The Bread And Roses Award shortlist!

The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (we’re a member!), and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

Nominations are invited from national and international publishers, with an award of £500 being made to the winning writer mid-September.

Books are judged by the following criteria:

• being informed by radical political concerns and traditions, such as socialism, anarchism, environmentalism, feminism or anti-racism

• inspiring, supporting or reporting on political and/or personal change

• being accessible to the interested reader

• making an important contribution to contemporary academic debate

• relating to global, national, local or specialist areas of interest

We love these titles, and think you will too. You can place your order here.

• Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact Of Nuclear Weapons Since Hiroshima by Becky Alexis-Martin

  Since the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, the history of nuclear warfare has been tangled with the spaces and places of scientific research and weapons testing, armament and disarmament, pacifism and proliferation. Nuclear geography gives us the tools to understand these events, and the extraordinary human cost of nuclear weapons.
  Disarming Doomsday explores the secret history of nuclear weapons by studying the places they build and tear apart, from Los Alamos to Hiroshima. It looks at the legacy of nuclear imperialism from weapons testing on Christmas Island and across the South Pacific, as well as the lasting harm this has caused to indigenous communities and the soldiers that conducted the tests.
  For the first time, these complex geographies are tied together. Disarming Doomsday takes us forward, describing how geographers and geotechnology continue to shape nuclear war, and, perhaps, help to prevent it.

• Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide (A Graphic Guide to Queer and Lesbian History 1950-2020) by Kate Charlesworth

  Cartoonist Kate Charlesworth presents a glorious pageant of LGBTQI+ history, as she takes us on a PRIDE march past personal and political milestones from the 1950s to the present day. Peopled by a cast of gay icons such as Dusty Springfield, Billie Jean King, Dirk Bogarde and Alan Turing, and featuring key moments such as Stonewall, Gay Pride and Section 28, Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, is the first graphic history documenting lesbian life from 1950 to the present. It is a stunning, personal, graphic memoir and a milestone itself in LGBTQI+ history.

• Afropean: Notes From Black Europe by Johnny Pitts

  'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.'

  Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

• Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal

  How rebellious colonies changed British attitudes to empire

  Insurgent Empire shows how Britain’s enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom.

  Priyamvada Gopal examines a century of dissent on the question of empire and shows how British critics of empire were influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies, from the West Indies and East Africa to Egypt and India. In addition, a pivotal role in fomenting resistance was played by anticolonial campaigners based in London, right at the heart of empire.

Also shortlisted (not pictured)

The Government Of No One: The Theory And Practice of Anarchism by Ruth Kinna preorder here

Crippled: The Austerity Crisis And The Threat To Disability Rights by Frances Ryan order here.

October Books has been going strong for over 40 years, keeping your shelves full of radical titles and your brains brimming with ideas - did you know we are also a member of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers? If you’re into radical ideas, and don’t live close to us in Southampton, check out the ARB site for another member bookseller who might be.

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