The Routledge guidebook to Gramsci's Prison notebooks /

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, a collection of notes and drafts he created while imprisoned in Fascist Italy, are widely regarded as one of the core texts of 20th-century Marxism. However, Gramsci died before writing the intended books, and English speakers have had only the 1971 compilation by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. In 1992, Joseph Buttigieg began publishing annotated translations of the complete notebooks; eight of the 29 notebooks are now available. Schwarzmantel (Univ. of Leeds, UK) explains more fully the place of the 1971 Selections in the notebooks as a whole, relates them to the historical and political context in which they were written, and examines their influence on later thinkers and political developments. Schwarzmantel's explanation of Gramsci's main concepts and arguments, their relation to the controversies within the revolutionary movement of his day, and the ways in which they have been carried forward to the present are all excellent. Some critiques (e.g., that today's parties cannot play the role of the "modern prince") seem shallow, but overall, the book will be of great use to anyone interested in Gramsci and his thought. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. --John C. Berg, Suffolk University