The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad
The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad
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The Darker Nations
A People's History of the Third World

Author: Vijay Prashad, Howard Zinn

Narrator: Neil Shah

Unabridged: 12 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/19/2021


Synopsis

Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement—the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world's impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.

Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad's fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, and Indonesia's Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World, and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Alternet, and BirGun. He is chief editor at LeftWord Books.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on October 11, 2022

An absolute favorite dive into censored history to reemerge with the present conditions, so I have to give a worthy review... Preamble on Vijay: --As in his lectures (highly recommended, see below), Vijay Prashad has such mastery of articulating overarching social issues, drilling down to give detaile......more

Goodreads review by Kaśyap on October 20, 2014

A brilliant dialectical analysis of the political phenomenon of third world and the global political economy. This is an analysis and not a narrative and assumes some rudimentary knowledge of the world history of the 20th century on part of the reader. The main thesis of Parishad is that the third wo......more

Goodreads review by Craig on May 03, 2015

A classic case of where even smart Marxist history can go off the tracks. Prashad's one of he best writers about Asian American experience and he can be a fiery speaker whose anger about the state of the world, especially white supremacy and economic injustice, is usually on target. I was hoping tha......more

Goodreads review by Rob on February 09, 2021

Brilliant political history of the Third World project, but the prospective reader will need to brush up on their prior knowledge of events. This book won’t explain Suez, or Vietnam, but it will help the reader make sense of the political universe these events produced. The aspects on development ec......more

Goodreads review by David on June 11, 2023

If a lizard murmured an anti-imperialist thought under a rock in the desert, you will probably find it mentioned here. Sweeping in scope, crystal-clear in structure and argument, characteristically charming in presentation, Prashad wrote the bedrock survey on the rise and decline of the formerly col......more