some of his out if print stuff. This community is probably one of the larger Parenti aware communities in the internet. Wonder how much a print run where we ship a few to every library in the US would cost?
Important caveat, this may be reflective only of my own experiences and limited knowledge, but I would say Parenti is a very minor figure in academic political science and history, and a fairly relevant figure in current communist circles (actual activists/organizers/party members). He isn't largely discussed among academic Marxists either. My local communist party leader is familiar with Parenti though.
An important reason the books are so expensive is because they aren't published by either university presses or larger publishing houses. Gramsci is readily available, but less talked about in communist circles.
Edit:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/promote-parenti-not-slavoj-zizek
Today, Michael Parenti is the most dangerous Marxist intellectual in the US. I know this because despite countless books, videos, and speaking engagements, despite an uncompromising commitment to a Marxist interpretation of history and current events, despite a profound, but reasoned hatred of capitalism, and despite an admirably approachable style and manner with big ideas, he is otherwise unemployed by universities and denied access to all but the most left or marginal media.
you can probably find an ebook reader under $30
http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=+Michael+Parenti&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=author
Just read Marx, he's free and then you get to know why Parenti is wrong. Or so far as I've seen out of him; I once screamed at someone because of how wrong his article on left anti-communism was. Actually, maybe don't read Marx.
I have a paperback copy of inventing reality I could send you if you want. It's got my highlights in it but it'd be free